I want to be on a private beach,
picking sand and shadows
out of my bellybutton, admiring the view
of a secluded castle on the hillside
and the dense wood
that nestles around it,
far from home
when the sunburn hits me,
when nations clash
over such stupidity
on the beach, as they play war games
with tin boats and daring rhetoric,
I want nothing more than to be sipping
a cold beer as my skin goes red
and peels,
getting sunburned in the Med
It is the beautiful lie
that makes us believe that Central Park
lays empty, photographed at four
in the morning and any sign
of lingering, full of early morning dew humanity
photo-shopped out,
leaving only the light green grass and the sound of silence
in a city of broken and disturbed dreams,
the snore and the wide awake call
of the alarms and the beautiful
that reside on avenues and in sewers;
for tourism depends fully on the calculated
and erasable lie.
I wish I had his talent,
not a phrase denoting green eyed fury
or jealous wrath
but just an adoration for the detail in elegant brush
strokes, thin line drawn
pencil men
which are more human than I.
An allusion perhaps dear Cyrano
to the master of clogs and dogs,
of factory gates at closing time
and scuffed hats thrown in the air
at the dead of dawn;
yet Cyrano, I might love Lowry,
how could you not after all,
but I am entranced by your work,
If only he had stuck to painting murals,
if only he wasn’t driven by nature
and run over constantly
by the Greyhound buses that skipped
and lolled through the desert
and 92 degrees heat, if only
he wasn’t such an arsehole,
we might have liked him more.
If only he had found a way
to curb his appetite,
to not clip the wings
of his bird
of prey, of his chosen meal
that would stop his mind from being obsessed,
if only he could change that nature,
Does it matter what colour your passport is
as long as you can travel safely
and experience the whirlwind world,
not be covered in ivy as you recede
into a fool’s paradise of post imperial pride.
I grew up with maps of pink,
I didn’t see the point of ownership,
embrace the blue, the green, the rampant red, the saffron,
I couldn’t care less about borders,
If we all had the same, then nobody would
suffer from envy, nobody would be jealous…
in theory
The grandee pokes his head
above the parapet and cries out
earnestly for war,
it is O.K. for him, stuck as he is,
behind the lines, behind the men,
behind his comfy leather chair
and his idealism enhanced by those foolish to believe;
carry the flag boys, show some of that bulldog
breed spirit that made them whimper
in the South Atlantic, jolly good fun
in April spring, he suggests
knowing the belligerent and the uncompromising will follow
and create havoc in the press,
… and I don’t know what they told you
about my Captain, but in his life
he opened my eyes for me,
I suspect he did the same for you,
or at least tried before you clammed them shut
and shook your head from side to side
like a mad man,
like the unfeeling
and wretched,
for in your pursuit of happiness
there was one thing you forgot to learn
that a hundred pounds stolen and squandered
is nothing compared
to five minutes alone
in the woods and listening
The sleepy Tamar
at high tide in summer
may have been the sound more gentle
to those ears of a Cornish Man
and Home Park love, Green
and Pilgrim, The Hoe and the Lido
just out of earshot and Mutley Plain
a place in another county;
yet for this South West Man, Green running deep,
Tamar running deeper still
and majestic, flowing football, he traded in Pastie days
and local derby smiles
to find the meaning of life
and complete the forty-two,
an achievement of high esteem
Their marriage was always the cause
of an argument, how could it not be
when they were always at war before hand;
the union laid down with ambassadors
forever at the birthing suite,
ready with hot water and towels
as a procession of children followed
who all left home with a single
solitary finger raised in the air
as they eventually told their parents,
sometimes nicely, sometimes
through gritted teeth,
that they were old enough, mature enough
to break away and live on their own
I would wait a lifetime
to kiss you, to feel that tender skin
now sweet with middle age
and soon to become lined, matured,
taken beyond the late teen I knew
to the world of womanhood
and with the next step,
Time’s next artistic breath,
near dust, near rust, near the echo of the youthful
freckled girl I once dreamed of;
I would wait a lifetime to kiss you
as it would show we had lived all our lives
in each other’s company.
Ian D. Hall 2017