I
never wanted
to stand alone on the
peek,
for me it was enough to be
in the crowd and see it from
base camp.
Ian D. Hall 2023
Tag Archives: poetry by Ian D. Hall
From On High they Swoop.
White beaked Messerschmitts
take vantage position
on the decaying church roof
as they crowd and wait
with piercing eyes
the early morning frenzy
of laid down black bags
the parcel corpses of the bread,
too far gone for morphine,
and they attack on mass.
The streets are filled with caw bullets
sprayed
and laughed by brains
so small
these creatures of the air,
and yet they know
our habits,
Your Presence.
Your life, in pictures,
is a reminder
of how I feel about You.
You are beside
My working desk,
You overlook me,
as I stretch and yawn
in the middle of the night, you
as a child
when I had to leave,
You
as an adult that has made me afraid…
Your presence
has filled me with love,
and it has driven me
to question, to anger, to fear…
I miss you always,
Scenes From A Black And White Photograph: The Sandcastle.
A memory of childhood
sets with the sun on a desolate beach
as whispers of tall grass watch over
forgotten sands
where once heavy footsteps danced
around fires and final beats of
misheard laughter, song lyrics, and confused
buckets are tapped down and moulded
into shape of turrets and invisible guards
keeping the sea and swooping bitter seagull alike
at bay.
The sands now brushed clean
by March gales, April showers
and October winds.
We were never there, just a blink
Fear Of The Calm.
The quiet
was deafening.
The silence
roared in my face
as the workman
signed off
on another job,
smiling as the payment cleared.
In fear of the calm,
the hammer and nail
withdrawn,
I turned on the radio
to thunderous applause
only to understand
that the sound
was just static,
unstill, crowded white noise
and not the end of a concert
that I had missed.
Ian D. Hall 2022.
Every Morning
Sometimes I open the blinds
to witness the dark at four o’clock
in all its stillness.
But more often than not I keep
them closed, till the Sun insists
its alive and well, screaming
into the darkness that becomes
a whisper of joyful light by the time
it reaches my ears…
and yet every morning,
long before the birds
see the march of time and early worms
I question whether
I should continue,
every morning I ask if you
Visible Shame.
There are times
when
I am so ashamed,
that I have to avert my eyes
to the damage
I
inflict upon
myself.
Proper Fish And Chips.
Vinegar drenched,
and salt infused,
eighteen months of food sobriety
in the face of pandemic and staple dinners
gone
in one
beautiful, grease kissed
moment
that saw proper fish and chips
fill my plate.
Ian D. Hall 2021
To Cut A Rug.
I tugged and pulled at the landing and stairs carpet,
threadbare, its fabric skin, hanging loosely
and unsurprisingly
it gave way easily, knowing its time was short,
revealing trapped dust of a decade’s footsteps,
up and down, occasionally falling, tumbling,
broken neck avoided by short distance
between point a and b…
The remains swept up, cleaned down,
a vacation in a vacuum and then in the bin,
to live and decompose in a thousand years
in plastic sweat, much like the carpet I had
It Was An Odd Way To Look At The World.
I found a diary entry
dated
in black bold letters at the top
of the page, September 19th 1986.
In the mix of teenage scrawl
and practised finer examples
of handwriting to come,
I noted that
Pat Pheonix
had died the day before;
I also wrote, took some pain killers today,
is the discomfort new, or am I just
noticing it for the first time,
as my neck stiffened at an awkward angle