Come on Everybody

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Come on Everybody Page 2

by Adrian Mitchell


  Or Something

  Selfepitaphs

  FOR THE AFRICAN CENTURY

  Here in My Skin of Many Colours

  The Radio Thief

  African Elephants

  The Beautiful Ghosts

  A Song for Thabo Mbeki

  A Poem for Nomtha

  SHOWSONGS

  Shake My Soul

  Four Windows

  Orpheus Sings

  The People Walking

  Saint Lover’s Day

  Tissue Paper Flowers

  Last Thing

  from THE SHADOW KNOWS Poems 2000-2004

  William Blake Says: Every Thing That Lives Is Holy

  THE SHADOW IN WARTIME

  The Shadow Poet Laureateship

  Unjubilee Poem

  Anti-Establishment Poet Is Difficult, Court Told

  A Refusal to Write a Royal Elegy

  Back to the Happidrome

  No More War

  Human Beings

  The Operation

  Roundabout

  Playground

  The Famous Battle

  Shadow Speeches

  All the Light There Is

  When They Tell You to Go to War

  Work to Do

  ENGLANDING

  Englanding

  Fun in World War Two

  Banned for Six Months

  In a Brown Paper Bag

  To Somebody Considering Suicide

  for mental patients

  Doctor Rat Explains

  ARTEFACTIONS

  Misery Me

  What Poetry Says

  Blake on His Childhood Visions

  King Lear’s Fool Waves Goodbye

  A Sense of Complicity: Advertising Supplement

  Advertising Will Eat the World

  Rest in Peace, Andy Warhol. Enjoy.

  Pioneers, O Pioneers!

  The Café Kafka

  AUTOMAGIC

  Memoirs

  Her Life

  Disguise

  Sorry

  Thanks to My Dog in an Hour of Pain

  Pour Soul

  Not Fleeing But Flying

  IN THE OUTLANDS

  The Ballad of the Familiar Stranger

  Every Day Is Mothering Sunday to Me

  Rosaura’s Song

  The Knife-thrower’s Slender Daughter

  Philosophical Agriculture

  ON BOARD THE FRIENDSHIP

  For Dick and Dixie Peaslee

  How William Blake Dies a Good Death

  For Miranda and Tom

  A Song for Maeve

  Seventy More Years

  to all our friends

  from TELL ME LIES Poems 2005-2008

  IVERS RUN THROUGH IT

  or Waterworking

  West End Blues

  Five Walks

  Sad Walk

  Glad Walk

  Bad Walk

  Dad Walk

  Mad Walk

  CITY SONGS

  or Don’t Mutter in the Gutter

  The Baby on the Pavement

  More Friends of Mine

  The Dirty Smokers

  Live It Like Your Last Day

  THE REALLY GOOD OLD DAYS

  or The Underbelly of History

  About the Child Murderer Marie Farrar

  The Plays What I Wrote by Shakespeare

  ENJOY THE LIGHT

  Love, friendship and sheep

  Enjoy the Light

  Death Is Smaller Than I Thought

  Our Mother

  Our Father

  Early Daze

  Beattie as Smike

  Edward Lear’s Imagination

  A Visit to Ivor

  With Love for Mike Westbrook

  Sheepishly

  A WALK ON THE WEIRD SIDE

  or Better Out Than In

  This Morning’s Dream

  Wongo the Wonder Dog

  Ghosts on the Line

  TELL ME LIES

  or Truth-Ache in the Anglo-American Empire

  At the Crossroads

  Tigers and Monkeys

  The Doorbell

  Peacetime Haiku

  Dust And Ashes

  The Question

  Is it all right to Kill People?

  Peace and Pancakes

  To Whom It May Concern Remix

  MY LITERARY CAREER SO FAR

  Adrian Mitchell: Select Bibliography

  About the Author

  Copyright

  COME ON EVERYBODY

  from

  HEART ON THE LEFT

  POEMS 1953-1984

  MY FAVOURITE ARCHIPELAGO

  To You

  One: we were swaddled, ugly-beautiful and drunk on milk.

  Two: cuddled in arms always covered by laundered sleeves.

  Three: we got sand and water to exercise our imaginative faculties.

  Four: we were hit. Suddenly hit.

  Five: we were fed to the educational system limited.

  Six: worried by the strange creatures in our heads, we strangled some of them.

  Seven: we graduated in shame.

  Eight: World War Two and we hated the Germans as much as our secret bodies, loved the Americans as much as the Russians, hated killing, loved killing, depending on the language in the Bible in the breast pocket of the dead soldier, we were crazy-thirsty for Winston Superman, for Jesus with his infinite tommy-gun and the holy Spitfires, while the Japanese hacked through the undergrowth of our nightmares – there were pits full of people-meat – and the real bombs came, but they didn’t hit us, my love, they didn’t hit us exactly.

  My love, they are trying to drive us mad.

  So we got to numbers eight, nine, ten, and eleven,

  Growing scales over every part of our bodies,

  Especially our eyes,

  Because scales were being worn, because scales were armour.

  And now we stand, past thirty, together, madder than ever,

  We make a few diamonds and lose them.

  We sell our crap by the ton.

  My love, they are trying to drive us mad.

  Make love. We must make love

  Instead of making money.

  You know about rejection? Hit. Suddenly hit.

  Want to spend my life building poems in which untamed

  People and animals walk around freely, lie down freely

  Make love freely

  In the deep loving carpets, stars circulating in their ceilings,

  Poems like honeymoon planetariums.

  But our time is burning.

  My love, they are trying to drive us mad.

  Peace was all I ever wanted.

  It was too expensive.

  My love, they are trying to drive us mad.

  Half the people I love are shrinking.

  My love, they are trying to drive us mad.

  Half the people I love are exploding.

  My love, they are trying to drive us mad.

  I am afraid of going mad.

  Icarus Schmicarus

  If you never spend your money

  you know you’ll always have some cash.

  If you stay cool and never burn

  you’ll never turn to ash.

  If you lick the boots that kick you

  then you’ll never feel the lash

  and if you crawl along the ground

  at least you’ll never crash.

  So why why why –

  WHAT MADE YOU THINK YOU COULD FLY?

  C’mon Everybody

  There’s a grand old dance that’s rockin the nation

  Shake your money and shut your mouth

  Taking the place of copulation

  S’called The Bourgeois.

  See that girl with the diamond thing?

  Shake your money and shut your mouth

  Didn’t get that by picketing

  She done The Bourgeois.

  Do-gooder, do-gooder where you been?

  Shake your money and shut your m
outh

  Done myself good, got a medal from the Queen

  For The Bourgeois.

  Is it a singer? No.

  Is it a lover? No.

  Is it a bourgeois? Yeaaah!

  Wave your missile around the vault

  Shake your money and shut your mouth

  Somebody suffers well it ain’t your fault

  That you’re Bourgeois.

  I play golf so I exist

  Shake your money and shut your mouth

  Eye on the ball and hand over fist

  I do The Bourgeois.

  Five days a week on the nine-eleven

  Shake your money and shut your mouth

  When we die we’ll go to Bournemouth

  Cos we’re Bourgeois.

  To Nye Bevan Despite His Change of Heart

  Because I loved him

  I believe that somebody dropped blood-freezing powder

  Into the water-jug of vodka Nye Bevan swigged

  Before he asked us:

  Do you want Britain to go naked to the conference table?

  A difficult question.

  Whoever saw Britain naked?

  Britain bathes behind locked doors

  Where even the loofah is subject to the Official Secrets Act.

  But surely Britain strips for love-making?

  Not necessarily.

  An analysis of British sexual response

  Proves that most of the United Kingdom’s acts of love

  Have been undertaken unilaterally.

  There have been persistently malicious rumours

  From Africa and Asia

  That Britain’s a habitual rapist

  But none of the accusers have alleged

  That Britain wore anything less than full dress uniform

  With a jangle of medals, bash, bash,

  During the alleged violations.

  So do you want Britain to go naked to the conference table?

  Britain the mixed infant,

  Its mouth sullen as it enters its second millennium

  Of pot-training.

  Britain driven mad by puberty,

  Still wearing the uniform of Lord Baden-Powell

  (Who was honoured for his services to sexual mania).

  Britain laying muffins at the Cenotaph.

  Britain, my native archipelago

  Entirely constructed of rice pudding.

  So do you want Britain to go naked to the conference table?

  Yes. Yes Nye, without any clothes at all.

  For underneath the welded Carnaby

  Spike-studded dog-collar groincrusher boots,

  Blood-coloured combinations

  And the golfing socks which stink of Suez,

  Underneath the Rolls Royce heart

  Worn on a sleeve encrusted with royal snot,

  Underneath the military straitjacket

  From the Dead Meat Boutique –

  Lives

  A body

  Of incredibly green beauty.

  I Tried, I Really Tried

  Mesh-faced loudspeakers outshouted Fleet Street,

  Their echoes overlapping down Shoe Lane

  And Bouverie Street, pronouncing:

  WASH YOURSELF POET.

  Blurred black police cars from the BBC

  Circled me blaring: WASH YOURSELF POET

  AND DON’T FORGET YOUR NAVEL.

  My ears were clogged with savoury gold wax

  And so I failed WASH to hear at first WASH.

  WASH WASH YOURSELF

  Since I was naked and they wore

  Chrome-armoured cars and under the cars man-made fibre suits and under the suits Y-front pants and under the pants official groin protectors and under the groin protectors automatics,

  I obediently ran to the city’s pride,

  The Thames, that Lord Mayor’s Procession of mercury,

  And jumped from Westminster Bridge.

  Among half-human mud I bathed

  Using a dead cat for a loofah,

  Detergent foam for gargle.

  I dived, heard the power station’s rumble and the moan of sewers.

  The bubbles of my breath exploded along the waterskin.

  Helmeted in dead newspapers, I sprang

  Into the petrol-flavoured air

  And Big Ben, like a speak-your-weight machine

  Intoned WATCH YOURSELF POET.

  Clothed in the muck of London, I yelled back:

  I HAVE BEEN WASHED IN THE BLOOD OF THE THAMES,

  BIG BROTHER, AND FROM NOW ON I SHALL USE NO OTHER.

  Nostalgia – Now Threepence Off

  Where are they now, the heroes of furry-paged books and comics brighter than life which packed my ink-lined desk in days when BOP meant Boys’ Own Paper, where are they anyway?

  Where is Percy F. Westerman? Where are H.L. Gee and Arthur Mee? Why is Edgar Rice (The Warlord of Mars) Burroughs, the Bumper Fun Book and the Wag’s Handbook? Where is the Wonder Book of Reptiles? Where the hell is The Boy’s Book of Bacteriological Warfare?

  Where are the Beacon Readers? Did Rover, that tireless hound, devour his mon-o-syll-ab-ic-all-y correct family? Did Little Black Sambo and Epaminondas shout for Black Power?

  Did Peter Rabbit get his when myxomatosis came around the second time, did the Flopsy Bunnies stiffen to a standstill, grow bug-eyed, fly-covered and then disintegrate?

  Where is G.A. Henty and his historical lads – Wolfgang the Hittite, Armpit the Young Viking, Cyril who lived in Sodom? Where are their uncorrupted bodies and Empire-building brains, England needs them, the Sunday Times says so.

  There is news from the Strewelpeter mob. Johnny-Head-In-Air spends his days reporting flying saucers, the telephone receiver never cools from the heat of his hand. Little Harriet, who played with matches, still burns, but not with fire. The Scissor-man is everywhere.

  Babar the Elephant turned the jungle into a garden city. But things went wrong. John and Susan, Titty and Roger, became unaccountably afraid of water, sold their dinghies, all married each other, live in a bombed-out cinema on surgical spirits and weeds of all kinds.

  Snow White was in the News of the World – Virgin Lived With Seven Midgets, Court Told. And in the psychiatric ward an old woman dribbles as she mumbles about a family of human bears, they ate porridge, yes Miss Goldilocks of course they did.

  Hans Brinker vainly whirled his silver skates round his head as the jackboots of Emil and the Detectives invaded his Resistance Cellar.

  Some failed. Desperate Dan and Meddlesome Matty and Strang the Terrible and Korky the Cat killed themselves with free gifts in a back room at the Peter Pan Club because they were impotent, like us. Their audience, the senile Chums of Red Circle School, still wearing for reasons of loyalty and lust the tatters of their uniforms, voted that exhibition a super wheeze.

  Some succeeded. Tom Sawyer’s heart has cooled, his ingenuity flowers at Cape Kennedy.

  But they are all trodden on, the old familiar faces, so at the rising of the sun and the going down of the ditto I remember I remember the house where I was taught to play up play up and play the game though nobody told me what the game was, but we know now, don’t we, we know what the game is, but lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime and departing leave behind us arseprints on the sands of time, but the tide’s come up, the castles are washed down, where are they now, where are they, where are the deep shelters? There are no deep shelters. Biggles may drop it, Worrals of the Wraf may press the button. So Billy and Bessie Bunter, prepare for the last and cosmic Yarooh and throw away the Man-Tan. The sky will soon be full of suns.

  So Don’t Feed Your Dog Ordinary Meat,

  Feed Him Pal, Pal Meat for Dogs,

  P-A-L, Prolongs Active Life

  (Enriched with Nourishing Marrowbone Jelly)

  My bird had a grin like a water-melon,

  My bird was a hopeless case.

  She wanted to look like Elvis Presley

  So she paid a man to wipe the
smile off her face,

  He was

  My friend the plastic surgeon

  Your friend the plastic surgeon

  Your friendly neighbourhood plastic surgeon

  (Enriched with nourishing marrowbone jelly).

  My mate was a dirty little Fascist,

  They shouted him down when he cursed the Jews,

  And nobody recognised his patriotic motives

  Till he hired a man to explain his views,

  He got

  My friend the public relations man

  Your friend the PRO

  Your friendly neighbourhood public relations man

  (Enriched with nourishing marrowbone jelly).

  My dad was a nervy sort of navvy

  He insured his job and his life and me

  Fire, flood, suicide and acts of God,

  And then he insured his insurance policy,

  He paid

  My friend the man from the Prudential

  Your friend the man from the Pru

  Your friendly neighbourhood man from the Prudential

  (Enriched with nourishing marrowbone jelly).

  My mum spent her life watching telly

  Till the Epilogue told her that her soul would burn.

  Now she’s got peace of mind and she still does nothing

  For she pays one-tenth of all we earn

  To

  My friend the Anglican clergyman

  Your friend the clergyman

  Your friendly neighbourhood Anglican clergyman

  (Enriched with nourishing marrowbone jelly).

  The plastic surgeon and the public relations man,

  The man from the Prudential and the man from God –

  Pals, pals, every one a pal.

  P-A-L,

  Prolongs Active Life

  (Enriched with nourishing marrowbone jelly).

  Time and Motion Study

  Slow down the film. You see that bit.

  Seven days old and no work done.

  Two hands clutching nothing but air.

  Two legs kicking nothing but air.

  That yell. There’s wasted energy there.

  No use to himself, no good for the firm.

 

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