He did it in Washington where everyone could see
because
people were being set on fire
in the dark corners of Vietnam where nobody could see.
Their names, ages, beliefs and loves
are not recorded.
This is what Norman Morrison did.
He poured petrol over himself.
He burned. He suffered.
He died.
That is what he did
in the heart of Washington
where everyone could see.
He simply burned away his clothes,
his passport, his pink-tinted skin,
put on a new skin of flame
and became
Vietnamese.
Would You Mind Signing This Receipt?
When you get back home
You will find a black patch on the ground,
A patch of blackness shaped like a house
Where your house used to stand.
It was a mistake.
It was the wrong house.
It was all a mistake
Based on faulty information.
When you get back home
You will find three black heaps on the ground.
Three black heaps shaped like children
On the patch of blackness shaped like a house
Where your house used to stand.
It was a mistake.
They were the wrong people.
It was all a mistake
Based on faulty information.
Three children.
51 dollars compensation per child.
That comes to 153 dollars, madam.
For Rachel: Christmas 1965
Caesar sleeping in his armoured city
Herod shaking like a clockwork toy
and spies are moving into Rama
asking for a baby boy.
Caesar is the father of Herod
Herod is the father of us all
and we’ll be obedient, silent little children
or the moon will drop
and the sun will fall.
Someone must have warned the wanted mother
she’ll be hiding with her family
and soldiers are marching through Rama
silently, obediently.
Caesar is the father of Herod
Herod is the father of us all
and we’ll be obedient, silent little children
or the moon will drop
and the sun will fall.
Down all the white-washed alleys of Rama
small soft bodies are bayoneted
and Rachel is weeping in Rama
and will not be comforted.
Caesar is the father of Herod
Herod is the father of us all
and we’ll be obedient, silent little children
or the moon will drop
and the sun will fall.
Caesar sleeping in his armoured city
Herod dreaming in his swansdown bed
and Rachel is weeping in Rama
and will not be comforted.
Caesar is the father of Herod
Herod is the father of us all
and we’ll be obedient, silent little children
or the moon will drop
and the sun will fall.
Thinks: I’ll Finish These Gooks by Building
an Electronically Operated Physical Barrier
Right Along Their Seventeenth Parallel!!!
(for John Arden and Margaretta D’Arcy)
1. Thousands of miles of invisible fencing
Distinguishable only by the balding badness of the earth
And a slight electric shimmer in the air.
But if you throw raw hamburger towards the sky
It comes down grilled.
2. The Marine shouted:
‘I don’t mind fighting Charlie,
But not with my back to a goddam
Electronically operated physical barrier.’
3. We have stopped lifting our electronic barrier
For one hour daily at Checkpoint Harold.
We don’t mind the refugee double-deckers heading north,
But sod this constant rumbling southwards
Of enormous invisible wooden horses.
4. If the barrier fails
We are going to bring in volcanoes.
5. ‘I just pissed against that
Electronically operated physical barrier,’
Boasted the police dog to his bitch,
‘And eighty-two square miles got devastated.’
6. Tom Sawyer drew a line in the dust with his toe:
‘Step over that and I’ll burn your skin off.’
7. What we really need
Is an electronically operated physical barrier
Around the United States.
To a Russian Soldier in Prague
You are going to be hated by the people.
They will hate you over their freakish breakfast of tripe soup and pastries.
They will squint hatred at you on their way to pretend to work.
By the light of yellow beer they will hate you with jokes you’ll never hear.
You’re beginning to feel
Like a landlord in a slum
Like a white man in Harlem
Like a U.S. Marine in Saigon
Socialists are hated
By all who kill for profit and power.
But you are going to be hated by
The people – who are all different.
The people – who are all extraordinary.
The people – who are all of equal value.
Socialism is theirs, it was invented for them.
Socialism is theirs, it can only be made by them.
Africa, Asia and Latin America are screaming:
STARVATION. POVERTY. OPPRESSION.
When they turn to America.
They see only flames and children in the flames.
When they turn to England
They see an old lady in a golden wheelchair,
Share certificates in one hand, a pistol in the other.
When they turn to Russia
They see – you.
You are going to be hated
As the English have usually been hated.
The starving, the poor and the oppressed
Are turning, turning away.
While you nervously guard a heap of documents
They stagger away through the global crossfire
Towards revolution, towards socialism.
Goodbye Richard Nixon
Your California bedroom was red white and blue
You won ten thousand dollars playing poker in the Navy
Your College football team was called The Poets
And you tucked the bottom of your tie into the top of your trousers
Gave you a sort of safe feeling
You had a music box played Hail to the Chief
Your favourite building was the Lincoln Memorial
Your favourite food was cottage cheese and ketchup
Your favourite Xmas song was Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
And you never wiped your arse
Ceasefire
(dedicated to the Medical Aid Committee for Vietnam)
The outside of my body was half-eaten
by fire which clings as tight as skin.
The fire has turned some of my skin
into black scab bits of roughness
and some pale bits smooth as plastic,
which no one dares touch
except me and the doctor.
Everyone who looks at me is scared.
That’s not because I want to hurt people
but because so much of me
looks like the meat of a monster…
I was walking to the market.
Then I was screaming.
They found me screaming.
They put out the flames on my skin.
They laid me on a stretcher and I cried:
Not on my back!
So they turned me over and I cried:
Not on my front!
A doctor put a needle in my arm
and my mind melted
and I fell into a furnace of dreams of furnaces.
When I woke up I was in a white hospital.
Everything I wanted to say scared me
and I did not want to scare the others
in that white hospital,
so I said nothing, cried as quietly as I could.
Months passed over my head
and bombers passed over my head
and people came and said they were my parents
and they found out the places on my face
where I could bear to be kissed.
And I pretended I could see them
but I couldn’t really look out of my eyes
but only inwards, into my head
where the flames still clung and hurt, and talked.
And the flames said:
You are meat.
You are ugly meat.
Your body cannot grow to loveliness.
Nobody could love such ugly meat.
Only ugly meat could love such ugly meat.
Better be stewed for soup and eaten.
And months passed over my head
and bombers passed over my head
and the voices of the flames began to flicker
and I began to believe the people who said they were my parents
were my parents.
And one day I threw myself forward
so that I sat up in bed, for the first time,
and hurled my arms around my mother,
and however the skin of my chest howled out in its pain
I held her, I held her, I held her
and knew she was my mother.
And I forgot that I was monster meat
and I knew she did not know that I was monster meat.
I held her, I held her.
And, sweet sun which blesses all the world –
all the flames faded.
The flames of my skin
and the flames inside my head –
all the flames faded
and I was flooded
with love for my mother
who did not know
that I was monster meat.
And so, in the love-flood, I let go of my mother
and fell back upon my pillow
and I rolled my head to the left side
and I saw a child, or it might have been an old man,
eating his rice with his only arm
and I rolled my head to the right side
and saw another child, or she might have been an old woman,
being fed through the arm from a tube from a red bottle –
and I loved them, and, flooded with love
I started to sing
the song of the game I used to play with my friends
in the long-ago days before the flames came:
One, one, bounce the ball,
Once for the sandal-maker,
Two, two, bounce the ball,
Twice for the fishermen on the river.
Three, three, bounce the ball,
Three times for your golden lover –
And had to stop singing.
Throat choked with vomit.
And then the flames exploded again all over my skin
and then the flames exploded again inside my head
and I burned, sweet sun, sweet mother, I burned.
Sweet sun, which blesses all the world,
this was one of the people of Vietnam.
I suppose we love each other.
We’re stupid if we don’t.
We have a choice –
Either choke to death on our own vomit
or to become one
with the sweet sun, which blesses all the world.
To Whom It May Concern (Tell Me Lies about Vietnam)
I was run over by the truth one day.
Ever since the accident I’ve walked this way
So stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.
Heard the alarm clock screaming with pain,
Couldn’t find myself so I went back to sleep again
So fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.
Every time I shut my eyes all I see is flames.
Made a marble phone book and I carved all the names
So coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.
I smell something burning, hope it’s just my brains.
They’re only dropping peppermints and daisy-chains
So stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.
Where were you at the time of the crime?
Down by the Cenotaph drinking slime
So chain my tongue with whisky
Stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.
You put your bombers in, you put your conscience out,
You take the human being and you twist it all about
So scrub my skin with women
Chain my tongue with whisky
Stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.
Peace Is Milk
Peace is milk.
War is acid.
The elephant dreams of bathing in lakes of milk.
Acid blood
Beats through the veins
Of the monstrous, vulture-weight fly,
Shaking, rocking his framework.
The elephants, their gentle thinking shredded
By drugs disseminated in the electricity supply,
Sell their children, buy tickets for the Zoo
And form a dead-eyed queue
Which stretches from the decorative, spiked gates
To the enormous shed where the flies are perching.
Peace is milk
War is acid.
Sometimes an elephant finds a bucket of milk.
Swash! and it’s empty.
The fly feeds continually.
The fly bulges with acid
Or he needs more. And more.
An overweight fly levers himself
From his revolving chair,
Paces across the elephantskin floor,
Presses a button
And orders steak, steak, elephant steak
And a pint of acid.
Peace is milk.
War is acid.
The elephants are being dried in the sun.
The huge flies overflow.
Look down from the plane.
Those clouds of marvellous milk.
Easily they swing by on the wind,
Assembling, disassembling,
Forming themselves into pleasure-towers,
Unicorns, waterfalls, funny faces;
Swimming, basking, dissolving –
Easily, easily.
Tomorrow the cream-clouds will be fouled.
The sky will be buckshot-full of paratroop swarms
With their money-talking guns,
Headlines carved across their foreheads,
Sophisticated, silent electrical equipment.
Heart-screws and fear-throwers.
The day after tomorrow
The clouds will curdle, the clouds will begin to burn –
Yes, we expected that, knew about that,
Overkill, overburn, multi-
megacorpse,
Yeah, yeah, yeah we knew about that
Cry the white-hearted flies.
Channel One –
A fly scientist in an ivory helmet
Who always appears about to cry
Explains why the viewers have to die.
Channel Nine –
A fly statesman,
Hardly audible through the acid rain,
Explains why nothing can ever happen again.
Oh we’ll soon be finished with the creatures of the earth.
There’s no future in elephants, milk or Asiatics.
We should be working out
How to inflict the maximum pain
On Martians and Venusians.
Sour sky.
The elephants are entering the shed.
Sour sky.
The flies have dropped a star called Wormwood
And turned the Pacific into an acid bath.
Sour sky.
Socrates said no harm could come to a good man,
But even Socrates
Couldn’t turn the hemlock into a banana milk shake
With one high-voltage charge
From his Greek-sky eyes.
Even Socrates, poor bugger.
They are rubbing their forelegs together,
Washing each others’ holes with their stubbled tongues,
Watching us while they wash.
Then, like brown rain running backwards,
They hurtle upwards, vibrating with acid.
They patrol our ceilings, always looking downwards.
Pick up the phone, that’s them buzzing.
The turd-born flies.
Peace is milk
And milk is simple
And milk is hard to make.
It takes clean grass, fed by clean earth, clear air, clean rain,
Takes a calm cow with all her stomachs working
And it takes milk to raise that cow.
Come on Everybody Page 17