Come on Everybody

by Adrian Mitchell

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.