Wolf Tongue
Page 25
James versions; I can, thanks to my eternal foresight,
and my purchases over the years, read them poems
from William Blake, not Billy Bloke, and Pursuit
Shellac, that famous renegade England runaway:
Withe his fast fury and strange politics, which burn
like leadminefireseams, I love him like a wifely starre
and in the wet raindrop doglicking morning alone with the dying
as I was alone with them in the Bradford City football fire
I will not shut up I will not spend cash in the highly-recommended
to buy a beautifully-appointed needle with little hole in one end
to take the jade thread on a bobbin to pull it through and make
sure that it is even and perhaps tie a knot, I will not
Yes, it is true: I am a fantasticalist – like Mayakovsky I DO
want Victory Over The Sun! What’s the point of living otherwise?
But alone in Ward 6 in my angel’s shift I walk reading Billy Bloke
to the men with one lung and those with a poor stroke of bad luck
and wait alone with my books, a union man, a left wing man
with a right foot on the field of play, and shattered rivets
the winding and rewringing
of loved one’s hands and the spewing
and taking of tablets to cease the nausea
and endless withdrawal detox puking
and ridiculous impossible breakfasts
and my fiery fierce love
in a swarm of desert snakes
I don’t know how they live so dry
and me miserable to be soaked
trying with help to beat the shakes
the quakes the gulped-down lakes
still I wish innocent I was a childe
three days dead man walking dead men burning
released
signed out
first time only before all the next times
dead streets stalking sober alone
hospital shadows mix with saliva on my energetic tongue.
They say I’ll live again. Winter’s dead. Spring sprung.
29 March – 19 May 1997
Sweet Advocate
(for Gillian Gibson)
Blizzard blossom’s pink fumes: between
low scrawling
the tender engine plans pursuit of bright ardency
before swift return to facts.
O yet to seek is petals trembling, coursed
with fire; a wrathless account.
Unhinged events divorced, as you will be
from that money-sodden lout,
alone in his castle and counting mad cash.
We will have justice
with bite, kisses on the Royal Mile perhaps,
well-mannered in expressions
of faith. I am with you & beside myself
in that mounted city
of joyous grandeur, that harps in our hearts
and holds its breath.
We plan nothing because alarms come easy,
ardency flagged-out.
From the toy museum to the wine bar
it is a walk inside paradise.
Forgiveness seekers crawl with doubt.
You can smell it in their faces.
Strapped for hard money & in a nutshell,
creamed. What beckons
is a parliament of foes & sighs, yet
the undamaged reverse
is also true. Your starched court cravat
says so, blinding as the moon & sun.
Argent, blanche, and black are my favoured heart colours now.
Up then, away from procurator’s shadow,
along avenues for the briskest walk,
by strictest gardens where spires are dreamiest.
How beautiful a city to have
such a beauty walking in its teeming mist & midst!
Here, where I am today, behind this iron gate
where Newton’s apple fell changing the world.
Look, these are the rooms of JH Prynne.
Jesus Green is jazzed and fiery, beryl bicycles,
lupins in a broth of flame.
Fainting at the smell of petals, cloud-heavy,
looning at your click sharp shoes
& pronunciation brilliant so far from London.
From single-toll to wide-awake:
so much good luck not to meet you
in a witless time
with fuming ardour hanged in chains.
2
Our world is very busy,
parterres aflame so much we have to seek
a flower dictionary.
On & on & on & on & Up & down where changed,
as we are like a tide,
and the whole themepark trembling. Let
the scorning jay behave:
we have gathered so many convincing proofs,
Shall we be forbidden
by manic thieves of cause & term? Blizzard
blossom blazes by. Dew not gone,
yet the day is ours and all is brightest.
Fancy that, most say,
passing by. Freed from winedrunk lethargy
& passed-out lack of purpose,
the worker of good is truly beckoned on.
Your mind delicate as wing-tip kes feathers,
without any false display.
To ruthless this would be fault by degree. Whole days
of blockage chewing women
wildly-thorned. They were menace & a sin.
Now it’s us, laid down without
fancy decoration. The madhouse drinking
closed. All taps turned off.
These fantastic bodyjolts quite famously
relive their highland times:
the bedroom balletschool has opened again.
To scran the testament
you say – adrift on pillows – Pierce me, yes,
the pilgrim pleads,
but wait until 11 a.m. on Monday. Even so,
at the mammoth leaving desk, O you,
shoes are midnight charcoalblue, stepping
out into a future not quite known.
Boozered by the bleat of stern children
asking for more at midnight
never far away, the acolyte breathes uncertainty
of pledged & promised dadhood.
Believe me, starched one, it’s a damaged stream.
Remember how we walked across the greening lawn
in Didsbury to talk to Win.
We stood in groups as jets descended
& waved thumbs-up –
happy landings in the nation of nod.
3
Total waste not in the scene; each blessed
well looked-after garden
blooms & wakes up, This wild O’Hara world
blinks too and shakes
its New York eyebrows at the sun. Each an island,
it is said, and you leaned closer
when I said it, quoting Donne and Shelley,
because the wind from the west
was booming the trunks in grey & blue.
You said Rothko, or did you, person
brightest. Then the pen appeared & black ink
thrived. What a poised italic nib.
We seize our breath, O this is a high place
indeed, wings thronging
in a dream of freedom’s flight away from
all this ready muck.
Can you believe it is so real, say lips
transferred into the permanence.
Frank & steady on the rock, marching
to your arms from islands
of despair, where crashing waves are keenest.
Quiet syllables beyond the hedge
drift here. Your left hand and costly golden ring.
There is no closure of love
and all the tulips glow. The river
of no return burns its banks
with heavy metal. No place for us there.
Help me somebody please
is a regular human message which does not
blossom always into everyday song.
We try our lips and what we do in rainlight
does not always become legend
except in the beating home of our hearts.
Another rush of jetted air trembles the
good house. Hot displeasure
stroked my thighs. Gillian. I was a victim
of true alienation, Othello-style.
O loveliness, yelps & moanings shook the ground.
Pasturage not clean, jalousie
burned deep as fire, strange gods brooding.
Even they were apprehensive.
4
It is true we go displumed, so much shopping
to be done, in dampe of night
& terrorised. Your black suit against the wall.
I am just a poet in love with you.
Beyond all of this and miles away the peewit cries
lifting its green breast
from earth and earth’s cares. It, like us,
drags a wing for safety sure.
There is absolutely nothing false in that.
Yes, we are full-feathered, to taughten
all for love, and love’s
bright and brilliant mystery. Then we’ll ride
Shelley’s mysterious light
and Shelley’s weather forecast
which blazes and shines
before the sinking of this deadened world.
It is all stirred by breezes
my click heroine, and hold to say:
All warnings have been received
from suspicious relatives, under what
bright threshold & under
Newton’s Cambridge tree. Then, treat-love,
we may gather in absolute darkness
exchanging things far more fascinating than cash.
Savage in a trance he came.
That’s what you’ll say when I come back alone.
Wine-bar cronies
flogging their weeds in Edinburgh wind.
His madrage bids at lovemaking
made me unstable and crazy, not like an advocate at all.
I became by turns in my highland heart
mercurial and delicate. My eyelids – not to speak
of other places – unhinged & winged.
Then the anonymous letters dropped on the mat.
Forgive me, sweetheart I am an angry man
tonight. These overwhelming bits and things.
Possibilities are always passing clouds.
I seek you – and would love to call you darling –
from the broken pieces just as well.
May 1988 – April 1998
Northumberland–Edinburgh–Newcastle–Edinburgh
POSTCARDS FROM HITLER
[1998]
It’s a collapsed empire
The Final Bavarian Hilltop Postcard
The bluebell sky, the sky of snowdrops.
Here, at the last count, where we we are,
daisies, dandelions and forget-me-nots.
At home, a late postcard from Adolf.
I cannot be there. No more Eva. No more Braun.
Too much happening. Six million.
I never counted having others do it.
Alien efficiency but the German sun
was never geared up and warm.
There was a needle and people less than me who disappeared swiftly.
I’ll shave again in heaven and grieve my love:
The whole earth I never had.
30 March 1998
The Amazing Eagle Has Landed
Wank-fever ran the world before I came.
And the banks run by conspirators with long hooked noses.
You’ll always call me an ex-corporal in the books of history.
It’s always going to be a closed book to you, Jews
and Australians and publishers.
What the universe needed was charisma
and I provided it. Even George Orwell knew,
the least humorous man ever born on earthe.
I – me – single-handed and double-footed – put the words
National Socialist back into their rightful place.
We did not need poets or booksellers or badblood Jews.
I was particularly interested in the extermination of gypsies.
There was a purge on and I was all for it.
This was the outrageous age before nose-rings
and Gary Glitter but we enjoyed all of our behaviour.
Glory and tanks were the last two words we said before sleeping.
30 March 1998
Blitzkrieg Homage
Once I was a quiet man before Eva
Then the stars rose in the sky like enemies.
Assiduous in my beliefs – there was no room for poetry –
there were six zeroes separated halfway through only by a comma
and a six and a comma after that.
All of that in such a short time.
It was an amazing reign of terror and rage.
And a period of icy decision and we will be proud of it forever
as I was proud of it then.
Seeing St Paul’s Cathedral
and the whole of Coventry burning made me come
very heavily
while Eva sucked my Nazi cock
and Goebels ranted
in due command
steadily,
saluting better than anyone.
31 March 1998
Let the Thunder Roll
I knew Stalin and knew him well.
Churchill even worse – not a new European.
Destroying you all was everything I craved.
Nobody left except the buttercups and milk of Germany.
In years to come, I imagined volk in pretty houses
installing old-fashioned Bakelite telephones
out of sheer nostalgia.
To me, it’s an entirely putrid idea
because they don’t match digital technology.
I don’t want V2 rockets.
Fetch me nuclear power and fetch me Stalingrad.
31 March 1998
Whatever Madness There Is Is
Eva, my eternal spanked love, and Speer, before he went
the way of the rest of the Western world, cowardice
and betrayal scalded all over his pathetic back. V1s, V2s.
In my early days, I never touched a pfennig that hadn’t
been handled by a Jew. It made me feel dirty and not German.
I spanked her because I liked it and she enjoyed it
especially the tougher it became. And I stared down
and ssnarled down Speer when his domination plan waved
in the wind.
Hands everything to me. Fists, palms, and pens for signing.
And the big open one high in the air.
31 March 1998
Brown stamps forever
We would sit alone in the Eagle’s Nest
and spank and lie and speak about the business
of the future of the universe – one long poem unburdened
by myth and more black and white films than you care to name.
We never appreciated homosexuals and we never allowed in Negroes.
There was a repetitious revision of everything indeed.
Take your Satchmo and your Bessie back to where they came from.
There is a direness in my white sky. There is firmness in my purity.
And only I believe it.
31 March 1998
UNCOLLECTED POEMS
[1998–1999]
I Looked Down On a Child Today
I looked down on a child today, not because he or she was smaller than me
or because I was being in my middle-aged way bairnbarren and condescending
but because he or she was dying or dead between the
kerbstone and the wheel
I stepped down from the steps of a 39 bus today with sudden blood on my shoes
The lesions and lessons and the languorous long-winged stiff-winged fulmars
chalked against the sky and white against the unpainted lips of her
I looked down at a child today, Gallowgate, the bus was turning left
the child stepped out, leaving its mam’s hand behind partly swept by the wind
and partly by blind wonderful enthusiasm for life we guard against increasingly
She stepped into the path of something she or he would never know forever
in an elegant but unassuming place where as a living they hanged prisoners for bread-theft
it was the eve of St Valentine’s Day on the wild side of Geordieland
The white dresses were being collected from dry cleaners Darn Crook to Sidgate
the strategy of the masses was being unaddressed once more except through the tills
where paper receipts come clicking out increasingly slowly to everyone’s annoyance
What a beautiful, brilliant day, tart with expectation of love and romance in Chinatown
or down the Bigg Market as lager casks were moved into station and the dance floors cleaned
I looked down at a child today, never having had one of my own, and having no kid
I can call mine in a very old-fashioned romantic Barry MacSweeney Elvis Orbison Highway 61 way