Repeat after me,
you are only a miserable sod.
It was words that I knew to be false,
miserable,
unhappy perhaps, certainly cheerless
in some cases, wretched,
low, as overcast as leaden sky
and the darkness of a thunderstorm
waiting to rage…
but even in that thunderstorm
must come surely
lightning, the illumination
of a flood of ideas, the mania
of hopeful praise and the sense
that the brief encounter
with electric vibration may last
long enough to kick start the heart
Doctor, never mind Fay Wray,
she will always be remembered
at least for being
instrumental in the death
of King Kong, animatronics
and the sense of colossal, the beast
dying at the hands of beauty
and pre war scream queen,
everybody will remember Fay Wray, Doctor,
because of you, but who remembers
poor old Lewis Wilson,
Adam West
considered by many to be the first
on screen, they forget you Lewis,
black and white hero in black
and white tuxedo and a cowl
There is no room
left in the world
for Spitting Image
to belong back on television;
Westminster
has finally
revealed itself
to be the finest
satirical sketch show
there is,
and with some great
puppets
at the helm.
Ian D. Hall 2017
It is a moment of time that stretches
and is lost forever,
gone are the days
when my name ran readily
off your lips and all I could do
was let you love me, let you protect
me, now
instead the faint whisper down the phone
as my first name is met with silence,
puzzlement, an abandonment
of once proud Feminist teaching;
now…
I am dust…
to you,
forgotten memory slides away,
the smile of a boy
lost
Well,
that was tremendous
fun…
shall we do the same again,
October?
in the wind and rain,
as Autumn leaves
fall to the ground
and we can all
be dismal
all year round.
Ian D. Hall 2017
Field of wheat, what did you do
to deserve being run through
by the chaff of this land,
did you ask for the vicar’s daughter
to act like a combine harvester,
to terrorise you, to rampage through
your hard work and denigrating you
into letting go of the nourishing wheat,
the hard decision in which one to save
because the footsteps, the running chaff,
tore at your foundations,
wiped out the hope of food for all
and allowed the following magpies,
black and white hedge head hunters
It is a shame you were not around
in the position
of responsibility
when Roger wrote the words
to Pigs, for surely they now suit you,
wrapped in the pig skin
and the mud and shit,
dear Teresa, Donald and Katie,
you three different ones
writhing in the destruction
of person after person
and in the case of Pig Katie,
the figures in her bile
put more straw upon her made up house.
The trouble is dear piglets,
you are tiny, an oink lost in the darkness
The curtains have begun to close
and through the dim light
afforded the scene, I see
in your eyes that it takes
a minute or two
for you to remember who I am,
the boy you raised in summer’s
warmth on an island and clotted cream
and to whom I revered as the fiercest
of storms, a one woman army
not dictated to by a single man,
in your eyes, it took a moment
and longer to remember me
and those eyes, frightened, lost
They called us nihilistic, we the latchkey
kids without supervision
as the post war post war children
dictated the every move
in the spirit of Victoria
and didn’t even leave us Jimmy Dean
to rebel alongside, we the latchkey
kids who were taught through the voice
of John Hurt, that sex could kill,
yet we held on to our latchkey
status in hope we could get someone home
to hold us for a while, we the latchkey
kids to whom Aids and the Crack
of dawn were but words to fear
As I sit,
down upon my leather chair
with a vacant look upon my face
after trying to live life to very max,
my wife will turn on the television
to watch a nature programme
or a compelling
feature on animals in the wild.
In my addled late night mind
and scowl driven perspective,
I swear I see a gorilla, an ape
or a chimpanzee hold up a sign
dripping in red ink
which reads,
Thanks for wasting evolution,
you bum.