The milk is not for the good elephant.
The milk is not for the bad elephant.
But the milk may be for the lucky elephant
Looming along until the end of the kingdom of the flies.
A family of people, trapped in Death Valley,
Drank from the radiator,
Laid out the hubcaps as bowls for the dew,
Buried each other up to the neck in sand
And waited for better times, which came
Just after they stopped hoping.
So the sweet survival of the elephants demands
Vision, cunning, energy and possibly burial
Until, maybe, the good times roll for the first time
And a tidal wave of elephants,
A stampede of milk,
Tornadoes through the capitals of flydom,
Voices flow like milk,
And below the white, nourishing depths –
Bodies moving any way they want to move,
Eyes resting or dancing at will,
Limbs and minds which follow, gladly,
The music of the milk.
So you drink my milk, I’ll drink yours.
We’ll melt together in the sun
Despite the high-explosive flies
Which hover, which hover,
Which hover, which hover,
Like a million plaguey Jehovahs.
Their prisons, their police, their armies, their laws,
Their camps where Dobermans pace the cadaver of a field,
Their flame factories and Black Death Factories,
The sourness of their sky –
Well that’s the poisonous weather the elephants must lumber through
Surviving, surviving,
Until the good times roll for the first time.
But it doesn’t end
With an impregnable city carved out of the living light.
It doesn’t end
In the plastic arms of an Everest-size Sophia Loren.
It doesn’t end
When the world says a relieved farewell to the white man
As he goofs off to colonise the Milky Way.
It continues, it continues.
When all of the elephants push it goes slowly forward.
When they stop pushing it rolls backwards.
It continues, it continues.
Towards milk, towards acid.
The taste of milk has been forgotten.
Most elephants agree peace is impossible.
Choosing death instead, they are jerked towards death
Slowly by newspapers, nightmares or cancer,
More quickly by heroin or war.
And some, the tops of their skulls sliced off
By money-knives or the axes of guilt,
Bow their great heads and let their hurting brains
Slop in the lavatory to drown.
There are prophets like Ginsberg – grandson of William Blake –
Desperate elephants who drink a pint of diamonds.
Their eyes become scored with a thousand white trenches,
Their hide shines with a constellation
Of diamond-headed boils,
Each footstep leaves a pool of diamond dust.
And sure, they shine,
They become shouting stars,
Burning with light until they are changed by pain
Into diamonds for everyone.
And sure, they go down shining,
They shine themselves to death,
The diamond drinkers.
The world is falling to pieces
But some of the pieces taste good.
There are various ways of making peace,
Most of them too childish for English elephants.
Given time and love it’s possible
To cultivate a peace-field large enough
For the playing of a child.
It’s possible to prepare a meal
And give it with care and love
To someone who takes it with care and love.
These are beginnings, but it’s late, late –
TV Dinner tonight.
It’s possible to suck the taste of peace
From one blade of grass
Or recognise peace in a can of white paint,
But it’s not enough.
In Nirvana there’s only room for one at a time.
WELL, YOU COULD STOP KILLING PEOPLE FOR A START,
Let loose the elephants.
Let the fountains talk milk.
Free the grass, let it walk wherever it likes.
Let the passports and prisons burn, their smoke turning into milk.
Let the pot-smokers blossom into milk-coloured mental petals.
We all need to be breast-fed
And start again.
Tear the fly-woven lying suits
Off the backs of the white killers
And let their milky bodies
Make naked pilgrimage
To wash the sores of Africa and Asia
With milk, for milk is peace
And money tastes of guns,
Guns taste of acid.
Make love well, generously, deeply.
There’s nothing simpler in the savage world,
Making good love, making good good love.
There’s nothing harder in the tender world,
Making good love, making good good love,
And most of the elephants, most of the time
Go starving for good love, not knowing what the pain is,
But it can be done and thank Blake it is done,
Making good love, making good good love.
In houses built of fly turds, in fly-turd feasting mansions,
Fly fear insurance offices even,
Fly-worshipping cathedrals even,
Even in murder offices just off the corridors of fly power –
Making good love, making good good love.
Good lovers float.
Happy to know they are becoming real.
They float out above the sourness, high on the seeds of peace.
There are too few of them up there.
Too little milk.
Drink more milk.
Breed more cows and elephants.
Think more milk and follow your banana.
We need evangelist, door-to-door lovers,
Handing it out, laying it down,
Spreading the elephant seed, delivering the revolutionary milk,
Making good love, making good good love.
United Nations teams of roving elephant milkmen
Making good love, making good good love,
Because peace is milk,
Peace is milk
And the skinny, thirsty earth, its face covered with flies,
Screams like a baby.
A Tourist Guide to England
£ Welcome to England!
England is a happy country
£ Here is a happy English businessman.
Hating his money, he spends it all
On bibles for Cambodia
And a charity to preserve
The Indian Cobra from extinction.
£ I’m sorry you can’t see our happy coal-miners.
Listen hard and you can hear them
Singing Welsh hymns far underground.
Oh. The singing seems to have stopped.
£ No, that is not Saint Francis of Assisi.
That is a happy English policeman.
£ Here is a happy black man.
No, it is not illegal to be black. Not yet.
£ Here are the slums.
They are preserved as a tourist attraction.
Here is a happy slum-dweller.
Hello, slum-dweller!
No, his answer is impossible to translate.
£ Here are some happy English schoolchildren.
See John. See Susan. See Mike.
They are studying for their examinations.
Study, children
, study!
John will get his O-Levels
And an O-Level job and an O-Level house and an O-Level wife.
Susan will get her A-Levels
And an A-Level job and an A-Level house and an A-Level husband.
Mike will fail.
£ Here are some happy English soldiers.
They are going to make the Irish happy.
£ No, please understand.
We understand the Irish
Because we’ve been sending soldiers to Ireland
For hundreds and hundreds of years.
£ First we tried to educate them
With religion, famine and swords.
But the Irish were slow to learn.
£ So now we are trying to educate them
With truncheons, gas, rubber bullets,
Steel bullets, internment and torture,
We are trying to teach the Irish
To be as happy as us.
£ So please understand us
And if your country
Should be forced to educate
Another country in the same way,
Or your own citizens in the same way –
We will try to understand you.
Sorry Bout That
Truth is a diamond
A diamond is hard
You don’t exist
Without a Barclaycard
Sorry bout that
Sorry bout that
Even South African cops
Do the sorry bout that
They showed me the world and said:
What do you think?
I said: half about women
And half about drink
And I’m sorry bout that
Sorry bout that
Mother, I need that booze
And I’m sorry bout that
If you cut your conscience
Into Kennomeat chunks
You can get elected
To the House of Drunks
Sorry bout that
Sorry bout that
You’ll never have to think again
And I’m sorry bout that
You can do the Skull
Or the Diplomat
But I do a dance called
The Sorry Bout That
Do the Mighty Whitey
Or the Landlord Rat
But I’ll keep grooving to
The Sorry Bout That
Sorry bout that
Sorry bout that
They make me dance with pistols and ten to one
I’m sorry bout that
I saw Money walking
Down the road
Claws like an eagle
And a face like a toad
Well I know your name baby
Seen you before
Slapping on your make-up
For the Third World War
Sorry bout that
Sorry bout that
Someone set the world on fire
And I’m sorry bout that
Victor Jara of Chile
(This ballad has been set to music and recorded by Arlo Guthrie)
Victor Jara of Chile
Lived like a shooting star
He fought for the people of Chile
With his songs and his guitar
And his hands were gentle
His hands were strong
Victor Jara was a peasant
Worked from a few years old
He sat upon his father’s plough
And watched the earth unfold
And his hands were gentle
His hands were strong
When the neighbours had a wedding
Or one of their children died
His mother sang all night for them
With Victor by her side
And his hands were gentle
His hands were strong
He grew to be fighter
Against the people’s wrongs
He listened to their grief and joy
And turned them into songs
And his hands were gentle
His hands were strong
He sang about the copper miners
And those who work the land
He sang about the factory workers
And they knew he was their man
And his hands were gentle
His hands were strong
He campaigned for Allende
Working night and day
He sang: take hold of your brother’s hand
The future begins today
And his hands were gentle
His hands were strong
The bloody generals seized Chile
They arrested Victor then
They caged him in a stadium
With five thousand frightened men
And his hands were gentle
His hands were strong
Victor stood in the stadium
His voice was brave and strong
He sang for his fellow-prisoners
Till the guards cut short his song
And his hands were gentle
His hands were strong
They broke the bones in both his hands
They beat his lovely head
They tore him with electric shocks
After two long days of torture they shot him dead
And his hands were gentle
His hands were strong
And now the Generals rule Chile
And the British have their thanks
For they rule with Hawker Hunters
And they rule with Chieftain tanks
And his hands were gentle
His hands were strong
Victor Jara of Chile
Lived like a shooting star
He fought for the people of Chile
With his songs and his guitar
And his hands were gentle
His hands were strong
Astrid-Anna
(This piece was written especially for an Anglo-German audience at the Goethe Institute in London)
Here is a news item from a right-wing British paper – the Daily Mail.
TERROR GIRL IS ILL
‘Baader Meinhof girl Astrid Proll, who faces extradition to Germany, is physically and mentally ill, her friends said yesterday. They gathered outside Bow Street magistrates court…and handed out leaflets saying she was having difficulty in breathing and had “sensations of panic”. Carnations were thrown to her as she was led away.’
If Astrid Proll, who is now a British citizen by marriage – Anna Puttick – is sent back to Germany, she will be dead within two years. There are special sections in special prisons in Germany where prisoners like Astrid-Anna find it easy to obtain revolvers. Even odder, they do not shoot their jailers. They shoot out their own brains. If the British hand over Astrid-Anna to the West German police, we will be collaborating in yet another murder. Well, we done a few before.
Sensations of panic
Carnations were thrown
Free Astrid Free Anna
Astrid-Anna was accused of the attempted murder of two policemen.
But she has never been found guilty of anything.
But she was the first prisoner in Germany to be kept in conditions of SENSORY DEPRIVATION. In the Silent Wing of the Women’s Psychiatric Unit at Ossen-dorf Prison in Cologne.
There are white walls, constant lighting, no external sounds – techniques designed to disorientate and subdue. She spent a total of FOUR AND A HALF MONTHS in the Silent Wing. About TWENTY-FOUR WEEKS in the Silent Wing. About ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED HOURS in the Silent Wing.
Her trial was stopped by a doctor. He found the following complaints: weakness and exhaustion, the feeling of ‘being wrapped in cotton wool’, dizziness, blackouts, headaches and no appetite, feelings of breaking down, an inability to concentrate, increasing signs of phobia and agoraphobia. Her blood circulation began to collapse, depriving her brain of oxygen. Continued imprisonment, said the doctor, would lead to PERMANENT AND IRREPARABLE DAMAG
E.
Four and a half months
In the silent wing
Four and a half months
in the silent wing
Shut in a white box
Under the constant neon
Being whitened in a box
Under the silent neon
Boxed in the white neon
Of the silent box
Under the constant wing.
In the white of the silent box
In the silence of the white box
In the constant silence
In the constant white
In the white of the white box
Your head starts exploding
Your skull is about to split
Your spine is drilling into your brain
You are pissing your brains away
In the white of the silent box
In the silence of the white box
In the constant silence
In the constant white
In the white of the white box
Under the Nazis an experiment was made in which they locked a man in a white cell with white furniture. He wore white clothes. And all his food and drink were white. He very soon lost his appetite. He could not eat. He could not drink. The sight of the white food and the white drink made him vomit.
Astrid came to England and began life again as Anna. She worked with young people in the East End as an instructor in car mechanics. One Englishwoman says: ‘Anna gave me and my children enormous support…When I was drinking too much, it was Anna who cared enough to see why and then helped me to make decisions that I was drinking to forget.’
Come on Everybody Page 18