Beyond Wigan Pier,
flat caps are worn with a sense
of irony
to the visiting football fan
that made their way through tunnels
and forgotten history book sampled landscapes
of the once industrial blackened soot North,
Orwell no longer in residence
and yet in this barbarous age,
a depression in all but name,
the great decline of the 21st Century,
but as long as you can get your nails done
and have the latest must have Playstation
diversion, then obviously the world is just great and green;
You will, no doubt,
receive your reward in Heaven,
she said to me with an air of superiority
and down at heel, run of the mill
lack of charisma; I knew she didn’t have the money
to pay me, I wasn’t doing it for reward,
just to help a fellow human being
in a moment of distress
but still
she had to bring Heaven into it,
she had to tell me that her belief,
the conviction that by doing something good
you must automatically become
You are all running marathons,
or perhaps still able to play
in a local league match
in which you can imagine
you are scoring
the winning goal in the Cup Final,
or perhaps feeling the burn down the gym,
or perhaps swimming the distance
of the channel every year
down the sports centre,
or perhaps doing something
that your body welcomes
with a parade and a joyful smile;
my old and dear friends from school,
I miss you more than ever
when I see you do these things
I think I missed out
somewhere on wild fields
and lazing in grass
as the music played around me
in Woodstock, back in ’69.
The closest I got to such
an Earth shattering
and open eyes moment
was sprawled out
near a cliff by Petit Bot
or perhaps in the bed
of a woman who would
never have made it back
alive from the scenes in Woodstock,
far out man, far out woman,
both gone for a while
as Janis Joplin
or The Who played out
The scowl of your elevated Cornish brow
as you lean over the hard won typewriter
and understanding so much of the world
yet deferring
in part
to the men in your life,
that is how I always imagine you
Daphne,
A murderess I cling to
with hands gripped tight,
white knuckled and surrendering
my masculinity, a joke in your
once noble Gallic background,
this I gleaned from you,
I am poor
a servant in your house,
They only tell you
when they hear
that you are dead,
just how much they love you.
The outpouring of grief on the streets,
The middle class avenues filled
with popular opinion and anguish
and in the houses of the fashionable
you get the sympathetic nod becoming of their understanding
and they hear the wails from the true believers;
they are unified when you die,
when the starlet fails to shine early one morning
or when the hero packs away his whip
one last time
She had no heroes,
no room in her life
for such romantic thought
or strength of feminine culture.
No heroes, not any more.
She swore off them, respect
whittled away
chip by whittled chip
and now the only hero
in her life
is the one who lives
in an imagined world
where She sleeps, catatonic
and death like; the hero arrives
faceless but frees her from her cell, her prison, her solitary
confinement.
There is no room for heroes,
for She will not relinquish the key.
It was 68/69 and I was tripping out
On psychedelic mushrooms ,green tea, and Brussel Sprouts
It was really far out man,
You know what I mean?
I’m living on Plannet Zogg so it would seem
My rock rolls in swirling colours like John Lennon’s Rolls Royce
Some people are just weird man, that’s their choice
On the day the Eagle landed on the moon
I had already been there on my flying spoon!
Spaced out flying high till I came down
Crash landing on Plannet Zogg in stereo surround
I AM NOT A ZIMMER FRAME
OR A LEANING POST…
Breathe easy, calm the old spirits and wheel
gently away and leave the person
so in love with my handlebars
that they could not stop fondling them,
caressing with deepening fingers
or leaning so heavily upon them
that like an irate
and unwanted suitor
I was getting more aware of their
jiggling up and down and heavy handed
strokes as each moment passed.
It’s not that hard at the end of the day
Nature reclaimed her
and now the window is no more,
a raging sky and sea
meet in the middle
and blur without the sense of Azure;
we live in the window frame
now and forever
as piece by piece,
the world crumbles
into the sea.
Ian D. Hall