Come on Everybody

by Adrian Mitchell

  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.