Come on Everybody

by Adrian Mitchell

  And when we lay down by the waterside

  My lover whispered in my ear

  The first thing that she said was Take Me

  The last thing that she said was Cast Me Away

  I saw a vision of my mother and father

  They were sitting smiling under summer trees

  They offered me the gift of life

  I took this present very carefully

  And one side of my life said Take Me

  The other side said Cast Me Away

  Reaching for the Light

  Crocus in flames

  Never burns up

  Dew comes dropping

  And it fills the cup

  Darkness falls

  Petals close up for the night

  But when the dawn paints them

  They start

  Reaching for the light

  Baby swimming

  Inside your womb

  Searching for brightness

  In that warm gloom

  Well blood is red

  And milk is white

  Out dives the baby

  And she’s

  Reaching for the light

  Light springs the life in everyone

  That’s why the planets dance around the sun

  Light makes the heart and the spirit rise

  That’s why Caitlin tries to touch your eyes

  See the apple tree

  Standing there

  Stretching blossoms

  In the shining air

  See Caitlin growing

  With all her sweet might

  I want the moon

  Mum

  I’m reaching for the light

  Stufferation

  Lovers lie around in it

  Broken glass is found in it

  Grass

  I like that stuff

  Tuna fish get trapped in it

  Legs come wrapped in it

  Nylon

  I like that stuff

  Eskimos and tramps chew it

  Madame Tussaud gave status to it

  Wax

  I like that stuff

  Elephants get sprayed with it

  Scotch is made with it

  Water

  I like that stuff

  Clergy are dumbfounded by it

  Bones are surrounded by it

  Flesh

  I like that stuff

  Harps are strung with it

  Mattresses are sprung with it

  Wire

  I like that stuff

  Carpenters make cots of it

  Undertakers use lots of it

  Wood

  I like that stuff

  Dirty cigarettes are lit by it

  Pensioners get happy when they sit by it

  Fire

  I like that stuff

  Johnny Dankworth’s alto is made of it, most of it *

  Scoobdidoo is composed of it †

  Plastic

  I like that stuff

  Elvis kept it in his left-hand pocket

  Little Richard made it zoom like a rocket

  Rock ’n’ Roll

  Ooh my soul

  I like that stuff

  Apemen take it to make them hairier

  I ate a ton of it in Bulgaria

  Yoghurt

  I like that stuff

  Man-made fibres and raw materials

  Old rolled gold and breakfast cereals

  Platinum linoleum

  I like that stuff

  Skin on my hands

  Hair on my head

  Toenails on my feet

  And linen on the bed

  Well I like that stuff

  Yes I like that stuff

  The earth

  Is made of earth

  And I like that stuff

  * Jazz musician John Dankworth used to play a plastic saxophone.

  † Scoobdidoo was a fistful of kind of multi-coloured pieces of plastic which were a playground craze in the 1950s. It was a sad sort of toy, nothing like the exciting Hula Hoop of the same period.

  Silence

  I held silence

  Like a globe

  I held silence

  And it glowed

  BOTY

  Boty Goodwin

  (obituary from The Guardian)

  The last time we saw Boty Goodwin, our extra daughter, she was happy, blonde, optimistic and planning her thirtieth birthday party. That was about four weeks ago, in Boston, Massachusetts. Boty had flown in from LA for 24 hours to see Adrian’s new show Tyger Two and to spend a little time with us, the parents she’d adopted. Then she flew back to the California Institute of the Arts to give her final show before a board of examiners.

  This was a presentation on November 6th of stories she’d written about her life performed against a background of beautiful wallpaper which illustrated key images from her history. At 29, she was already a brilliant artist/writer/performer – and her show delighted her examiners, who congratulated her, offered her a scholarship and encouraged her to take her Master’s Degree in both writing and fine art.

  On November 9th she repeated the show for her fellow-students, who were dazzled and exhilarated. All her life Boty celebrated whatever was worth celebrating. That night she partied with her friends. At some point she was given a drug which killed her. She died in her studio in the early hours of November l0th of an accidental overdose of heroin.

  Boty wasn’t a junkie or a suicide. Nor was she a martyr or a role model. She was a lovely, funny, very talented young woman who made one stupid, fatal mistake.

  Boty Goodwin was an orphan. Her mother was Pauline Boty – one of England’s finest pop painters, an actress whose beauty was admired by everyone and whose shining intelligence enlightened her friends. Pauline was the painter of The Only Blonde in the World – perhaps the greatest and most lively painting of Marilyn Monroe.

  Pauline met and fell in love with Clive Goodwin. He was a working-class actor, handsome, witty and hip, who became editor of the influential magazine Encore and later worked on the TV arts programme Tempo as right-hand man to Kenneth Tynan.

  Pauline and Clive married. But shortly after she became pregnant, Pauline was diagnosed as suffering from a rare form of leukaemia. She gave birth to a daughter and died shortly afterwards. Clive decided that the baby should be named Boty. Boty spent her first years living with her loving grandparents in Surrey. Clive was nervous about looking after a little girl by himself, but we encouraged him to bring Boty to live with him in his large South Kensington flat.

  The first time he looked after her on his own, Clive was terrified, so they both came to stay with us in the beautiful Yorkshire farmhouse where we lived at the time. Boty and our two daughters, Sasha and Beattie, who were around her age, became very attached to each other. It was during one of these visits that Clive told us: ‘If anything should ever happen to me, you will have Boty to live with you, won’t you?’ We laughed, of course, our friends didn’t die in those days. We laughed, but we agreed.

  In 1968 Clive founded the Black Dwarf, that fine raging left-wing magazine in which, for a short time, socialists, artists, pacifists, anarchists, poets and communists formed a volatile alliance. By now Clive was also literary agent for most of the best left-wing playwrights in Britain.

  One day, when Boty was nearly 12, Clive flew to Los Angeles to negotiate with Warren Beatty and Trevor Griffiths about the movie Reds. They met in the Beverly Wiltshire Hotel. During the meeting Clive drank one glass of wine. But he was suddenly attacked by a headache and had to leave. In the lobby of the hotel he staggered and vomited.

  The hotel staff, thinking he was drunk, called the Los Angeles police. Clive was handcuffed and thrown into a police cell, where he died, alone, of a cerebral haemorrhage.

  There was a big memorial meeting in a London theatre – with songs and speeches and poems. Boty, nearly 12 years old, not only came to the meeting, but insisting on appearing in a sketch of her own devising, in which she and Cli
ve’s secretary were trying to contact Clive by phone. Everyone knew right away that Boty, somehow, would survive.

  Until she was 16, Boty lived with her grandparents and came to us in London for weekends and holidays. But she had lived with Clive in the centre of radical, bohemian, rocking London and she longed to return.

  When she was 16 she chose to live with us and go to the local comprehensive. By now she was one of the family, a maker of laughter, a setter of style and a wonderful peacemaker in a sometimes stormy family. Our proudest moment came when Boty signed a card to us – lots of love from your extra daughter.

  Four years after her father’s death the Los Angeles Police and the Beverly Wilshire finally settled out of court and Boty had financial independence. Her beauty and intelligence and wit attracted hundreds of friends and admirers. But she worried that some people were after her money – and a few of them were.

  Boty believed fiercely in education. She knew that education for women is the only real way to freedom, but she also knew and understood politically the huge advantage she had over most other women because of her money. She was able to choose for herself to study at the California Institute of the Arts and pay her own way. But money didn’t corrupt her. She remained true to her Clive and Pauline’s principles while developing her own political philosophy.

  Her family and friends and teachers and fellow-students are devastated. Maybe this will silence a few of those voices which whisper that ‘smack is cool if you know how to handle it’ and play on the glamour of dead and alive junkie rock stars to make heroin a fashionable poison. We feel both empty and angry about Boty’s death. But we and her extra sisters who loved her so utterly are immensely proud of her talented, shining life.

  ADRIAN & CELIA MITCHELL

  Boty Goodwin was born on 12th February 1966. She died on 10th November 1995.

  The Forest and the Lake

  (for Clive Goodwin, Pauline Boty and their daughter

  Boty Goodwin, written soon after Clive’s death).

  the forest laughed

  plenty to laugh at –

  squirrels at their gymnastics,

  motorways full of fanatical ants

  carrying out their looney missions,

  overdressed pheasants holding fashion parades

  watched by the rabbiting rabbits –

  the forest laughed a lot

  sun-washed clearings,

  small thickets dark with grief –

  it was a good forest to go to,

  swaying and sheltering,

  welcoming as a woolly, brown-eyed dog

  one day the forest turned its head

  and realised it grew beside a lake

  the lake was liquid light

  there were deeps with wisdom fish

  long as your leg,

  there were shallows with quick fish

  tinier than pins,

  swallows skimming and surfing,

  a plump of ducks at their pleasure-boating

  the lake looked down at the fish and smiled

  the lake looked up at the waterbirds and smiled

  the lake looked at the forest and smiled

  and from that day

  it was lake and forest

  forest and lake

  so lovely so lively

  shining and shadow

  the laughing forest

  and the shining lake

  green hand holding blue hand

  a landscape of glory

  in which so many of us wandered happily…

  only the bird of badness sang: not long

  and the earth shook twice

  and the lake shook dark

  and the forest shook still

  dawn finds us watching

  as a green and blue striped boat

  drifts over smoking waters

  up to the shaded shore

  and, nearly twelve years old,

  half forest and half lake,

  out of the boat steps Boty

  A Flower for Boty

  Eloquent art

  Speaking straight to the heart

  Fills the critic with numbing dismay

  For eloquent art

  Speaking straight to the heart

  Leaves the critic with fuck-all to say

  Good Luck Message to Boty with Flowers

  Before Her Finals at Cal Arts

  With the Style of the Beatles

  The Flash of Jean Harlow

  And the Funkiness of Frida Kahlo

  Plus the Fire of Blake

  And the Wings of Shelley

  C’mon Boty

  Give it plenty of Welly

  Telephone

  Telephone told me that you were dead

  Now I hate every telephone’s stupid head

  I’d rather sit here turning to a block of stone

  Than pick up any snake of a telephone

  Every Day

  Every day we’re going to talk to you Boty

  Tell you the ridiculous News

  The Politics of Bebopalula for All

  And the Meaning of Red Suede Shoes

  Every day we’ll have Visions of you Boty

  Dressed up like a Birthday Cake

  Every day we’re going to listen to your Voice

  And your Laughter like a Trumpet Break

  Every day we’re going to see you clearer

  Stomping on a faraway Starry Floor

  Every day we’ll edge a little bit nearer

  Till we Dance with our Boty once more

  (I wrote that last poem with a beautiful new fountain pen. I saw it at London Airport on my way to fly to Los Angeles for Boty’s Memorial Meeting. The pen was flecked in various shades of silvery blue and I couldn’t afford it. But I heard Boty whisper to me – Go on – buy it! Get blue ink and only use it to write poems. And when I paid for it, I heard Boty laughing.)

  For Boty

  Down on this planet

  where we waver and wander

  lost among the towering hours

  Down on this planet

  when an apple tree dies

  there is a long leaning

  and a slow falling through the years

  until the moss-kissed insect-lively trunk

  rests in its bed of grass

  and becomes part of the grass

  And down on this planet

  if you drop a ball on the pavement

  its bounces become smaller

  till it finds a resting curb or gutter

  Things fall and take their time in falling

  and then they take their rest

  But I don’t see you as falling darling

  you seem to move

  among our lives

  like waves of the sea

  like a mist of tears sun-touched with laughter

  like a slow snowfall

  like bonfire smoke

  and the swirl of scarlet leaves

  Especially When It Snows

  (for Boty)

  especially when it snows

  and every tree

  has its dark arms and widespread hands

  full of that shining angelfood

  especially when it snows

  and every footprint

  makes a dark lake

  among the frozen grass

  especially when it snows darling

  and tough little robins

  beg for crumbs

  at golden-spangled windows

  ever since we said goodbye to you

  in that memorial garden

  where nothing grew

  except the beautiful blank-eyed snow

  and little Caitlin crouched to wave goodbye to you

  down in the shadows

  especially when it snows

  and keeps on snowing

  especially when it snows

  and down the purple pathways of the sky

  the planet staggers like King Lear

  with his dead darling in his arms

  especially
when it snows

  and keeps on snowing

  from

  ALL SHOOK UP

  POEMS 1997-2000

  THE YEARS SPEED BY

  A Year Passes, as Years Do

  January is a penguin on a slide of ice

  on an iceberg full of penguins

  watching a film called Iceberg

  about an iceberg badly damaged by a monster ship

  and a love affair between two of the penguins

  but only one survived

  there is a terrible song in the film

  called Our Fish Will Go On.

  February is a man called Fred

  with cardboard in the soles of his holy shoes

  as the Manchester rain pours down

  and slaps his face with its chilly hands

  and his coat is soaked through

  so that putting his scarlet-blue

  hands into his pockets only

  makes them colder and damper.

  March is a kite which breaks free of its string

  and surfs across the sky over the South Downs

  and sees the far coast of France shining

  and starts to slide along the air currents over the Channel

  dreaming of a happy landing in Paris.

  April is a blue-eyed toddler

  who staggers into a field of trampolining lambs

  and sits in the meadowgrass

  snatching at the raggedy white clouds

  and singing a song about chocolate biscuits.