Two poems by Barry Fentiman Hall

THE BALLAD OF MICKEY TWO SUITS

Mickey wore two suits to pass his happy hours
One day he wore morning grey
Another mourning black
Bathed in frosted dust beamed from
Mock tudor central casting
A long afternoon light thrown
Through stained glass
On to stained cloth
Showing hard won
Marks of distinction
And by 5 o’clock
They burn a little brighter now
-
Mickey went on the road a while
After the shit went down y’know
But the white lines caught
Up with him till he wore them
On his black back like
Magpie feathers
Badged as thief and liar
Blind curves brought
Him back to where
The smoke still hung
Thick enough to hide his
Burning very brightly now
-
Can in hand confident
Mickey counts his days
From grey to black to grey
Songbirds murmuring on his tongue
That thing that they would sing
In the dark back then
When he had painted eyes
And she had painted wings 
They took it way deep
All the way down to the roach
And spat another shot in the fire to make it
Burn a little brighter now
-
Grey to black to grey to black to grey
Two suits Mickey wears away
Measured twice and cut once
One for the wedding
One for the wake
One for the wedding
One for the wake
Mickey bled away
Coughing up her ashes
In polite company, he’s
Burning very brightly now
-
Mickey had to go away
His name was on a list
Of the damaged and the pissed
The one’s whose stories didn’t fit
The rising prices of the drinks
Two suits grey black grey black grey
Black the day he got his wings
Half cut and measured
And desperately wanting
Something only he could see
Heading down the aisle again
To burn a little brighter now

(My debt to Derek W Dick whose words partly inspired these words is acknowledged)





DEAD CAT BOUNCE DOWN THE WHITE LION

The fake plastic dancing girls
Seem to have no knickers
From this perspective
They look a little stiff
As they get their plastic groove on
To Band On The Run while
The TV plays videos of ABBA
Before they invented the genre
Of relationship gothic for the masses
They are synching somehow
Sailor Sam is harmonising with
The drums of Fernando
We are sinking somehow
in a sea of magic eye carpet
Me and the sad man and Sailor Sam
Nameless and me are looking 
Over the edge for an hour in
The afternoon to see how far
The bottom is from Wednesday
He don't care much now but
It's nice to have some company
The fake plastic dancing girls
Have a faraway look in their eye
They can see all the way to the
End of the world and they will
Take it on the chin when it comes
Drafty as it is for them down South
What with being underdressed
And all the rest and they don't care either
They've been expecting it
For a long, long time
If it comes, my word
It's gonna happen here....



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Bio: Barry Fentiman Hall is a walking writer based in Kent, UK who mythologises his travels and the people he meets. He hosts Roundabout Nights in Chatham and regularly performs his work in Kent and London. He has been published in City Without A Head (Wordsmithery 2013), An Assemblance Of Judicious Heretics (Wordsmithery 2105), and his first solo collection The Unbearable Sheerness Of Being (Wordsmithery 2016).

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