Come on Everybody

Home > Fantasy > Come on Everybody > Page 22
Come on Everybody Page 22

by Adrian Mitchell


  to flip up into the light again

  past the black tip

  of the nose of a small bear

  his eyes as wide as all amazement

  The Elephant

  Elephant Elephant

  Simmering gently

  Carry me home

  As smooth as a Bentley

  Elephant Eternity

  Elephants walking under juicy-leaf trees

  Walking with their children under juicy-leaf trees

  Elephants elephants walking like time

  Elephants bathing in the foam-floody river

  Fountaining their children in the mothery river

  Elephants elephants bathing like happiness

  Strong and gentle elephants

  Standing on the earth

  Strong and gentle elephants

  Like peace

  Time is walking under elephant trees

  Happiness is bathing in the elephant river

  Strong gentle peace is shining

  All over the elephant earth

  JOIN THE POETRY AND SEE THE WORLD

  Blue Coffee

  Blue coffee

  The air was like

  Blue coffee

  Frothy cow’s parsley

  Either side of the path

  Across the Heath

  Blue coffee

  The whirling air was like

  Blue coffee

  Up jumped a poppy in scarlet

  Her heart beating black as the blues

  Blue coffee

  The swirling, spiralling air

  Blue coffee

  Vauxhall Velvet

  After-dark London crouches

  Like a grisly grimy cat

  The Funman slouches

  Underneath the bridge in his fuck-you hat

  As the pedestrians go skulking home,

  Each skull a fragile stained-glass dome.

  By the Waters of Liverpool

  So many of her sons drowned in the slime of trenches

  So many of her daughters torn apart by poverty

  So many of her children died in the darkness

  So many of her prisoners slowly crushed in slave-ships

  Century after red century the Mersey flowed on by –

  By the waters of Liverpool we sat down and wept

  But slaves and the poor know better than anyone

  How to have a real good time

  If you’re strong enough to speak

  You’re strong enough to sing

  If you can stand up on your feet

  You can stomp out a beat…

  So we’d been planning how to celebrate

  That great red river of Liverpool

  As our team rose to a torrent

  That would flood the green of Wembley

  We’d been planning how to celebrate

  The great red dream of Liverpool

  For Dalglish held the Cup in his left fist

  And the League in his right –

  By the waters of Liverpool we sat down and wept

  Our scarves are weeping on the gates of Anfield

  And that great singing ground is a palace of whispers

  For the joy of the game, the heart of the game,

  Yes the great red heart of the great red game

  Is broken and all the red flowers of Liverpool –

  By the waters of Liverpool we sat down and wept.

  April 1989, after Hillsborough

  I Am Tourist

  I am Tourist

  I fly across the seas with a cold glass in my hand

  Watching Burt Reynolds movies

  I am Tourist

  With my chocolate-coloured spectacles

  And my blue travellers chequetacles

  And my video camera purring at the Sights

  I am Tourist

  With my Tourist Wife

  We live the full and beautiful

  Tourist Life

  We are taken to a hill tribe

  They live on a hill

  They sell us many boxes

  Painted green and grey

  They are ugly boxes but very inexpensive

  Then they put on hairy masks

  And scarlet knickerbockers

  They bang their stomachs and circle round us

  Is it a wedding? Is it a funeral?

  Whatever it is we video it all

  And it is picturesque but it is not inexpensive

  On the way back to the hotel

  I tell our Guide

  No more painted boxes

  No more picturesque ceremonies

  No more hill tribes

  I want a mattress

  And a pool and a bar

  Just like back home

  I am Tourist

  March in Vienna

  March in Vienna

  March in Vienna

  Coffee Danke Schoen that’s one tenner

  London in March

  London in March

  London in March

  Where the wind whistles round your Marble Arch

  The Postman’s Palace

  Deep down in France is the village of Hauterives,

  A village as quiet

  As a heap of stones by the roadside…

  To the brave heart, nothing is impossible.

  A new postman came to Hauterives

  And he was known as Le Facteur Cheval

  Which means, in English, Postman Horse.

  Time does not pass, but we do.

  One night Postman Horse dreamed himself a dream

  And in it he saw, at the bottom of his garden,

  A wonderful palace of stairways and towers

  Decorated with trees and fruit made of stone

  And camels and giants and goddesses and elephants.

  Out of art, out of a dream, out of energy.

  Next day Postman Horse was on his rounds

  When he tripped over an odd-shaped stone.

  He took it home in his wooden wheelbarrow,

  Set it on the ground in his garden, and smiled.

  This is where the dream becomes reality.

  Postman Horse began to build.

  Every day on his rounds he found amazing stones.

  Every day after work he collected them.

  Carefully, each evening, he cemented the stones together.

  Gradually the palace of his dreams began to rise.

  To the brave heart, nothing is impossible.

  After ten thousand days of work

  In the freezer of winter, the oven of summer,

  After thirty-three back-breaking years of work

  The palace was finished.

  Postman Horse wrote on panels of cement:

  All that you see as you pass by

  Is the work of a peasant,

  The work of one man alone.

  Time does not pass, but we do.

  I have seen the palaces

  Of the Kings of England, France and Russia.

  They were magnificent and dead.

  But deep down in France is the village of Hauterives

  And from its earth there rises

  A wonderful palace built out of dreams

  Where Postman Horse inscribed these words:

  To the brave heart, nothing is impossible.

  Time does not pass, but we do.

  Out of art, out of a dream, out of energy.

  This is where the dream becomes reality.

  Lerici, the Bay, Early on Saturday, May

  orchards awash

  with rippling green shadow

  a buttercup schoolbus

  blurts its trumpet at me

  an Egyptian lion of an island

  dozily gazes

  at a warm breadroll of an island

  by and by, says the lion,

  I will eat you,

  by and by

  and now, like a slow-motion dancer

  in a crimson dress

  with a white neckline

  a trawler lies in the m
iddle of the blue stage

  waiting for the opening music

  of the Shelley ballet

  the words of Shelley’s spirit

  dance like the flames round a gas ring

  strong and painful and transparent

  and hot enough to melt the heart of England

  pass round that bottle of blue flames

  let’s drink to Shelley

  Peace Memories of Sarajevo

  Sarajevo glowing white

  as a translucent china cup

  Sarajevo forty poets in suits on an official platform

  Reciting eight lines each under a giant portrait of Tito

  Sarajevo my daughter aged eight laughing

  As she stands in the concrete rain-filled

  Footsteps of the assassin

  Sarajevo in the smoky little orchards on the hills

  Families sitting under gentle-eyed blossoms

  Enjoying their slow dinners

  Sarajevo and my brave schoolmaster friend

  Who did not blink when the bureaucrats spat in his eye

  Sarajevo I wish you no bombs no shells no guns

  I wish you smoky little orchards and glowing poets

  And soldiers who refuse to kill

  And children who refuse to kill

  And Sarajevo

  Glowing white

  As a translucent china cup

  For My Friends in Georgia

  The good old moon drank a bottle of wine

  And she began to sing

  The fine old tree drank a bottle of wine

  And he began to sing

  The warm black sea drank a bottle of wine

  And she began to sing

  The strange old bridge drank a bottle of wine

  And it began to sing

  The tattered little book drank a bottle of wine

  And it began to sing

  The dog with one ear drank a bottle of wine

  And he began to sing

  And the child

  With a broken doll in his arms

  Drank a breastful of milk

  And she began to sing

  For the love of Georgia

  For the love of Georgia

  A land with a heart as big

  As the good old wine drinking moon

  When the Government

  When the government whips

  when the government whips

  it’s a special kind of gangster

  bashing out its brutal will

  with a mouthful of morality

  heartful of cruel thrill

  When the government kills

  when the government kills

  it’s a special kind of murderer

  strangling with a hypocrite’s sigh

  mouthful of deterrence

  heartful of hang shoot and fry

  When the government tortures

  when the government tortures

  it’s a special kind of thug

  who’s trained to be a terrorcop

  mouthful of security

  heart full of poison to the top

  When the government bombs

  when the government bombs

  it’s a special mass murderer

  crazy with its own success

  mouthful of democracy

  worldful of emptiness

  The Boy Who Danced with a Tank

  It was the same old story

  Story of boy meets State

  Yes the same old story

  Story of boy meets State

  The body is created by loving

  But a tank’s made of fear and hate

  Armoured cars and heads in helmets

  Rank on rank on rank on rank

  The hearts of the soldiors were trembling

  But the eyes of the soldiers were blank

  And then they saw him swaying –

  The boy who danced with a tank

  The tank moved left

  The boy stepped right

  Paused like he was having fun

  The tank moved right

  The boy stepped left

  Smiled at his partner down the barrel of its gun

  You remember how we watched him

  Dancing like a strong young tree

  And we knew that for that moment

  He was freer than we’ll ever be

  A boy danced with a tank in China

  Like the flower of liberty

  Sweet Point Five Per Cent

  I saw my Iraqi sister

  There was red stuff running from her eyes

  She said My son is dying in a hospital

  With no medical supplies.

  I said Well you shouldn’t have started that war

  Does he really need an oxygen tent?

  But I was feeling generous so I took my week’s wages

  And slipped her point five per cent.

  I bumped into my African brother

  The bones were pushing through his skin

  He was carrying a skeleton baby

  In a coffin hammered out of tin

  Well both my kids are at public school

  And I have to pay my mistress’s rent

  Plus my motoryacht and an island I’ve got –

  Still I chucked him point five per cent.

  I met my Indian mother

  She was staggering through iron rain

  She said The Earth turned into a monster

  Eating everything we had all that’s left is pain.

  Now I believe that charity begins at home

  And home in my case is Kent.

  But before I drove away in my Jaguar

  I threw my mother point five per cent.

  I drove on and on playing Elton John

  But I lost control on a curve

  And I failed to see a stupid great tree

  And I didn’t have time to swerve.

  The next thing I saw was St Peter at the Gates

  And I asked him where should I go?

  You’ll spend point five per cent of your time in Heaven

  Ninety-nine point five per cent down below.

  Ten Holes for a Soldier

  Two holes were the size of the holes in his ears.

  They were rounded, and as they opened and shut

  They seemed to make a sound like sighing.

  Two holes were the size of his nostrils,

  Close together and dark inside

  And breathing out a smell of something – rotting.

  Two holes were the size of his eyes

  And they were trying to clench themselves

  To hold back – the red tears.

  One hole was the size of his mouth

  And it cried out

  With the voice of – an old child.

  One hole was the size of the hole

  In the end of his cock

  And it was skewered by a white-hot, turning gimlet.

  One hole was the size of the hole in his arse,

  Small and wincing away from the light

  And it went – very deep.

  Petrol was poured into all his holes.

  All of his holes were set on fire.

  They covered his holes with a clean uniform.

  They flew him home. There was a flag.

  In the village he loved, they put him in a hole.

  YOUNG AND OLD

  My Father and Mother or Why I Began to Hate War

  My father was small and quiet, with a brown face

  And lines of laughter round his eyes

  And wildly sprouting Scottish eyebrows.

  Everybody called my father Jock.

  In 1914 he joined the army.

  He fought for four years in the mud of the trenches.

  Nearly all his friends were killed in that war.

  He told me about one friend of his

  Who suddenly, in the lull between bombardments,

  Fell on all fours, howled like an animal,

  And was never cured.

  M
y father was a small and quiet man.

  My mother was called Kay.

  She had blue eyes and a comical nose

  And a doll called Beauty.

  And she had two older brothers

  Called Sydney and Stanley.

  Sydney was dark and Stanley was fair

  And they used to pull my mother’s long gold plaits –

  And she loved them dearly.

  In 1914 Sydney joined the army

  And was killed within days.

  Next year Stanley went to the war

  To take revenge for his brother.

  But Stanley was killed as well.

  In 1918 my father came home

  With a sword and a kilt and shrapnel in his arm

  And Jock and Kay met and fell in love

  At the Presbyterian Badminton Club.

  And in good time they had two sons

  And one of us was dark and one was fair.

  And I think, in a way, my brother James and I

  Came here to take the place of Sydney and Stanley

  My mother’s two beloved brothers.

  And when I think about war I remember

  How when Remembrance Day came round each year,

  My mother always wore two poppies.

  Rainbow Woods

  I was nearly seven when war broke out.

  My brother James and I were evacuated

  To Combe Down, a village of bright stone

  on the hill above the city of Bath.

 

‹ Prev