Inside the space where the thoughts
are your own, where the brief
space between wondering
who the fuck we are
and what does it matter to anyone else,
in that cubicle, in that closet
and holding tissue to wipe away
the fear of passing
out when others demand to know
why you are using the toilet in Carolina,
surely all we should have to say,
all that needs to be said,
I am a girl,
I am a boy,
I identify with one,
The sun streams through the glass
as if trying to set the paper doilies
on our wooden bench
alight or at least spark into life
the broadsheet news that lays between us
and the sway of information,
the language barrier breaking down,
between the forties and the roaring
twenty-something who between them
understand that love is not
an emotion that signifies sex.
The sound of belly-ache
laugh ripples untidily
across the rip tide of tea
and the thought of cinema
going on overhead;
The last words of the girl
as she laid herself down to die,
to drown in water,
lovelorn, love sick, driven mad
by an indecisive soul and one who
dismissed her and urged to attend
to more saintly needs, more virginal attire
and to praise a God that let her down,
these words were unheard
except by anyone who cares to listen
with intention, with thought in their minds
to hear quietly, the silent
mutterings of one driven
to the point of death;
hush now as she lays down
Do not temper my ill-reason
and allow the sharpness of my tongue
to mean anything less or be unequal
to the storm of cramp that binds my legs
in the middle of moonlight favour;
for in those spasms, in those dark pities
and muted screams for fear of stirring
from any dream bestowed by Morpheus,
I feel alive, rage forces me to seek the dawn
and shake my fist in furious attachment.
I must see the dawn, for the dawn brings hope.
Ian D. Hall 2016
If only every death,
every murder, every execution
and tight lipped soliloquy
moaned and driven through barbed poisoning
by the players upon the stage,
were as interesting as the company
made them, then Polonius would not have died
in vein, killed by a misty eyed word,
Ophelia would not have drowned
languishing in a painted scene
and slowly dying of hypothermia
and Hamlet, dear Hamlet,
the man whom of first I read
but as a young child in some hand me down
book, tattered but loved, creased and bent
From down in the steam covered pulpit,
the area filled with the sweat
of the encroaching night
and heavy breathe of tenderness,
I watch Whisky Ginger wryly
smile and lift up that one eyebrow,
slightly touched and kissed
by the sweeping gestured touch
of eye shadow, brownish tinge
alluring and deep in meaning,
as she combats the noise of indifference
and early weekend discussion, dissecting
through the early on-set liver damage
and creaking prostrate
that sits in a thousand men
who fall to their knees in deference.
Biting nails down to the quick,
the slow reveal of blood that hunts
down the clear skin and slowly
congeals and revels
in the sting of pain, sharp
and enticing, finger sucked
but the will
to place it in salt, the desire to increase
the medicine and the healing
overwhelming.
Too old to bite my nails
but it gives the nerves
something to chew on, to
let the rage and unquestionable tension
gorge itself and release the strain,
the simplest of self harm
She had the look
of God’s right hand woman,
the fixer extraordinaire
to whom God, when she was in
the tightest of fixes, called upon
with a certain amount of pleasure
down the end of a tightly wrapped
phone, the old fashioned type
with the plastic curly cord,
still used just in case
she had to resort to throttling
the life out of someone, can hardly do
that with a smart phone after all;
the fixer smiled at me
and I knew I was in trouble
The family motto suits me fine
or it just may mean the battle
is never over, that along the way
and through shrouded dusk
will come stomping feet
over heather and gorse, through thick blood
and soothing mud that clogs the lungs
and in which only the sweet faint smell
of whisky will revive;
Aut Pax Aut Bellam
is the mournful cry
of slashing swords and muted dying words
faint hearted upon the lips of former giants
as their world is disarmed by blunted weapons
These thoughts are constant
and there is no release
as there is permanently a state
of war going on being the two
emotional conditions
in my head; both trying so hard
to be on the side of good,
upright, pleasant and respectable,
both always losing.
No Hyde though appears,
I leave that for others
to search for, their tattle
giving them their own hope;
I am too weighed down
by wanting to be free
to care anymore.
Duality means taking two breaths