Thirty years without you,
It has gone in a blink of an eye,
yet still, you remain, in my thoughts,
larger than life, the story man,
Adanac and the green painted door,
The Story Man, a ready tale
of heroism that I have tried,
and failed,
to live up to.
March 1st 1988, ironic to die
on a patron saint’s day, we all do
though I guess, have to pass
through the gossamer thin web and veil
eventually, it is though whether we
The snow drifts silently down,
feather touch, soft and beautiful
against the flash of the camera
which lights up the scene in Sefton Park.
An everyday photograph of a park bench
in winter, deserted, surrounded by claustrophobic emptiness,
by time standing still and in the distance
a bell calls the man home, a clock
striking midnight, magic happens
in dark lonely places, as the man
pulls his coat tight around his snow covered shoulders,
and it wouldn’t be till the morning,
when the man returned to the scene
Bin bags galore, lined up drunkenly spewing
the whiff of loaded down hoarding,
a symptom of the black I have been touching,
holding close, I want
to let go.
No council name or number
blazed across the thin plastic coating,
an advertising sign
coated in the decay of years
that the item inside has been lost
but holding ground, a black hole swallow
and burp now tied together with string,
a promise in the knot that this is the last time
I hold such antique thoughts and treasures
Standing end on end in graveyards,
The near dead adorn their resting place
with words, with their sentence
of death inscribed
and dated, stamped, remembering the last time
they were thought of
fondly, with fingers quivering
with anticipation, their spines
still erect, still perfect,
but like anything that breathes life,
soon will fade, soon will lose their meaning,
their passion
as younger, more tempting words
are echoed and brushed against
closed dreaming eyes and the smell
of the new and intoxicating
…and I set the grass on fire
out in the meadow
in the hope of raising smoke signals
so you might see my concerns,
you left me without defences, no timber
to build shelter, no army to stand alongside,
only hope that once the short fuse
was lit, that the grass grew black
and blazed for a second or two
before burning out
you might find the signal
as it melted away
into the clouds above.
Ian D. Hall 2018
I read
your biography, hand stamped
and correction liquid filled
till the paper stuck like glue
and the pictures,
all glory, had your head
on the shoulders of giants.
I heard your authorised memoir
through my ears and the hairs
wilted under the pressure, singed
by facts and figures
quoted by this somewhere man
whose ego arrives an hour
before his life;
I took your words and I let them blow away
into the sunset, a history, not secret,
no tale too tall which you could
I wouldn’t have got far,
nowhere at all really,
if you had not come into my life
and shown me a new road in which
to travel, a crossing in which to pause
at and wait for the signal to move back,
and also to understand sometimes
that you have to step back
in which to gain momentum.
I would not have got anywhere
if you had not shown me how to break
using my feet and worn down sole,
I would have still been
Birthdays rarely fall
when they should,
a day in which to celebrate
and make good
of the hopeful
cheer that might come your way
would be better served in warmer climes,
not in the frozen pastures of February,
neither ought it tumble
onto the stony, unforgiving ground
of the weekday, wantaway Blues,
where grown adults of the current age
shake their heads and say,
not on a school night, despite
not having children to care for.
I will take my birthday when it comes,
I have thrown out so many bags
for refuse of late, that countless
ideas of nonsense have become
obsolete, not worthy of being
in the same house anymore;
I must find a way to make room
for the hopeful flights of fancy
that are being conceived,
embryonic, shifting shapes
of butterflies, pinned down,
to grow into
the nonsense they desire to be.
Ian D. Hall 2018
Valentine’s Day is cruel,
unforgiving as expectations are raised
and the hope of a declaration of love
so special is hoisted high
in the hopes that your relationship
is seen to be perfect;
she told me to be ready by seven,
the table was booked for eight
and for a change
she was treating me to a night out
in low lights, soft music
and a night which was not
to be considered make
or break.
I hated the idea of such fuss,