Come on Everybody

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Come on Everybody Page 19

by Adrian Mitchell


  This is the Terror Girl of the Daily Mail.

  Now Anna is being kept under maximum-security conditions in a man’s prison – Brixton. There are only two women in the prison. They are supervised by seven warders. They have no privacy. When Anna has a visitor, her conversation is listened to. When her lawyer visits her in her cell below the court, there is always a policeman in the cell. For three hours a day she is allowed to meet the other woman in Brixton jail. The rest of the time she spends on her own.

  So will Anna be sent back by our rulers

  to the white of the white box

  to the silence of the white silence

  to the constant silence and the constant white

  to the whiteness of the silence

  to the silence of the whiteness

  to the whiteness of the whiteness

  to the silence of the silence

  to the whiteness of the whiteness

  to the silence of the silence

  to the whiteness to the silence to the whiteness to the silence

  whiteness whiteness silence silence

  Stop. You can stop them. If Anna is extradited or not depends on the Home Secretary. Write to the Home Secretary. Demand she be allowed to stay. Demand that she be treated humanely. And if you are German, force your government to be satisfied with its revenge, to drop its demands for extradition, to drop the case against her, to close the Silent Wing forever.

  We will walk out from here

  into the blue-eyed, brown-faced, green-haired world

  our spinning, singing planet

  but Anna who was Astrid lies chained in the box of the state

  silent men in suits walk towards her with blank faces

  they carry syringes and hooks and guns in their white briefcases

  LET ANNA STAY HERE

  LET HER WORK

  LET HER REST

  LET HER FIND LOVE

  Activities of an East and West Dissident Blues

  (verses to be read by the Secret Police, the chorus to be read by anyone else)

  When I woke up this morning it was nothing o’clock

  I erased all the dreams from my head

  I washed my face in shadow-juice

  And for breakfast I ate my bed

  I said goodbye to my jailer and spy

  Burnt letters from all of my friends

  Then I caught the armoured bus for a mystery tour

  To the street with two dead ends

  and oh

  I wish I had a great big shiny brass diver’s helmet

  and I wish I had great big leaden diver’s boots on me

  and I wish I had infallible mates upstairs at the air-pumps

  as I wandered forever on the bottom of the great free sea

  I arrived at my factory or office or field

  I did what I was meant to do

  I left undone what should be left undone

  And all of the others did the same thing too

  And you too? Right.

  In the evening I read whatever should be read

  Listened to whatever should be heard

  And I taught the top twenty government slogans

  To my golden-caged security bird

  And I changed into the pair of pyjamas

  With a number stamped on brown and black bars

  And I pulled down the blind to keep out of my mind

  The excitement of the stars

  but oh

  I wish I had a great big shining brass diver’s helmet

  and I wish I had great big leaden diver’s boots on me

  and infallible mates upstairs with their hands on the air-pumps

  as I wandered forever on the bottom of the great green

  flowing free and easy sea

  Carol During the Falklands Experience

  In the blind midslaughter

  The drowned sank alone

  Junta set like concrete

  Thatcher like a stone

  Blood had fallen, blood on blood,

  Blood on blood

  In the blind midslaughter

  In the madness flood

  What shall I give them

  Powerless as I am?

  If I were a rich man

  I wouldn’t give a damn

  If I were an arms dealer

  I would play my part –

  All I can do is point towards

  The holy human heart.

  Chile in Chains

  ‘Student demonstrators yesterday forced the Chilean Ambassador to clamber over rooftops and hide in a kitchen after they broke up a meeting he was trying to address at St John’s College, Cambridge. The Ambassador, Professor Miguel Schweitzer, was invited to talk to the Monday Club on diplomatic relations between Britain and Chile…’ The Guardian, 13 November 1980.

  ‘Any victory for the people, however small, is worth celebrating’ – a demonstrator.

  ‘I’ve never seen an Ambassador running before, so I’m not quite sure how to rate him as a runner’ – a Cambridge spectator.

  There’s eight men in Cambridge called the Monday Club,

  It’s like the British Movement with brains,

  And they thought it cute to pay a sort of tribute

  To the government of Chile in Chains.

  So the Mondays invited the Ambassador

  To St John’s as their honoured guest –

  But he must come unto them secretly

  (At the Special Branch’s special request).

  The Ambassador was glad to get an invite –

  He flicked off his electric shock machine,

  Scrubbed the blood from under his fingernails

  And summoned his bodyguard and limousine.

  ‘What shall I tell them?’ the Ambassador mused

  As he flushed his better self down the loo,

  ‘Allende was a mass murderer

  But Pinochet is Jesus Mark Two?

  ‘What shall I tell them?’ the Ambassador thought

  As his car snaked down Cambridgeshire lanes,

  ‘That Victor Jara tortured himself to death

  And Paradise is Chile in Chains?’

  But as they were proffering South African sherry

  The faces of the Monday Club froze –

  For a mob of Lefties had assembled outside:

  Socialist and Anarchist desperadoes!

  So they switched their venue from the Wordsworth Room

  To the Wilberforce Room, locked the doors

  And the Monday Club gave its limp applause

  To a pimp for fascist whores.

  But the revolution never stops

  (We even go marching when it rains),

  And a Yale lock is no protection at all

  For a salesman for Chile in Chains.

  When the Left tumbled into the Wilberforce Room

  The Ambassador was terrified.

  His bodyguard shovelled him out the back door

  And the Monday Club was occupied.

  Oh they hurried him over the rooftops

  And the pigeons gave him all they had.

  Oh they hid him away in the kitchen

  And all of the food went bad.

  But the Left sat down in the Wilberforce Room.

  The atmosphere smelled of shame.

  Then a Don said: ‘This is private property.

  Tell me your college and name.’

  ‘We didn’t come to talk about property.

  We came to talk about the pains

  Of the poor and the murdered and the tortured and the raped

  Who are helpless in Chile in Chains.’

  They grouped a scrum of cops round their honoured guest

  And we jeered at him and his hosts

  As he ran with the cops across the grass of the Court

  Like a torturer pursued by ghosts.

  He galloped with his minders to his limousine

  But the stink of his terror remains

  And everyone who watched his cowardly run
>
  Knows – Chile will tear off her chains.

  A Prayer for the Rulers of this World

  God bless their suits

  God bless their ties

  God bless their grubby

  Little alibis

  God bless their firm,

  Commanding jaws

  God bless their thumbs

  God bless their claws

  God bless their livers

  God bless their lungs

  God bless their

  Shit-encrusted tongues

  God bless their prisons

  God bless their guns

  God bless their deaf and dumb

  Daughters and sons

  God bless their corpuscles

  God bless their sperms

  God bless their souls

  Like little white worms

  Oh God will bless

  The whole bloody crew

  For God, we know,

  Is a ruler too

  And the blessed shall live

  And the damned shall die

  And God will rule

  In his suit and his tie

  One Bad Word

  (for my Black and Asian friends and their children who are threatened in the streets)

  You call me that bad word

  That one bad word

  That bad word weighs a thousand tonne

  That one bad word burns my skin all over

  You call me one bad word

  That word makes my mother

  Cast down her eyes in shame

  Makes my father

  Deny his own name

  Makes my brother

  Turn and fight like a demon

  Makes my sister

  Spend her life in bad dreaming

  So call me one bad word

  And you don’t know what will happen

  It could be tears it could be blood

  I could be storm

  It could be silence

  It could be a rage

  Hot enough to burn the whole town down

  Could be a stampede of elephants

  Through your back garden

  And into your mother’s

  Frilly perfume sitting room.

  Could be zombie nightmares

  Every night for the rest

  Of your natural life

  Could be all your food

  From this day on

  Will taste of rotten fishheads

  Could be anything

  Could be the end of the world

  But most likely

  This will follow:

  I’ll stare at you

  For one cold second

  And then I’ll turn and walk away from you

  Leaving you alone with yourself

  And your one bad word

  from

  BLUE COFFEE

  POEMS 1985-1996

  YES

  A Puppy Called Puberty

  It was like keeping a puppy in your underpants

  A secret puppy you weren’t allowed to show to anyone

  Not even your best friend or your worst enemy

  You wanted to pat him stroke him cuddle him

  All the time but you weren’t supposed to touch him

  He only slept for five minutes at a time

  Then he’d suddenly perk up his head

  In the middle of school medical inspection

  And always on bus rides

  So you had to climb down from the upper deck

  All bent double to smuggle the puppy off the bus

  Without the buxom conductress spotting

  Your wicked and ticketless stowaway.

  Jumping up, wet-nosed, eagerly wagging –

  He only stopped being a nuisance

  When you were alone together

  Pretending to be doing your homework

  But really gazing at each other

  Through hot and hazy daydreams

  Of those beautiful schoolgirls on the bus

  With kittens bouncing in their sweaters.

  A Dog Called Elderly

  And now I have a dog called Elderly

  And all he ever wants to do

  Is now and then be let out for a piss

  But spend the rest of his lifetime

  Sleeping on my lap in front of the fire.

  Questionnaire

  Q. How do you do?

  A. Like a bear in the Zoo.

  Q. Why should that be?

  A. The world is not free.

  Q. Must it always be so?

  A. No.

  With our hearts and our brains

  We will tear off its chains.

  Q. You write poems, why?

  A. Because I am shy.

  In real life I conceal

  Everything that I feel,

  But in poems I shout

  And my feelings fly out.

  Q. Why do you write in verse at all?

  A. I would always rather jump than crawl,

  My tongue would rather sing than talk

  And my feet would sooner dance than walk.

  Q. What’s the difference between a walker and dancer?

  A. Love is the answer.

  Q. Why do you write?

  A. For the love of life

  And my friends, my animals,

  my children and my wife.

  I am lucky and happy –

  Q. But how do you do?

  A. Like a bear who dreams he is not in a Zoo.

  Yes

  A smile says: Yes.

  A heart says: Blood.

  When the rain says: Drink

  The earth says: Mud.

  The kangaroo says: Trampoline.

  Giraffes say: Tree.

  A bus says: Us

  While a car says: Me.

  Lemon trees say: Lemons.

  A jug says: Lemonade.

  The villain says: You’re wonderful.

  The hero: I’m afraid.

  The forest says: Hide and Seek.

  The grass says: Green and Grow.

  The railway says: Maybe.

  The prison says: No.

  The millionaire says: Take.

  The beggar says: Give.

  The soldier cries: Mother!

  The baby sings: Live.

  The river says: Come with me.

  The moon says: Bless.

  The stars says: Enjoy the light.

  The sun says: Yes.

  Golo, the Gloomy Goalkeeper

  Golo plays for the greatest soccer team in the Universe.

  They are so mighty that their opponents never venture out of their own penalty area.

  They are so all-conquering that Golo never touches the ball during a match, and very seldom sees it.

  Every game seems to last a lifetime to Golo, the Gloomy Goalkeeper.

  Golo scratches white paint off the goalposts’ surface to reveal the silver shining underneath.

  He kisses the silver of the goalpost.

  It does not respond.

  Golo counts the small stones in the penalty area.

  There are three hundred and seventy eight, which is not his lucky number.

  Golo pretends to have the hiccups, then says to himself, imitating his sister’s voice:

  Don’t breathe, and just die basically.

  Golo breaks eight small sticks in half.

  Then he has sixteen very small sticks.

  He plants geranium seeds along the goal-line.

  He paints a picture of a banana and sells it to the referee at half-time.

  Golo finds, among the bootmarks in the dust, the print of one stiletto heel.

  He crawls around on all fours doing lion imitations.

  He tries to read his future in the palm of his hand, but forgets to take his glove off.

  He writes a great poem about butterflies but tears it up because he can’t think of a rhyme for Wednesday.

  He knits a sweater for the camel in the Zoo.

  Golo suddenly realises he can’t remember if
he is a man or a woman.

  He takes a quick look, but still can’t decide.

  Golo makes up his mind that grass is his favourite colour.

  He puts on boots, track-suit, gloves and hat all the same colour as grass.

  He paints his face a gentle shade of green.

  Golo lies down on the pitch and becomes invisible.

  The grass tickles the back of his neck.

  At last Golo is happy.

  He has fallen in love with the grass.

  And the grass has fallen in love with Golo, the Gloomy Goalkeeper.

  Blood and Oil

  (to the British armed forces)

  And once again the politicians

  Whose greatest talent is for lying

  Are sending you where they’re afraid to go

  To do their killing and dying

  You’re young and you’ve been trained to fight

  You’re brave, well-equipped and loyal.

  That’s why they’re sending you to Hell –

  Blood and Oil.

  It’s not to defend the Falklands sheep

  Or Christians in Ireland

  But to sit in a tank till you are moved

  On a giant chessboard of desert sand

  You’re not there to fight against tyranny

  Or for hostages or British soil

  But for economics, the dollars of death –

  Blood and Oil.

  And the soldiers you fight will be young men

  With no reason to kill, young men like you

  With beautiful families back home

  And some with wives and children too

  But no politicians will be there

  When lungs tear and arteries boil

 

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