I
have never worn
a watch,
heard up close
the tic
between
the tock,
or marvelled
at the second hand news
as I
don’t keep Time,
I
have never believed
in caging any
type
of wild, feral or emotionally superior creature
when they should
roam free.
Ian D. Hall 2016
Somewhere in the desert lies a lonely man
the rattling of snakes and the whispering sand
his only escape from the heat,
that shakes his shooting hand.
Death is forever by his side,
as grizzled as a companion can be
with no end to the slaughter
that came at the Battle of Wounded Knee.
The Gunslinger, once the hero in this game,
now kills for money and peace in his brain,
his mind to savagery,
when he thinks of the men he has slain.
Sockless
and feeling the chill
of a slight September breeze
blowing across the vacant
church’s lawn, through
the tall trees that cover its blank
windows of now soulless celebration
like an autumn sheet
with browning leaves adorning the pavement,
I light a cigar in the last
sunshine that I shall see today
and breathe in a seldom ritual
to escape the craving of chocolate,
of the bounty of gluttony
that has swelled
my disposition over forty years;
one habit to replace another,
Picking over the words,
the vulture harvesting the
single tasty treat surrounding the bones,
I stagger and reel at the weight
of my sentence, always
truthfully incomplete,
not quite the full essay
or explanation that people require
or should be satisfied with,
but it is the only one I can offer,
the only true meaning behind all the madness,
I live for the word,
I shall die by the word,
in pursuit of the full stop,
in the drive to fall into a comma,
I await our Archduke Ferdinand moment,
the catalyst in which many of us will fade
into history’s notebook and which is followed
by the eraser, the silver tongue
with white mesh, diseases
of the throat capturing the lies,
spreading the hatred;
I await the gossip that spews
from the fountain of knowledge
and know that all I have learned,
all I have tried in vain
to remember
will be put down in a diary,
hidden under rubble
till the world is awash
with God’s curse.
I knew Laura Dentt Stevens,
intimately perhaps, sharing
the same space
for a while, trading thoughts
and the ultimate fuck you
to the outside world
who thought we were
irrelevant students,
I was too old to have an opinion,
my thoughts immaterial,
unrelated to the hip and groovy
paid by the latest clothes and fashions;
she was, to my mind,
sarcastic, but fun, the kind
of girl who got the point
of existence, which was not
to exist,
or at least not to be an arse about it;
Nostalgia
it burns,
the yearning for yesterday,
the songs and sights
of a past that cannot be connected
or revisited
for the colour photograph in your mind
has turned sepia, discoloured,
browned and parched by the sun,
they can only be seen as
fragments,
disjointed,
the wreckage,
the rubble you left behind.
Nostalgia
I remember you
fondly.
Ian D. Hall 2016
There is a dark heart
that beats
in your shadows,
double time, occasionally
skipping
and the pulse
oozing a venom
that does much to remove any trace
of humour, sarcasm or the fine
art of gilded laughing;
I despair at the thought
of the Constable
and the modern Haywain
sitting in the bleached over
life dictated by
the divine and the blessed
hand shakes
in Time,
through Time
and across the backs
of those who know nothing more
than veneration.
Static,
camera in hand, mobile conditioned,
we have all become directors,
producers and stars of our own bubble
reality, too much to say,
we film first for the fascination
of the audience
and the ethereal likes, the thumbs
up and the oh my gosh that
is so cute…
we film first and react later.
I half expect one day
to unbelievingly witness several
different angles, the Blu-Ray
Director’s Cut edition
with bonus features and condescending
commentary supplied by a man in a beret,
I wish
I could sit across
the table from myself
and look at the shell,
the bundle of broken nerves
and the uneasy anxiety, directly, squarely
in the blue eyes, those eyes
that have seen too much
and tell me
to let go, to damn myself
for my annoyance, for not having
the spirit to tell some
to go to Hell for their mistakes
and revelling too much in mine;
stupid boy, no answer
from your sallow lips and misty
eyed memories, holding back tears