Come on Everybody

by Adrian Mitchell

  Parade

  Have you ever been in Memphis

  At midnight Halloween

  I been there dad

  And it druv me mad

  When I saw whut I have seen

  There’s no city ever was haunted

  Like cursed Memphis is

  I’d like to tell

  About that blue flame hell

  So I say with heavy emphasis

  There’s

  Fear in the streets

  Fear in the malls

  Fear that clutches you

  By the balls

  There’s

  Gruesome in the gravy

  Grisly in the lemonade

  Look what’s coming –

  Zombie Elvis Presleys on Parade

  A million zombie Elvises at the witching hour

  hey hey oom borooga boom

  A million zombie Elvises twitching with power

  hey hey oom borooga boom

  Staggering and boogying and woggling their hips

  Dropping ears and fingers and noses and lips

  A million zombie Elvises

  A million zombie Elvises

  Edward Hopper

  He found his thing

  Cross-legged blondes

  waiting quietly

  Standing men with sharp grey faces

  waiting by doors

  People in deckchairs

  waiting for the sun to set

  And the sun in an empty room

  waiting for nobody

  He found his thing

  he did it

  Mayakovsky and the Sun

  (to Little Richard)

  It was the summit of summertime bang in the middle of July.

  You could hear the rivers boiling, villages sizzle and fry.

  It was that white-hot melting summer that I’ll never forget –

  The cows came out in blisters and even my sweat had sweat.

  The Sun lay in his hammock snoring fit to wake the dead

  So I opened up my window and I shouted at him: ‘Goldenhead!

  My name is Mayakovsky, I’m a poet and a painter too

  And I’m doing all I can to make the Revolution come true.’

  Mayakovsky and the Sun…Mayakovsky and the Sun…

  ‘I’ve been sitting up printing propaganda poems all night

  And now it’s early morning and I need some poster-painting light

  But you’re still kipping in your featherbed four-poster cloud!

  Get up and get rolling! No layabouts allowed!’

  Well the Sun gives a grin and he drags himself up by the roots

  And comes marching towards me in his seven-league thumping boots

  And he strides through my garden and he bursts into my room

  And he opens up his jaws and his lion voice begins to boom:

  ‘Hi Mayakovsky, I turned down my burners for you.

  I can see there’s a lot in common between us two.

  I’d enjoy a conversation, that’s the kind of Sun I am –

  So where’s my favourite glass of tea with cherry jam?’

  Mayakovsky and the Sun…Mayakovsky and the Sun…

  I stood there thinking Mayakovsky what the hell have you done?

  I was sweating like a waterfall eyeball to eyeball with the Sun.

  We shared a bucket of vodka ice cream to cut down the heat

  And I said: ‘Cosmic Comrade, would you like to take a seat?’

  The Sun relaxed back in a rocking chair looking benign

  And he said: ‘You imagine it’s an easy thing for me to shine?

  Have a shining competition, you bet I come an easy first.

  But if you’re going to shine, man, better shine till you burst.’

  Mayakovsky and the Sun…Mayakovsky and the Sun…

  Well we talked on and on until the purple began to fall

  But the Night didn’t dare to stick one toe inside my hall.

  When I slapped him on the back the Sun gave a black hole of a yawn

  And he said: ‘Hey, brother, it’s time to do a bit of dawn.

  ‘Let’s shine away the boredom of how the everyday world looks.

  I’ll take care of the sky, Mayakovsky you can take the books.’

  So the two of us are kicking down the prison walls built by the Night.

  Yes it’s a double attack in boots of poetry and light.

  So when the Sun shines down, that overworked mate of mine,

  That’s when I jump up and with all of my spirit I shine.

  Shine on! Shine on! Shine on for everyone!

  That’s what Mayakovsky says, and so does his friend the Sun.

  Mayakovsky and the Sun…Mayakovsky and the Sun…

  The Perils of Reading Fiction

  If you read too many books with made-up stories you go a bit mad

  That’s what my Sergeant used to say every time he saw anyone reading

  All those writers, most of them foreign and dead,

  With their freaky ideas and nancy ways and gone with the how’syourfather

  All those Swish Family Robinsons and Lorna Dooms and King Falstaffs

  And The Great Fatsby and Virginia Beowulf and Kubla Khan-Khan

  And Jane Austen and Jane Morris and Jane Volkswagen

  All of em jumbled up and tripping over each other in your brainbox

  Well it’s like letting a year’s worth of dreams out of a corrall

  To stampede all over your real life, all those pretty lies and ugly lies,

  Whirling about inside your skull, beating up storms of yellow dust

  So soon you can’t see for the grit in the eyes, you can’t look out at all

  And see the real world which is just the real world

  And is real and not made up by somebody trying to be clever –

  Listen – what I say is –

  If you read too many books with made-up stories you go a bit mad.

  COUNTRY LIFE & SOME ANIMALS

  Dart River Bed

  The mash of rotted-down oak leaves

  of bark from drifting branches

  the white flesh blackening of the salmon

  who jumped the net and perished of old age

  under her shadow-rock

  the ragged robin chewed into shreds

  the rich rust of a radiator

  the bones of voles polished down to white specks

  the dragged down muslin

  robbed of its dye then mashed to filaments

  and sweet Ophelia too –

  all in the soft cool deeps of mud

  under the mirror

  all in the soft cool deeps of mud

  all one in the soft cool deeps of mud

  gradually dancing down to the ocean

  That June

  most days the sun was friendly

  a few showers of fat warm raindrops

  life was a hammock slung between the trees

  of birth and death

  poetry was a glass of iced tea

  with a submerged seeping lemon slice

  the silver condensation

  singing in my palm

  such easy days such easy days

  I didn’t think all month

  You gave me a perfect cherry

  I bit it ate it and spat the stone

  all the way to St Petersburg

  where it hit Pushkin on the nose

  and he began to laugh

  that June

  Winter Listening

  Humble, crumbly song of the snails.

  Pinecones rattling in a stormy tree.

  The frosty voices of December stars.

  Dragon-roaring of a factory.

  Honking slapstick of seals at play.

  The creak and slish of snow off a roof.

  Crackle-whisper of Christmas paper.

  The silver step of a unicorn’s hoof.

  Winter Night in Aldeburgh

  I stood beside the dark white tower

  and fancied I hea
rd a train over in Holland

  There was an old man keeping himself warm

  by leaning against the fish and chip shop wall

  out of the corner of my left eye –

  a gang of grey cats pedalling miniature bicycles

  an orange boiled sweet sat stuck to the pavement

  it was the size and shape of a rugby ball

  and was bleeding orange sugar

  I looked into the boating pond

  and the boating pond looked into me

  enough – I saluted the enormous moon

  and scuttled back into my room

  every inch of this town is haunted I said to myself

  but I don’t mind these ghosts

  they have no business with me

  at this moment a newsaper thrust itself through my letter-box

  and fell on the mat with a sound like salt being poured

  it was the ghosts’ gazette, the newspaper

  which is published by the dead for the dead

  at first it was like reading a gravestone

  covered with silver moss

  but then I started to make out the words

  The headline read

  OCEAN INVASION ALERT

  and the story began:

  A squadron of green-headed mermen is swimming shorewards

  through the torn metal desert of the waves

  towards the singing shingle.

  Now I am lying in my bed

  face down eyes shut

  I am awaiting instructions from the dead

  The Monster’s Dream

  Under the shoulder of Mount Ferocity

  The fugitive monster’s head hums itself to sleep

  And he steps out of his head into a fresh dream –

  And the air in his fresh dream is chilly-blue

  Feathers falling flowers spiralling upwards

  Brown tarns shouting as waterbirds skid on their waterskins

  The dew on the grass is a moon of crystal frost

  Tickling the dark soles of the monster’s feet

  And the sun is mild and white and far away

  It is early in the morning it is early in the world

  All the bad warriors have sailed off to their hero fortresses

  Or fallen over the edge of the world

  It is early in the morning it is early in the heart

  As the fugitive monster breaks through the bracken to find

  The ghost of his mother sitting in the grass

  Her monster face all gentle for love of him

  A Living Monument

  (for Peter, Cathy and Thom Kiddle)

  Raised myself a monument – somewhere way back there.

  Most people miss it. They move too fast.

  It crouches in the little grass, snuffling the blue air,

  A deep-eyed animal, bred to last.

  I’ll die, but that much of me will keep on lurking,

  Not rusting into mudweeds like Cleopatra’s barge,

  But alive to the beat of the planet, songbark working

  While there’s one rocker still at large.

  My verses will afterburn, like a good curry,

  Though Penguins turn their back on them and BBC TV

  And Buckingham Palace and Esher, Surrey –

  But some schoolkid’ll learn them, secretly.

  Some children love some of my poems – and that’s enough!

  That was why I bled all over the page.

  In a smooth country my songs were a bit rough

  Praising gentleness in a vicious age.

  My poetry’s an old border collie who gets by

  Performing tricks or rounding up the sheep

  And it’ll keep digging as long as politicians lie

  And mothers weep.

  (after Horace, Derzhavin and Pushkin)

  Bird Dreaming

  (for Roger Woddis)

  And in my dream a little shaking cloud

  Of ten-eleven-twelve birds kept me company

  As I ambled beside the chalky ploughed-up fields

  And the clear frosty skies watched over me.

  So I whistled a Hoagy Carmichael tune

  And called the birds with outstretched arm.

  One starling landed on my scarlet thumb,

  Pressing its stars into my palm.

  I kissed the feathers of its breast

  And said: Some of them are beginning to know me.

  And I felt the warmth of that bird’s heart

  And my own heart was fiery.

  Sausage Cat

  Behold the cat

  the cat full of sausage

  his ears do slope backwards

  his coat’s full of glossage

  His whiskers extend

  like happy antennae

  he would count his blessings

  but they are too many

  He unfoldeth his limbs

  he displayeth his fur

  he narrows his eyes

  and begins to purr

  And his purring is smooth

  as an old tree’s mossage

  Behold the cat

  who is full of sausage.

  Epitaph for a Golden Retriever

  It was my job

  To be a dog

  My master said

  That I was good

  Now I turn myself around

  And lie down in the musky ground

  For Golden Ella

  At four in the morning

  With furry tread

  My good dog climbs

  Aboard my bed

  She lays her chin

  In my open palm

  Now neither of us

  Can come to harm

  In my open hand

  Her long jaw seems

  Like a shifting weight

  As she chews at her dreams

  From the coolness

  Of her nose

  The blessing of

  Her breathing glows

  And the bad night

  Vampires disappear

  As my wrist is tickled

  By her ear

  Elegy for Number Ten

  (for Ella)

  One out of ten, six gold, four black,

  Born in a bulging transparent sack.

  I eased him out, this holy gift.

  His mother turned to him and sniffed

  Then licked the blood and the sack away.

  All small and golden, there he lay.

  There are some insects and some flowers

  Whose life is spent in twenty-four hours.

  For twenty-four hours, beside his mother,

  He fed and he slept with his sisters and brothers.

  Good smells. Close warm. Then a crushing weight.

  Then nothing at all. His head the wrong shape.

  He was wrapped up and taken beyond the bounds

  Of his mother’s familiar digging grounds

  For she would have found him and known him too

  And have wept as golden retrievers do.

  So she kept all her love for the alive –

  The black four and the golden five.

  But I celebrate that golden pup

  Whom I talked to and kissed as I wrapped him up

  For he fed and he slept and was loved as he lay

  In the dark where he spent one golden day.

  Now his mother pursues an eccentric trail

  With casual sweeps of her lavish gold tail

  And when number ten stumbles into my mind

  She consoles me and so do the other nine.

  The Meaningtime

  Bananas and bicycles are beautiful animals

  Elephants and waterfalls are wonderful machines

  Show me a bucket and I’ll bite you a biscuit –

  Now you know what the universe means

  Understanding the Rain

  (for a horse called Elgin)

  Top right-hand corner

  Of a South Devon field

  The great white hor
se

  Stands under the warm rain

  Slow-motion grass

  Growing greener and greener

  The great white horse

  Stands under the warm rain

  Like a shining cathedral

  Under the centuries

  The great white horse

  Stands under the warm rain

  Like a waiting messenger

  Like the people

  Like the planet

  Like poetry

  Like a great white horse

  The great white horse

  Stands under the warm rain

  A Cheetah, Hunting

  A herd of Thompson’s Gazelle

  Like 43 bars of marzipan.

  The great wheels of the cheetah’s shoulders.

  The black tracks of her killer tears.

  And now her teeth are in a throat.

  Two huge lakelight eyes

  Look upwards with such love.

  Here Come the Bears

  Clambering through the rocky torrents

  Here come the bears

  Quicksilver salmon flip into the light

  to flop a little higher up

  swerving past scooping claws

  and underwater gaping muzzles