Again, I enter your domain
and feel the queasiness
of my symptoms take a tumble,
for your eye is uninterested
and your stethoscope brutal,
a cold metal harbour
for your five minute lesson
in your ignorance
and impatience, watching
the clock tick over, counting down
the sick, marking them off,
crossing them off;
the sigh of the same story once told
now the conjured message of disguised help
me please, modern
life the incorrigible scourge
of modern living.
I look into your eyes,
Learning to read
the British Rail National Timetable
was a rite of passage
I enjoyed early
as my mum
would invariably
restrict me to one comic
only, purchased at the station,
as we made our way from Birmingham
to Plymouth
when I was a small boy;
exotic names, unheard of treasures
would find their way
worm like and lay eggs forever
into my subconscious.
I lament the passing
of such information,
lost to print it seems,
found only as an A to Cornwall,
I bought the wrong winning ticket,
easy mistake to make,
and yet the council
won’t take the wrong money
to pay off my bills,
the slave owners of credit cards
insist I still owe them
despite mistakenly wanting to settle
my debt and the milkman
is adamant that he still feels
obligated to inform me
that I should hand over
the spondoolicks for my
regular full cream top.
I wanted to shell out shrapnel
to the people that own my house
I have a silver knife,
an antique picked up
from a market stall
in South London, a depiction
of a car, old as the time that
the Hallmark suggests,
I wrote a snappy poem
and put the picture up
on social media,
it wouldn’t load,
I only asked
if friends knew where they
would plunge it in me.
Ian D. Hall 2017
I don’t know how to respond,
perhaps you are having
one of those bad days
in which the world can go to Hell,
or is it just a portion, a half,
fifty percent
that you would see burn, break it down
to the man
you despise
and the assertion
that no man is capable of true emotion;
I don’t know how to respond,
not because I am devoid of feeling
or lack empathy, I just don’t
want the argument to escalate
further as you march
Every night
I say sweet dreams, I check
the room for spiders
and walking beasts that might scare
you, I wipe gently
the crusts from your eye
and tickle your nose
and it is that holds me
together, for a while
but then I see the papers,
and I know I fight my own
losing battle each night,
a small war, a territory
lost in the middle of screams,
silent and rubble
built back over night
to show a smile to the world;
Of course I am always broke,
try being a poet
and paying off your dues
the old fashioned way,
try being a writer
and
finding that the dues
always have interest
from their end attached
and then see how
that work out;
cards stacked against
lower class
as you get told
just think of the exposure.
Ian D. Hall 2017
Police baton raised in Barcelona streets
and a point raised
is shouted down in Madrid
with force, with a flowering
of violence,
a crashing down
on someone’s head,
falling down,
falling down,
Spain’s soul
is in an unhappy state,
the homage to Catalonia
is lost in time,
falling down,
raised tempers, words of disrespect,
falling down, down
as anger flares and firemen and police clash,
how long before the baton becomes the gun
becomes the wood becomes the bullet
fired in the air, into
Hillp, Jelli,
(bother)
Hello nate, mate,
Blinet, blimey, that’s geeat mews,
Nole, nipe, nope not seem your sitter around
recently, fidnt, didn’t knoe sheep was
going back to yni, I hope sheep
gets the reslut sheep deserbed, sheep
wad always a geeat, ham worlet, waker,
warker, worker.
Whem do yiu get jome from prosin,
P]risim, prisoin, (damn) when are yiu released?
Anyway, fat thumbs at the reast, teadt, ready, herr,
Don’t crew up your remaning dates, days,
wouldn’t want you blowing
your feesdom, freedsam, freedon, freedom,
The night you were in town,
I could not get to see you,
was that planned,
was it just the latest
in a long line of inside
out misunderstandings,
that if I bumped into you,
if I should set my eyes
on your supposed beauty,
would I just crumble
into dust
or would I rise like a tiger
in the cage, mad, bad and dangerous
to approach trapped and with my own eyes
blazing, burning bright.
The night you came to town,