I saw my Granddad’s ration
book once, held out to me
as a symbol of patient loss,
from the fall of the Canadian farmland
scrubbed dry and parched
in the ’36 Depression
to the bombs and shells
that descended, rained and flooded
around his Grandfather’s old fruit
and veg shop
opposite Stirchley baths;
in Time,
do I also hold out
the passing of this failed belief
in the form of a book
that we all must feel free
to express our gratitude,
From out of the shadows
the mugger brandished his weapon,
a desperate poet in need of a rhyme,
shunned by society, he thrust his
ill thought out Haiku
and grinned blackened teeth.
Call that a poem?,
enquired the mugger’s late-night target
and slowly drew out the epic
he had been working on
for twenty years, with unfolding
plot and elaborate narrative
weaved throughout time,
imagining gasps and the scent
of the Italian Rivera in his cold,
wind swept, storm driven sandals.
You are no Queen Cobra
and your beyond treason
to the cause, as you bite
down hard on my skin,
full of scales, makes you believe
you have won, beaten me
with tongue and the venom
that drops from gleaming
hypodermic needles
that infects me
and will kill me, but not before,
like the constrictor, heavy weight,
that I am,
I will squeeze with regrettable anger
in return
but take no satisfaction
in seeing us both become food for the bereaved.
She wanted to see less of me,
for my health
and state of mind,
she was willing to let part
of me go, fade I suppose
the adipose had to go away,
told to leave, less of me
to hold,
she would miss me,
but when I was less of the man I used to be,
then perhaps she would love me
again.
Ian D. Hall 2018
…and they thought God spoke to them all,
how wrong they were.
His voice, though brooding,
sometimes a whisper
that could shatter mountains
and move men’s hearts,
had been replaced in the band
by a more seductive call,
one that oozed sensuality
as a virtue.
Now God stood at the back, fixed grin,
happy to still be on tour, though now
more as symbol to the group’s
finer moments in pop history,
content, he played the triangle
like a demon
and occasionally was allowed
Through the throng
of two-legged traffic,
the feral beaked stumbles
melancholically in people’s way,
side stepping with three crossed
tango, beak down, resentment
building as old dinosaur rage
and blood courses through
it veins, stooped in cowardice
and fluttering disease, it pecks
against the storm and the rush
of legs, whilst high above, looking
down on the world with smug eyes,
the seagull lives on, perpetually
ready to shit downwards, happy
to see the feral tango back and forth
in between shuffling
Call me cynical
if you must,
but I believe it is harder to hand out hope
and be sincere with your praise
than to be callous, revelling in the quick-
soundbite of sarcasm as you search
for the cheap laugh, the moment
in the sun, the joker who drives the fans wild,
until it gets out of hand and the wit
turns ugly, because after all,
it had nowhere else to go.
Being kind is filled with pain, holding
out a hand that gets rejected
There were nerves admittedly,
Isn’t there always, I thought,
but did it matter, I had
taken my mind of the evening,
super sexy perhaps,
or just a brief glimpse of the divine,
once in a lifetime, my soul,
nestling somewhere between the Canadian
past, Cornish beauty and Birmingham
love, the Manchester Saturdays
in which I exploded with passion
in your forgiving arms,
the Mersey beat in which I trust,
the south coast serenade
and a moment in which identity
It started out as a whisper,
a small national joke
at the expense of our once
blighted, blind devotion,
to a game, a pastime,
we believed with arrogance
that should always be ours
to hold aloft the greatest prize.
Like conquest, of Empire,
of taking what wasn’t ours,
we demanded it and we became
barbaric.
The whisper turned,
not out of self-importance
or crass, dogged egotism,
but out of hope,
that we might once again
be civilised about such things,
The desert, when in full swing
of parching you dry,
will always compound the problem
as you seek to stay alive
reckless, thirsty for some meaning
as the words of the day become stagnant
you wait for the Earthquake and dream
of French fries, a bowl of cooling
ice cream or a thick, headache inducing
milk shake, or just a snowflake
to drift down from the heavens
and make you feel like Superman,
or at least give you hope…
compounded and complex,