Come on Everybody

by Adrian Mitchell

  A family of Deer

  Guarding each other with their branches

  Birds and Animals

  Feeding Drinking

  Singing Resting

  The Trees are dancing

  Stretching and swirling

  And the Sky is a dance

  Of speeding blue and white

  It is all a dance

  And at its centre

  The wedding of two Horses

  They have a special temple

  Of grass and flowers

  Among the shining rocks

  The Grey Horse looks at me

  The Chestnut turns away

  Their flanks are touching

  Silver flank against

  Chestnut flank

  Two Horses

  So glad and close together

  It can only be love

  Never lose it

  Guitar in his hands

  Leaning on an Elephant

  Orpheus sings

  I lost her once

  I lost her twice

  I lost her once

  In Paradise

  Eurydice

  Eurydice

  I lost her once

  I lost her twice

  In a dark tunnel

  Made of ice

  Eurydice

  Eurydice

  I looked back

  And for the second time she died

  Oh grief comes in and out like the tide

  Eurydice

  Eurydice

  Guitar in his hands

  Leaning on an Elephant

  Orpheus sings

  The People Walking

  Sometimes the people walk together

  Down the streets of their own cities

  With no weapons but the truth

  Sometimes the soldiers and police

  Turn their backs on their own officers

  And walk with the people

  As the people walk together

  Down the streets of their own cities

  With no weapons but the truth

  Sometimes the people walk together

  Brave and fearful and angry and joyful

  With no weapons but the truth

  Saint Lover’s Day

  There’ll be love for the lovers

  And for the loveless

  There’ll be love

  The spring shall make the world swing

  Till it’s giddy with love

  The light shall stroke the night

  Till it’s ready for love

  The valleys shall mate with the mountains

  And every lake will shake

  There’ll be love for the lovers

  And for the loveless

  There’ll be love

  Every street shall rock to the beat

  Of the making of love

  Every uncle and aunt and insect and plant

  Will be quaking with love

  Red buses shall mount on green buses

  And every cop go pop

  There’ll be love for the lovers

  And for the loveless

  There’ll be love

  The trees will drop to their knees

  And they’ll tremble with love

  The bees and the chimpanzees

  Will assemble for love

  Jill shall fetch a bucket of loving

  And Jack shall blow his stack

  There’ll be love for the lovers

  And for the loveless

  There’ll be love

  The armies will throw down their arms

  And go searching for love

  The preachers will give up their psalms

  And their churching for love

  The employer shall sigh for the worker

  And double his pay today

  There’ll be love for the lovers

  And for the loveless

  There’ll be love

  Yes there’ll be love for the lovely

  Who already get plenty of love

  And there’ll be love for the ugly

  Or anyone starving for love

  All the lonely shall be happy

  And every bum shall overcome

  There’ll be love

  For the lovers

  And for the loveless

  There’ll be love

  Yes there’ll be love love

  For the lovers

  And for the loveless

  There’ll be love

  Tissue Paper Flowers

  she is a maker

  of tissue paper flowers

  gently she bends their petals

  pink and blue and ivory

  into light blossom patterns

  she makes little flowers

  they are no bigger than her eyes

  approximately roses

  approximately daffodils

  but never exactly

  and sometimes invented flowers

  or flowers picked from her

  summertime dreamfields

  she makes

  tissue paper flowers

  and scatters them secretly

  by ones or by twos

  in unexpected places

  on a train seat

  or a briefcase

  or the bonnet of a car

  or the brilliant surface of a puddle

  she lets drop

  one or two

  and they drift

  towards the ground

  and she is out of sight

  around the corner

  long before they land

  paper kingcups

  or buttercups

  they sit and wobble

  and balance and toboggan

  on the small breezes

  of the grimy air

  she took a basket

  of a thousand blossoms

  to the top of a tower

  in the middle of the city

  and emptied them into

  a passing cloud and

  watched them drift

  over streets and schools

  and parking lots

  a thousand blessings

  on the city

  Last Thing

  First thing you notice

  when you meet somebody

  is male or female

  Second thing you notice

  is probably

  black or white

  Third are they old or young

  Fourth are they weak or strong

  Fifth are they rich

  or poor as shite

  high class low class

  honest or faker

  sexy or chilly

  murderer or maker

  Last thing you notice

  last thing you notice

  murderer or maker

  from

  THE SHADOW KNOWS

  POEMS 2000-2004

  William Blake Says:

  Every Thing That Lives Is Holy

  Long live the Child

  Long live the Mother and Father

  Long live the People

  Long live this wounded Planet

  Long live the good milk of the Air

  Long live the spawning Rivers and the mothering Oceans

  Long live the juice of the Grass

  and all the determined greenery of the Globe

  Long live the Elephants and the Sea Horses,

  the Humming-birds and the Gorillas,

  the Dogs and Cats and Field-mice –

  all the surviving Animals

  our innocent Sisters and Brothers

  Long live the Earth, deeper than all our thinking

  we have done enough killing

  Long live the Man

  Long live the Woman

  Who use both courage and compassion

  Long live their Children

  THE SHADOW IN WARTIME

  The Shadow Poet Laureateship

  The official elegy for Princess Margaret was the final straw. There had to be an antidote: a poet who would stalk the powerful and the pretentious. The soci
alist magazine Red Pepper invited Adrian Mitchell to don the dreaded costume of The Shadow Poet Laureate and write regular poems for their columns. At a midnight ceremony in a Stoke Newington crossword den frequented by swarthy anarchist stokers, he was anointed with tomato ketchup. Then he was decked in the scarlet and red cloak, the charcoal sombrero and the Parisian blue suede shoes which are the garb of the Shadow. From his interview with intrepid Jane Shallice, we excerpt the following:

  JS: You are the people’s first Shadow Poet Laureate, but you come from an honourable tradition.

  SHADOW: Yes, like Lord Byron and William Blake, both of whom wrote wonderful Shadow poetry. Byron particularly aimed his at Southey, when Southey was Poet Laureate. He wrote some marvellous stuff aimed at people like Castlereagh and mad King George; Blake wrote against kings and warriors and priests. There have always been Shadow Poet Laureates, but I’m the first to take it on as a mission.

  Somebody, wearing a sort of Spanish cape and a dark hat, needs to be standing just behind the Poet Laureate, leering. To remind him that he’s human and even the Royal Family are human. But I don’t want to concentrate my fire on the Royals, but on the rich and powerful, those who rule and ruin this world and keep leading us into wars.

  JS: And your inspiration?

  SHADOW: For instance – I found out that Tony Blair, like all British Prime Ministers, has to write a letter, which is sealed and given to the captains of all our Trident nuclear submarines. They are only allowed to open it when England is destroyed. And they’ll know that because the Today programme on Radio Four will not have broadcast for four days. Then they can open the envelope. So I wrote Tony Blair’s Secret Note…

  JS: How did you come to write your challenge to the Poet Laureate – ‘Unjubilee Poem’ – which was published in the Guardian in February 2002?

  SHADOW: The Guardian had just published some sycophantic pieces about the present Laureate. I kept meeting non-poets who said that he was ‘an ambassador for Poetry’. Well I don’t think Poetry needs Ambassadors or any other kind of diplomat. There are career poets in every generation. You can see how many committees they are on, how many things they edit. It’s important to pull the plug on them. Free the baby and the bathwater! Poets shouldn’t take titles except ridiculous ones like the Shadow. And anyone can have that. When young poets complain they’re not getting recognition I tell them they can be Shadow Poet Laureates too! What poets need is a democratic trades union and wages for good work. I won’t be spending my time dogging Andrew Motion’s footsteps. My little squib wasn’t personal - it was about his work as Laureate.

  JS: May we hear it again, Shadow?

  SHADOW: If you insist.

  Unjubilee Poem

  Liquid sunshine gushing down

  To dance and sparkle on the Crown.

  I see the Laureate’s work like this:

  A long, thin streak of yellow piss.

  Anti-Establishment Poet Is Difficult, Court Told

  Totally thrilled by my appointment as Shadow Poet Laureate and the worldwide media reaction to same, I was disconcerted to be asked – before my costume was even delivered, to react to the passing of the Queen Mother. Not only was Red Pepper intrigued to catch my reaction – but the revolutionary Evening Standard wanted to reprint my reaction. (£1,000 plus VAT is my fee, Evening Standard).

  When I was elected Poet Laureate, thirty years ago, I made two conditions for my acceptance:

  1. I would appear at every Royal Wedding dressed in the costume of a Giant Banana.

  2. I would be entitled to tap-dance on the coffin at every Royal Funeral. I am still awaiting a reply. Meanwhile here is:

  A Refusal to Write a Royal Elegy

  When Kings and Queens decide to die

  Up in a golden coach they fly

  To Heaven to do Royal things

  With the imperial King of Kings.

  But write them elegies, you call?

  They never touched my life at all.

  A boy, I mourned when Roosevelt died.

  For Gandhi and Martin Luther King, I cried,

  Comedians died – I wept and shook

  Milligan, Cooper, Morecambe, Moore and Cook.

  Weeping with grief to see them gone.

  Weeping with joy at how they shone.

  How can I write of royalty

  Whose lives are meaningless to me?

  Back to the Happidrome

  Everybody’s happy at the Happidrome

  – OLD RADIO CATCHPHRASE

  But when we came round the corner out of

  Paris in the ice cream sunshine –

  There was Colombia in flames

  There was Palestine in flames

  There was Afghanistan in flames

  in a backwash tidal monsoon of fire –

  at what heat does the hair burn?

  at what heat do newspapers burn?

  at what heat does flesh burn?

  at what heat do the eyeballs boil?

  at what heat does the heart explode?

  at what heat does the atmosphere burn?

  at what heat do the people awake?

  The Army, the Navy and the Royal Marines!

  With missiles and gunships and submarines!

  Lords and Commons, Presidents and Queens!

  They all dance hand in hand

  With the Arms Manufacturers of this land!

  All singing;

  Want to make a killing in the Congo?

  Pull my bongo!

  Want to make mass-murder in the Middle East?

  Call my beast!

  Want to do some big-time fire and sword?

  Pull the Armageddon Emergency Cord!

  Tear the skin off the face of the human race –

  with British Aerospace

  it gives employment

  with British Aerospace

  you’re laughing

  with British Aerospace!

  No More War

  As War eats more and more of its victims

  Growing huge and strong on foreign flesh,

  Quiet ladies and gentlemen in grey suits

  Will ask you to learn the killing trade.

  Maybe you’ve got no hope of work

  And the Army sounds like a steady job

  And you’ve seen Ross Kemp in Ultimate Force

  Wasting the terrorists. Tell them: No.

  As War multiplies and War and its children

  Start to devour our own parents and children,

  Your friendly postman will hand you an order

  To leave your home and go learn to kill.

  It’s simpler to go when you’re told to go.

  Maybe you’re worried what your family will say.

  Maybe you’re frightened by their prisons

  Designed for crushing men and women. Tell them: No.

  Prepare your defence. Explain to them peacefully

  Why you refuse to kill or die for them.

  Call your witnesses – Martin Luther King

  Or Gandhi or Jesus or Buddha

  Or your own loving heart.

  Human Beings

  (for the company of the truthful and beautiful Red Red Shoes

  by Charles Way, staged by the Unicorn Theatre for Children)

  look at your hands

  your beautiful useful hands

  you’re not an ape

  you’re not a parrot

  you’re not a slow loris

  or a smart missile

  you’re human

  not british

  not american

  not israeli

  not palestinian

  you’re human

  not catholic

  not protestant

  not muslim

  not hindu

  you’re human

  we all start human

  we end up human

  human first

  human last

  we’re human

  or we’re nothing

  nothing but bombs


  and poison gas

  nothing but guns

  and torturers

  nothing but slaves

  of Greed and War

  if we’re not human

  look at your body

  with its amazing systems

  of nerve-wires and blood canals

  think about your mind

  which can think about itself

  and the whole universe

  look at your face

  which can freeze into horror

  or melt into love

  look at all that life

  all that beauty

  you’re human

  they are human

  we are human

  let’s try to be human

  dance!

  The Operation

  hero executioners

  forensic psychopaths

  extreme venom

  storm rockets

  they’re all part of

  The Operation

  born-again dragons

  Jurassic porridge

  shock wheeltappers

  scorpion singers

  all essential to

  The Operation

  and all you

  grizzly crackers

  colditz wannabes

  boogie hungerbabes

  and bungalow maniacs

  you’re absolutely central to