May is an orchard bursting with blossoms
where the bad boys have built
a shadowy hut made of old doors
roof and walls camouflaged with slices of turfs
they may smile and you and promise you surprises
but don’t go into the shadowy hut
built by the bad boys.
June is a dancer in the centre of the city
as the businesspeople march past in their uniforms
barking into their voodoophones
she is the only one who looks the sun in the face
as she dances her slip-sloppy dance in the fountain
the big fat sweaty happy dancer who loves the sun.
July is an exhausted old retriever
back from a walk on his three good legs
lying on the cool sofa panting with his tongue
as his eyes flitter shut and the dreams begin
of galloping after rabbits down a mountain of bones
as he sleeps in the arms of his master.
August is a couple of pale crabs under a green rock
complaining about the aliens
with their thudding music and howling voices
and terrible spades wrecking the sandy lands
and emptying pools and generally
upsetting the slow and sideways world
of a couple of old curmudgeons with claws.
September is an apple
in the shaking hands of a young woman
on a bench in the grass compound
behind the mental hospital.
She is afraid to eat the apple.
She is afraid to put the apple down.
Because the apple is her mind.
Because the apple is her heart.
Because the apple is her life.
Because the apple is the world.
She cannot remember the word for apple.
October is a wood of scarlet and gold
and an old poet smiling to himself
as he shuffles through squashy leaves
remembering only the good days gone by
remembering beloved people animals and books
and chuckling inside himself to see
a party of schoolchildren with clipboards and a teacher
who has told them to write poems about October.
November is a bursting bonfire
of souvenirs going up in smoke
a bonfire of grasping high-jumping flames
surrounded by grimy worshippers
as a thousand stars burst in the gunpowdered sky
and down inside the belly of the bonfires
the baked potatoes crackle to each other.
December is a reindeer travelling
across hundreds of miles of golden moss
past the poised pines of dusky forests
over the frosted mirrors of lakes
up down and round about blinding snowscape
to the Snow Queen’s Palace
where his friend Gerda sits
with the apple of September in her hands.
Life Is a Walk Across a Field
(opposite of the Russian proverb, Life is not a walk across a field,
which is the last line of Boris Pasternak’s poem ‘Hamlet’)
Life is a walk across a field
sometimes a golden dreamdrift of polished petals
and daisies bouncing among the hummocks of moss
which guide an infant river sometimes over squashed grass
sometimes under the spongey turf but sometimes
the tickling green surface breaks apart underfoot
and the mouth of the ground gapes
and the bogdragon swallows down your shins
your hips your armpits your chin your –
Life is a walk across a field
and should you find a milkmaid in one hollow
with a jug of cider and breasts like summer
from behind the spectacular oak will steam
the minotaur, half farmer and half bull
guffawing as his horns impale you both oh yes
Life is a walk across the field
of buttercups and landmines…
UNDER NEW LABOUR
That Feeling
When you sit
On a chair
And the chair’s
Not there
That’s the feeling I mean –
That’s the Blair.
We Bomb Tonight
(headline in the Evening Standard, London, 17 December 1998)
‘deafening explosions reverberated across Baghdad last night’
‘City traders reacted calmly to the air strikes, with oil prices and the dollar retreating after yesterday’s sharp gains…’
me and little sister
sleeping tight
hugged in the arms
of a dark blue night
I was in a funny dream
and both of us
were being driven by a horse
in a dark blue bus
then my dream went bang
night turned day
little sister
was vanished away
and the air was nothing
but dust and screams
now I search for little sister
in all my dreams
she hides I seek
but all I have found
in my dreams is a
dark blue hole in the ground
Education Education Education
Only one reason why I get to school
it’s a condition of my parole
chilled a teacher and torched a church
in the cause of criminological research
back to the playground I take my stand
uppers and downers in each hand
if you don’t like the deal we made
I’ll unzip your kipper with a rusty blade
The Druggards
The druggards lean in corners of the werehouse
wearing raggerjeans, eight-piece suits,
little block dresses, corrugated overcoats,
chins like the prows of model yachts
mouths like slots for credit cards
Brains can be such beautiful islands
but they abandon theirs to the invading
mute and screaming chemical armies
for they think the brain is only this
a hunk of electrified meat
they imagine life is a boredomboardroomboardgame,
the soul a stamped-out cigarette
as they cheat each other and trick each other
and sneer at the undruggard world
before plotting a petulant suicide…
Go Well
When the last Whale in the whole world
Was hauled through London on an open lorry
One million children trudged behind it
Bearing banners saying Sorry.
Later the last Horse and the last Dog
Rolled by upon their funeral carts.
No children waved Goodbye to them –
All were in hospital with broken hearts.
Shaven Heads
Men in their twenties with shaven heads
Men in their thirties with shaven heads
Men in their forties with shaven heads
They all look alike to me
Their noses jut out like ruddy rockets
Their eyeballs bulge out of their sockets
They smile all the time at people from foreign parts
To show they are not skinhead racist farts
But that smile too frequently unzips
Like a leer and bald heads speak louder than lips
It must feel so weird when you’re shaving your crop
Put that razor away grow some sort of a mop
But don’t overdo it or I shall wail
Get out of here with your fuzzy pony-tail
Walldream
They collected up, in fine
brown nets,
the coal-coloured rocks on the dark side of the moon.
Around the limits of London
in the 28th century
they built a bulging wall of sootrock
a wall with blurred outlines
emitting rays of darkness
so that anyone approaching the city
whether explorer or attacker
became lost in a black fog
and turned, to stagger, blinking, home.
But when the wall builders, time travelling,
visited me last night
They cried out: ‘Where are the walls we built?
Where are the Walls of Darkness?’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘Your Walls are in the future
so long as you don’t go too far.
Otherwise, you’ll find them in the past.’
Jesus Poems
Jesus stepped on to the bus,
‘Nazareth, please,
But I don’t have the fare.’
‘Bugger off, hippie,’ said the driver
And was turned, in the flash of a ticket,
Into a purple hippopotamus.
*
Blood oozing
From his hands feet and side
Jesus crawled into Casualty
Late on Good Saturday night.
‘Take a number,’ said the desk woman
‘It’s urgent,’ he whispered.
‘Aw shut up, ye bastard –
We’re all urgent here.’
*
Pilate said ‘What’s Truth?’
Jesus clicked his fingers like Smokey Robinson
Out of the floor
Sprang a bloody great cactus
Right up Pilate’s jacksie.
*
‘You’re a poor man,’
Said the squaddy, looking up from his crap game
‘Die a poor man’s death.’
‘I came not to bring bread
But a stone,’ mumbled Jesus
‘What the hell you blabbing about?’
‘I’m a poet.’
‘We’ll soon put a stop to that.’
THE CARNIVAL OF VENUS
Asymmetrical Love Song
My love is asymmetrical
She looks different from every angle
Some might say she’s a little bit wonky
But I say – jingle jangle!
Valances
(with love to Celia)
Today is the first day of my life as a domesticated animal
For I have discovered the meaning of the word valance
Yes and I have handled two different but similar valances
And helped to fit those valances appropriately.
What, you may ask me, is a valance?
Well the centre of the valance
Is a sheet upon which nobody lies.
It is spread on the upper surface of the base of the bed
On which the sun seldom if ever shines
And there the centre of the valance becomes
A sheet for the mattress to repose upon.
I should hazard that even in the suburban world
Inhabited by such underlings as
Doillies, druggets and downtrodden felt,
The valance centre must be numbered with the humblest.
Even were it decorated with a gold-embroidered
Representation of the Signing of the Treaty of Utrecht,
Or hand-sprinkled with a spiders’ web
Of luminous paints from Jackson Pollock’s fist
Or scorched by the impression of the face of the corpse
Of the great-grandfather of Ian Paisley
It would be unseen and unacclaimed
Except by minions whose duties occasionally oblige them
To change the valances or rearrange the valances.
(So I was not surprised that the two valances
Which I handled today, my two first valances,
Were undecorated in any sense.)
But it is not the centre of the valance
Which is at the heart of valancehood
Any more than it is the underpants of Leonardo da Vinci
Which inspire our admiration.
For all around the centre of the valance runs a margin
And, beyond that margin, a billowing border of linen,
(The same material of which the centre is composed)
But slightly ruched all round.
So, when the mattress is placed upon the valance
The edges of the valance appear all around the waist of the bed
Like a short ballet skirt, a modest tutu,
An edging of wavelets, ready to bear the sleeper
Over a sea of frills and flounces, to the Land of Furbelow.
Away
I went out
with open hands
into the strange
and shaking lands
I shake my spear
I shake your hand
I stretch my smile
like a rubber band
is it good to shake
is it good to be shook
come on do the earthquake
and the avalanche book
I could tell you my name
but it’s meaningless
like the clothes on the floor
when I undress
call me by any name
you like to say
one name for the night
another for the day
I’m in a far country
and travelling’s fun
but tonight it was bad
when you cried on the phone
thousands of miles away
lies my darling
she wears my love
like a silver ring
Arlo Guthrie, Ray Charles, Willie Nelson,
Aretha Franklin and Peggy Lee
they got the voices
say what I long to say
and I wish I could be many species of animal
so I could show how I feel
I’m a stumbling moose
I’m a homeless goose
I’m an unplugged electric eel
love is like a circle
it goes round and round
life is like a spiral
circling down and down
death acts very tough
but he’s silly stuff
tries to fill us full of fear
sticks his black iron claw in our ear
lots of my friends have been dragged down there
I’ll have to join them eventually
I plan to float down through the glittering blue
to rot proudly in their company
well
that’s why I’m shaking
like a six-month pup
on fireworks night
all shook up
A Lucky Family
(to Helen and Phil)
Their garden’s a magical
Welcoming planet
With plenty of room for
Roses and daisies
Men and women like roses
And children like daisies
Daisies and roses
Roses and daisies
a dream of daisies and roses
Sometimes they sit and watch from a window
Sitting and watching from a favourite window
A little girl watching her father in the garden
A husband watching his wife in the garden
A mother watching her children in the garden
Down the road
A woman’s trapped
In a family of terror
The children are screaming
Tearing her brain to shreds
If she takes six pills she may fall asleep
If she takes ten pills she may have a good dream
Of life in a lucky family
Their garden’s a magical
Welcoming planet
Which dances through space with
Roses and daisies
Men and women like roses
Children like daisies
Daisies and roses
Roses and daisies
A dream of daisies and roses
It Still Goes On
once upon a time when I was out of my mind
I left three beautiful children behind
I could not tell them why
I had to leave or die
you never saw so much pain
once upon a time I shot my world apart
each of my children took a hole in the heart
so did their mother and so did I
I had to leave or die
you never saw so much pain
you never saw so much pain
The Arrangements
The children see their father every week.
He is not sure what they should do.
He and their mother find it hard to speak.
He takes them to the park, the cinema, the zoo.
Their mother phones their father up to say
That every Sunday night they’re in distress.
It tears them up each time he goes away.
It would be better if he saw them less.
And he, because he cannot bear their pain, agrees.
But monthly meetings lead to days of tears.
And so the visits lessen by degrees
Until he does not visit them for years.
Oh but I needed them. They needed me.
Not to spend time with them was cruel and wrong.
Come on Everybody Page 26