Another turned down invitation,
one that wasn’t meant,
one that designed to encourage
one nodded at but underneath
the spluttering search for solitude
commences;
not that I want to be alone,
not that I crave to be isolated
and abandoned, it is just…
well easier to not be in people’s way,
to feel the cruelty of hope
of a conversation that didn’t switch
to feeling guilty, of opening up
about my fears and dreams,
dreams that are smashed with
the sledgehammer eyebrow raised,
They shall not bury them
in the alleyways they fall in,
the concrete just does not give
way to the simple spade like grass
and dusty earth, from mud we came
and when the first shots
of final rebellion come,
don’t get caught on open streets,
hard knocks, no grave where you fall,
left most likely to rot in the space
you met your end in,
crows tearing at your eyes,
crows tearing at your eyes;
they have no fear of you,
no open battle ground,
If I leave a blank page,
If I should just leave the scab
alone, like me, not pick at it,
not to get my finger nail
underneath it and slightly
leave it looking off coloured compared
to the rest of the skin that surrounds it,
would that please you, would it make you
jovial, a feeling of being eight
clouds above me, far out of sight, spit down
to my eye and showing me the arse
you wish me to kiss, bare bottom
and needing a wipe,
With my wife’s permission,
I spent the late winter Saturday evening
in the memory of embrace and arms
of my first love before
heading back home, cold feet
but undoubtedly a warmed heart.
I have neglected her, since she came
into money. For nine
and half long years I watched, hiding
my interest, trying hard
to forget just what this lady
in sheer blue had once meant to me.
I had loved her
when it seemed no one else would,
when she ragged, poor, shambolic,
In a lonely place,
where no one talks
and no one smiles,
no one calls,
no one knocks on the wooden panelled door,
the text alert stays silent,
the interaction on social media
reduced to the barest minimum
contact, more chance of Life
in the hereafter it seems.
A Twenty-First century death,
silent, tumble weed on screen
garners more interest,
just forgotten,
and the worst part is when you get used to it,
then the feeling of memory is taken from you.
Ian D. Hall 2017
Greeted with a glass
of what seemed cheaply made,
home induced, egg nog
at the door of my daughter’s school
by a woman with dust marks on her hair,
and the strange smell of child nerves
upon her weighted down shoulders,
deeper in debt, demoralised
and now having to greet
parents to whom their child is the star
of this off Broadway, local authority show.
Small talk surrounds the close fitting
chairs, designed for the uncomfortable
advances of an ice cream pot for child sized hands
I promised myself
no more cold winters
stuck indoors
as I approached the autumn
years of fifty.
I promised with hand on heart,
a vow to my then hopefully older self
that by then, the words would have meant
something more, that the days
would be long and bright,
not sat under a blanket,
with two pairs of socks, a cardigan, long johns on
trying to keep my nose from freezing
and turning blue, choosing
between heating the house and eating a meal,
It is all about introducing children
to the delight of theatre,
thrill them with a funny
but beautiful tale at Christmas
when they are young, and in hope,
you will have them for life.
I was seven before I first saw my first panto,
played out for some reason
on my birthday and with Jimmy Edwards
and Arthur Askey on stage,
Hello playmates and bushy moustached Whacko
transferred from my bedside radio
to the grandness of the Birmingham Hippodrome,
my birthday, I needed to visit the toilet
When I was a boy
I believed that witches
were real.
Even good ones.
The Witch in the Wizard of Oz
scared me,
the pointy shoes
and I cheered when Dorothy
and her friends
dropped a house on her
tired withered body.
I reasoned that good witches
could wear high heeled shoes,
all black, stiletto points
and daggers in the stamped down male foot,
when we didn’t behave.
Dorothy, I thought,
you can leave those witches be.
English towns and cities,
grassy, curtain twitching villages
very little play Hamlets
seem so ordered and logical
in how they are named,
how they gained their identity,
Ox-Ford, seemingly self explanatory,
Ply-mouth, a river runs through it,
Birmingham, named after a great Norman,
Wallsend-
a future prophecy in which the great
Ice Cream Wars finally came to pass.
Ian D. Hall 2017