Ten Years in an Open Necked Shirt
Page 1
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Dedication
Title Page
ten years in an open necked shirt
euro communist/gucci socialist
the ghost of al capone
i mustn’t go down to the sea again
the face behind the scream
90 degrees in my shades
psycle sluts: part one
psycle sluts: part two
the day my pad went MAD
i married a monster from outer space
belladonna
i wanna be yours
readers’ wives
i was a teenage werewolf – or was i
a love story in reverse
this heart disease called love
post-war glamour girl
full-time loser
the new assassin
the it man
evidently chicken town
the day the world stood still
i travel in biscuits
salome maloney
midnight shift
kung fu international
36 hours
the pest
drive she said
valley of the lost women
gaberdine angus
i don’t wanna be nice
health fanatic
track suit
sleepwalk
beezley street
suspended sentence
limbo
a distant relation
the house on nowhere street
spilt beans
majorca
conditional discharge
nothing
23rd
the bronze adonis
you never see a nipple in the daily express
the isle of man
night people
Copyright
About the Book
Punk. Poet. Pioneer.
The Bard of Salford’s seminal collection is as scabrous, wry & vivid now as it was when first published over 25 years ago.
STEVE MAGUIRE
The marvellous illustrations herein
Were rendered by my great friend, Steve Maguire.
I shall always remain grateful for his undervalued genius.
John Cooper Clarke
September 2012
to young macdonald
(the one without the farm)
ten years in an open necked shirt
Lenny Siberia was the bastard offspring of Captain Africa (the lard mogul) and Tracy. The captain disappeared without Tracy who perished alone with her diamond collection, the victim of a mau-mau hit squad, leaving Lenny alone with the one thing money can’t buy poverty
He was discovered at one year old by a wayward nun; he had been living in the dumb waiter of the zambezi juice bar Sister James (for it was she) lost no time in mailing the child, by first-class parcel post, to a friend in Brussels. Fortunately he was erroneously delivered to the Eros Luxury Club, a converted charabang in the bowels of Manchester’s la quartière latin.
The proprietor, a swarthy ill-mannered character of Armenian origin, received the package with a bestial grunt. Taking a curved knife from a canteen of curved knives, he slashed it open Lenny gazed into the face of this his first stranger and what he saw was pure malevolence
He ran down flattened streets patrolled by aimless amputees through a world of refugees, out of the cold war into the deep freeze, he ran out of money, he ran into trouble
He was adopted by Sheba and Rex, a pair of alsatian dogs who regarded the boy with an uneasy ambivalence They lived in an Art Deco cocktail cabinet by the bicycle sheds of Salford Metropolitan Police compound They were devout Catholics.
It was arranged for Lenny to attend the School of Our Lady of the Seven Robes of Gold by the Garden of Sorrows in the Vale of Tears which was run with teutonic efficiency by the little daughters of the sick under the iron rule of Mother Cyrene.
Mother Cyrene was everything rancid to Lenny her mouth a malignant slit in the murderous mask she called a face, her cheesy breath steaming up his spectacles, her eyes like mobile ball bearings – their colour left a mechanical taste in the mouth
Daily religious instruction furnished his vacant mind with tales of treachery, morbid betrayals, oceans pink with the blood of multitudes, saints looking to the sky their living bodies smashed by hammers before the alien idols of the heathen Incense filled his nostrils with the fatal breath of ghosts, hermaphrodite choirs droned in his ears.
Each student could elect to spend their free time in one of three ways sporting activities, visiting the sick or in the service of the Knights of the Sacred Orchid. The latter seemed the least demanding, the most hygenic and it also appealed to the lad’s naive sense of chivalry.
The Knights of the Sacred Orchid held their thrice-weekly routines in the spacious open-plan lounge of the sinister Raoul, who affected the manner of the proto-fascist with psychotic attention to detail His navy blue hair sleeked with ancient grease, his meagre Don Ameche moustache waxed stiff like the legs of a dead fly. He went nowhere without the chums.
The chums were namely Horace and Boris, the brothers Morris, a titanic duet each in possession of a powder-blue safari suit and arms of anthropoidal length Their physical immensity fully emphasized the stiff angular grace of the nifty Raoul who now led the way into the lounge
The lounge was furnished by three rows of seven leatherette easy chairs faced by one formica table The curtains were the colour of mustard embellished with the bleeding heart motif The walls were hung with colourless daubs The carpet was monotonous, its pattern gave the impression of a small animal crapping at regular intervals The whole scene was lit by a soundless colour TV and a row of six orange table lamps in which shifting globules of molten wax moved like specimens of rare snot
Enter Mother Cyrene, flanked by the chums and a hyper-reverent Raoul who wore the look of a man obsessed She stood on the table and began
‘Even as I speak a filthy tide of bolshevism issues from the dives of tin pan alley in short the world is a subterranean playground for lounge lizards from every sphere of idleness and crime who their pockets a-jingle with Moscow money go unchecked about their evil business take china cathedrals ransacked churches turned into judo schools I have seen the finest laundries in the world converted into bordellos for the gratification of the lumpenproletariat what with the drink trade on its last legs and the land running fallow for want of artificial manures I leave you with this thought’
Mantovani strings cascaded from the Queen Anne Dinatron stereo system Everyone crossed themselves and left The chums in their lilac Isetta bubble cars headed for the golden finger bowl where they were employed as part-time knuckle merchants
Upon arrival at the compound Lenny, to his horror, found the cocktail cabinet in flames and his devoted guardians, Sheba and Rex, their heads split by faceless vigilantes, slaughtered in the rabies scare of ’62 ‘Christ! Where do I live?’ thought Lenny in genuine desperation and the heavy traffic seemed to whisper ‘Raoul, Raoul’
So for two weeks Lenny resided in Raoul’s broom cupboard which he shared with an upright vacuum cleaner and Doris the chums’ slender loris, a cute little number redolent of the lazoon of Fireball XL5 fame
Raoul imbued Lenny with the tactile beauty of the luger and the surly prose of Mickey Spillane. Finally, however, it was the prospect of nude fencing lessons that drove Lenny out. Leaving a bag of onions for Doris he left silently via the laundry chute. That winter he got a job at Barmy Sid’s Elephants Graveyard of up-to-the-minute accoutrements, during which time he moved into a bathroom with an all-girl cycle gang. On the back of a Woodbine packet in lips
tick he wrote this his first poem:
The mopeds head for the seaside
Yvonne
Looked at the trees
And her stomach turned
‘That’s arguably the greatest poem in the world today,’ enthused a sudden voice Lenny turned round to see a tall, loose-limbed young man dressed in the beatnik anti-mode of the committed; his lank hair was hacked into a careless coup-sauvage style favoured by the existentialists who were A-1 credibilitywise in the flourishing capitals of the EEC Lenny noticed that although his lips moved his voice seemed to come from the side of his neck
His name was Reg Trademark, heir to a crumbling biscuit empire who, by virtue of his artistic endeavours, had secured a position of trust at the Marxist-Leninist ping-pong club He persuaded Lenny to declaim his work the following Thursday at the club’s variety night.
Among those appearing were Harry, Barry, Garry and Larry, the Brothers McGarry, reading a three-hour concrete poem entitled ‘The Yes No Interlude’, a neo-functionalist mime troupe presenting a two-act play based on ‘Stop the World I Wanna Get On’. a novel by Larry Dines concerning the Judaeo-Christian ethic of self as not self. Finally, however, it had to be agreed by all that the night belonged to Lenny, agreed by all but Larry Dines who had been poisoned
In a vain attempt at bourgeois credibility Lenny changed his name to John Cooper Clarke and under this title embarked on a polysyllabic excursion through Thrillsville, UK. Yes, it was be there or be square as, clad in the slum chic of the hipster, he issued the slang anthems of the zip age in the desperate esperanto of the bop John Cooper Clarke the name behind the hairstyle, the words walk in the grooves hacking through the hi-fi paradise of true luxury
euro communist/gucci socialist
for a modern home and cheap electricity
streamlined functional neat simplicity
put yourself on the slum clearance list
dial a dialectical materialist
find out what your net potential is
get married to an existentialist
don’t doubt your own identity
dress down to a cool anonymity
the pierre cardin line to infinity
clothes to climb in the meritocracy
the new age of benevolent bureaucracy
i like to visit all the big cities
museums and municipal facilities
i strive for critical ability
i thrive on political activity
i’m alive in a new society
i arrive quickly quietly
the car that i drive is the family variety
roman catholic marxist leninist
happily married to an eloquent feminist
a lapsed atheist all my memories
measure the multitude’s deafening density
psycho citizens are my enemies
crypto nazis and their remedies
keep the city silent as the cemetery’s
architectural gothic immensity
a new name on the less-than-kosher list
the euro-communist/a gucci socialist
the ghost of al capone
in a marble room i was alone
somewhere in the heart of rome
through gardens long since overgrown
down old arcades of broken stone
i met the ghost of al capone
upon request for some ID
he said the guardian angels are working for me
i call for a cop he said stop or i shoot
one or two holes in your three-piece suit
i say steady on old fruit
he told me not to be so cute
consider the river and the concrete boots
the devil and the deep blue sea
what you saw you didn’t see
the guardian angels are working for me
the arms the raving arms
and the hustle and the bustle
muscle in i get sandwiched
between the palms
the waving palms and the banknotes rustle
like an international language
even the recession doesn’t put him out of pocket
back in the depression he made a profit
a one-man crime wave who can stop it
the agéd william in his pocket
blackmail blue films narcotics
served with the style of a real neurotic
and the easy smile of a true psychotic
a sort of refugee
from the heart of the apostolic see
from one flat fee to another flat fee
the hours are short and the money’s free
and the guardian angels are working for me
i under pressure suggested it
why not confess and quit
you’re 39 sir and less than fit
he took my false address and split
by the dirt road through the fever trees
in a lamborghini if you please
to get from a to b
i beat my heart and bend my knee
the guardian angels are working for me
paralysed in precious stone
canonised i stand alone
in the clouds of paradise my home
a million orchids deck the throne
of the man who numbered al capone
the man who numbered all his bones
a personal friend of the sacred three
the guardian angels are working for me
i mustn’t go down to the sea again
sunken yachtsmen
sinking yards
drunken scotsmen
drinking hard
every lunatic and his friend
i mustn’t go down to the sea again
the ocean drags
its drowning men
emotions flag
me down again
tell tracy babs and gwen
i mustn’t go down to the sea again
the rain whips
the promenade
it drips on chips
they turn to lard
i’d send a card if i had a pen
i mustn’t go down to the sea again
a string of pearls
from the bingo bar
for a girl
who looks like ringo starr
she’s mad about married men
i mustn’t go down to the sea again
the clumsy kiss
that ends in tears
how i wish
i wasn’t here
tell tony mike and len
i mustn’t go down to the sea again
the face behind the scream
this case appears to be urgent
kindly pull the screen
cosmetic surgeon
the son of mister sheen
is jerry building versions
of the face behind the scream
the girl who would be beauty queen
tells the doctor of her dream
in which she reads a magazine
wearing only cold cream
they call her the face behind the scream
the image he maintains
and the silence he observes
say it’s worth a little pain
for the figure we both deserve
a cowboy by profession since the age of 17
who’s singular obsession is the face behind the scream
the girl who would be beauty queen
tells the doctor of her dream
the soirée in the mezzanine
the castanets and tambourines
a careless word an ugly scene
the doctor knows he’s made for good impressions on demand
the new nose in the neighbourhood was fashioned by these hands
he can do it blindfold his instruments are clean
a snapshot in his mind holds the face behind the scream
the girl who would be beauty queen
diamond rivets in her jeans
wi
ld and with it even off screen
he removes the bandage and the odd remaining scab
a flair for fancy language
the gift of the gab
hands you a sandwich applies the vaseline
to show to best advantage the face behind the scream
the girl who would be beauty queen
tells the doctor of her dream
in which she turns her money green
finds herself in a funny scene
cracks up like a shatterproof windscreen
danke schoen ich liebe dich i promise not to hurt
a telephone receiver clicks RED ALERT
whatever you do don’t touch that switch the doctor goes to work
with his bag of tricks in his limousine
mugshots from magazines
face creams and photofits
to fix the face that doesn’t fit
the face behind the scream
the girl who would be beauty queen
surrounded by the regular team
of pluto brats and coma teens
in bowler hats and brilliantine
or bold cravats of bottle green
such a precious little dream
to be taken to extremes
how many times can you be 16
they call her the face behind the scream
90 degrees in my shades
i’ll be there if you want me
exactly where you said i’d be
in the easy chair
in front of the tv
i don’t care what i see
the au pair on the bed settee
with her teddy bear
and a cup of tea
i swear she’s out of her tree
the way she stares right out at me
i can’t leave i lost my key
i can’t breathe somebody help me
visiting the bathroom
that’s my format
living in a vacuum
keeps me warm at
90 degrees in my shades
90 degrees in my shades
surprise surprise that monotone phrase
idealise this monochrome haze