They’ll be filmed with survivors in hospital
Blood and Oil.
Yes, once again the politicians
Whose greatest talent is for lying
Are sending young men where old men dare not go
To do their killing and dying
To do their killing and dying
To do their killing and dying
Blood and Oil
Blood and Oil
Blood and Oil
Blood and oil…
Millennium Countdown
Nine will coo you with a beeper bomb
Eight will tickle the mousetrap
Seven will shave you like a zombie prom
Six is the ultimate cowpat
Five will catch you in a yellow thumb zone
Four will play the Hempty Dempty
Three will be lost in abalone Babylone
Two will find your pooter empty
Some say One will be miserable fun
Some say Bake the town down
But I say if you count me count me out
Millennium Countdown
Bruce Thursday
Minority shine
Sliding all over the meltdown
You bit it – you git it –
Harna! Harna!
Millennium Countdown
Can’t stop dreaming about the future
Two thousand years in a beggar’s coat
Can’t stop screaming about the factoid future
Two thousand years got stuck in my throat
Trying Hard To Be Normal
(for Spike Milligan)
I bought myself a hairbrush
A Military Hairbrush it turned out
It came in a box marked Military Hairbrush
I opened the box
And took out the Military Hairbrush
But there was still something left in the box
I shook the box and brought out a brochure
It was printed in every colour that exists
The brochure showed me with diagrams
And a text in seven languages
How to brush my hair with the Military Hairbrush
I was about to throw the box away
When I realised there was something else left in the box
I shook the box and out dropped
A smaller brush
A wooden brush a humble brush
Certainly not a military brush
Just a brush
I looked for an explanation in the brochure
And found that this was the brush
With which to brush
The Military Hairbrush
Or
Simplicity
is a glass of water
Stupidity
is a mugful of dust
Simplicity
is the moonlight’s daughter
Stupidity
is the father of rust
get the idea
they are opposites
they are not twins
get the idea
when simplicity weeps
stupidity grins
Simplicity
is a box of matches
Stupidity
is a forest ablaze
Simplicity
is an egg that hatches
Stupidity
is the murderer’s gaze
you ask me
you ask me how I know
I’ll tell you
Simplicity came and took my hand
She lead me from the city to a peaceable land
Of complicated creatures and rivers and trees
With days of excitement and nights of peace
And I love the way Simplicity moves
I love the way Simplicity moves
But I have seen enough Stupidity
To last me to the year three thousand and three
Cutting It Up
If you’re looking for trouble
Here’s how to start
Blow up the theatres
Tear down the art
Burn down the libraries
And concert halls
Cut your jazz and ballet
And then cut off your balls
And be a serial killer of culture
A serial killer of the soul
If you’re looking for trouble
Take the artists you’ve got
Stack their works all around them
And torch the lot
The human soul is hungry
And so’s the human heart
The food and drink makes them feel and think
It comes from works of art
And the human soul without art
Is locked in a dungeon cell
If you take your knife and cut the arts
You can cut your throat as well
Cos you’re a serial killer of culture
A serial killer of the soul
If you’re looking for trouble
Cut your grants to the poor
Seek out the old and sick
Cut them some more
Suffer little children
To go to school in Hell
Then watch them burn your cities
And your country estates as well
Cos you’re a serial killer of Britain
A serial killer of its soul
THE HAIRY ARTS
The Olchfa Reading
I had told Nigel Jenkins
the bard of Mumbles, who was my friend,
that I wanted to read to a large audience
I was led in to entertain
the fourth and fifth and reject forms
of an enormous comprehensive
in a hall the size of
a Jumbo Jet hangar
They seemed as multitudinous
as the armies of Genghis Khan
but they were larger and hairier
and less interested in poetry
I tried to read a few of my poems –
my political ones were dismissed as ancient history
my love lyrics scoffed at for their naivety
my banter greeted by a thousand embalmed faces
It was a Friday afternoon to end all Friday afternoons
It was Goliath dressed up as Just William
yawning in my face
the audience stretched from Wales to Florida
the front rows shuffled their terrible boots in their sleep
or read magazines with mutilated nudes on their covers
further back they were snorting anthracite
and even further back
they were tearing the blazers off each other’s backs
and indulging in Welsh Kissing
Desperately I asked for Questions from the audience.
I’ve sometimes had good questions
from unpromising aliens, questions like:
how old were you when you turned famous?
But this was bottomless sea-bed of Friday afternoon
A tall boy with several jam-stained
bandages around his head asked me:
Have you got any Horror Poems?
What sort of Horror Poems?
You know, poems with rusty spikes
sticking out of people’s necks.
I shook my head – the tall boy snarled
and began to chew one of his bandages
then a lobster-boy in the front row
detached a lump of pink bubble gum from his stubble
before he asked me scornfully:
Why are your trousers so long?
Booze and Bards
I do a lot of thinking stuff all day long
You know trying to chase those words around the page
If I can round up enough of those critters
I might earn a living wage
Every morning down the poetry pit
Cut a few tons from the verseface
But the sky’s always darkening by the time
I clamber up to the surface
That’s w
hen I run to catch the Jungle Juice Train
Everybody says He’s at it again
Well the Jungle Juice Train’s what I travel on
To the dear old station of Oblivion
And here’s a health to the corpse of Dylan Thomas
And to all of the pain in the poetry dome
He fell among strangers time after time
But he only wanted to be carried home
Poet
He swings down from the train
on to the evening platform
the bag bumping his shoulder blade contains
gear for the night and weapons
only the main street shows any brightness
Been here before? Seven years ago.
He leans on the deep gold wood of the bar
orders a double whisky
waiting for the organiser
I’ve come to clean up this town
Poetry and Knitting
A good poem and a good sweater
have plenty in common
both keep you warm
but the sweater fits only one person at a time
poem lasts longer
Astrid Furnival
Designed and knitted
A sweater with William Blake on the front
And Catherine Blake on the back
And vice versa
I gave it to Celia
Through heaven and through hell
She wears it for my sake
But this is not typical Contemporary British Knitting
Not at all
There are knitting factories in South East Asia
which produce
Red for Liverpool Blue for Everton
Anything for money scarves
I love the children’s mittens which are connected
by a thin woollen rope
which goes up one overcoat sleeve
and down the other
so that the mittens cannot be lost
except by a mixed infant contortionist
with a Stanley knife
I love those knitted dogs
which have trousers and jackets
kind of knitted into them
I love those mighty woollen helmets
hairy all over with a bobble on top
which make toddlers look
like multi-coloured steaming puddings
I love the generously knitted
lop-sided cardigan
with its baggy pockets
smelling of arcane pipe tobaccos –
Old Barty’s Green Plug, Parrot Stock,
Cardinal Jasper and Shmoggo’s Midnight Toffee
I love the hopeless inspirational
Christmas insanity of an aunt-knitted tie
sent to an aspiring arms salesman
with British Aerospace
I love the shapelessness of woollen slippers
slopping and slapping like two
pink and cosy three-dimensional amoebas
But maybe I don’t love
the French knitting of John Ashbery
that just goes on and on
producing one endless knitted turd
Explanation
The poet’s briefcase is a plastic bag
the poet’s microphone’s a hairy eyebrow
through it he broadcasts to the lowbrow and highbrow
The poet’s taxi, that’s his righthand thumb
the poet’s taxi is a souped-up mind
a fourlegged jaguar not the fourwheel kind
the poet’s lipstick is a stick of frozen blood
his make up is primeval sludgeration mud
His financial security’s an ice cream cone
His political party is called All Alone
There’ll be a bill at the end of the meal
Be sure you pay as much as you feel
You only have to pay as much as you feel
The Wilder Poetry of Tomorrow
Come on Poetry, get up off your big fat rusty-dusty
Come on Poetry, get up off your big fat rusty-dusty
When you crawled home at dawn your breath was smelling mausoleum musty
You’ve been mooning round the boneyard, mumbling to the dead,
Playing Ludo against yourself and wearing gloves in bed
Why don’t you swing up through the treetops, get some jungle in your head?
I want every kind of creature to break out of the Poetry Zoo –
Barefoot heartbeat of the elephant, stride of the kangaroo.
I want to see your body naked when the sun comes shining through.
It can knock you down in Devon, it can bust you up in Jarrow
It bumps across the landscape like a customised wheelbarrow
But The Wilder Poetry of Tomorrow – it strikes like Robin Hood’s arrow.
So come on Poetry, get up off your big fat rusty-dusty…
Hot Pursuit
(to Paul McCartney)
Augusta, Georgia,
Saturday night.
‘Car Number Seven
Go break up a fight.’
‘Make it downtown
To the Franklin Hotel.
James Brown’s in the lobby
And he’s kicking up hell.’
James Brown standing
Like a tall black tree.
‘Hey little coppers
Did you come for me?’
‘Hold it James Brown
Or we’re gonna shoot.’
But he took off in a truck,
Law in hot pursuit.
Cop car zooming
Right after James Brown.
He laugh like a jackass
Stuck his foot right down.
‘Augusta, Georgia
Is my home town.
Shoot me if you dare
But I’m the famous James Brown.’
‘We don’t care
If you’re the great James Brown.
We’ll shoot out your tyres
That’ll slow you down.’
Bam! One tyre
Got blown by their first.
Fired another bullet
A second tyre burst.
James Brown, James Brown,
They’ll never catch him.
He kept on driving
On the metal rims.
‘Catch me alive,
Or catch me dead.
Augusta, Georgia
There’s sparkles round my head.’
Moondog
There was a man called Moondog
Who made tunes
With thimbles, glasses, zithers,
Keys and spoons
And all the tunes he made
Were living things
Which flew around his head
On silver wings
I bought a Moondog record
Fourteen tracks
A red and golden label
Dusty wax
The sounds were delicate
As cowrie shells
The moonlit dancing
Of a thousand bells
My first day in New York
I walked downtown
Moondog sat on the sidewalk
All in brown
He played his instruments
So sweet and wild
I wanted to stay with him
As his child
Deep Purple Wine
Friday in a city
That was growling with the heat
I saw the tall rain coming
Walking with a steady beat
It walked right down the sky
And then scuttled off down the street
Seven in the evening
Yellow streetlights start to shine
I turned to my woman
She locked her eyes on mine
She said: Best thing when it’s raining
Is a bottle of Deep Purple Wine
It makes your spirit laugh
It makes your spirit moan
It makes you feel you’re talki
ng to
An angel on the phone
It cools you then it fools you
And it warms you to the bone
Duke Ellington invented it
The greatest ever brew
It was made by Jimmy Blanton
And by Johnny Hodges too
And it gurgled out with every note
Old Cootie Williams blew
It tickles like the old pianner
Mrs Klinkscale taught
It’s heavy as the drum-kit
That Louis Bellson fought
It’s light and bright as a kitten
Or a Billy Strayhorn thought
Tricky Sam Nanton
Poured it into crazy shapes
Cat Anderson employed it
In miraculous escapes
Sonny Greer Ray Nance Rex Stewart
They were all vintage grapes
Don’t forget Ben Webster
Barney Bigard Lawrence Brown
They filled a big cloud with that wine
And sailed it over town
And every night in Ellington
That wine came pouring down
Such Sweet Thunder in the throat
Such a Crescendo In Blue
Black Brown and Beige jump out your cage
And start Slappin’ Seventh Avenue
It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing
Like East St Louis Toodle-oo
So drink to the great Duke Ellington
And the Deep Purple Wine he made
Deep Purple Wine gives you dancing feet
Like kangaroos on parade
Deep Purple Wine so fine so fine
It will never ever fade
Thanks, Duke.
Come on Everybody Page 20