They adjusted his face so it faced the face of the moon
And they told him: ‘There is your one true melon,
Your forever melon, your melon of melons.’
Now, fully grateful, he watches the melon rise,
The setting of the melon, the new melon and the full melon,
With a smile like a slice of melon in the green-and-yellow melon-light.
To My Friends, on My Fiftieth Birthday
My darlings, my friends, makers of all kinds, what can I say to them?
Go on with your labours of love, for you build Jerusalem.
My friends, my darlings, what can I say about you?
I will love you forever, I would have died without you.
How to Be Extremely Saintly, Rarefied and Moonly
(for Becky, who, when I spoke about resisting my urge to lie around watching videos all day told me: ‘Let your temptation never fail you.’)
Let your coconut be your guide
Let the sun stew in its own juice
Let your coat and rent your hat
And let your temptation never fail you
Let the good times roller-skate
Let me inside-out please, I forgot my keys
Let the flim-flam floogie with the floy-floy rock ’n’ roll
But let your temptation never fail you
Let the lecturer be harangued by the blackboard
Let your letters stamp their footling feet to better letter music
Let us play soccer together with a bonny lettuce
And in the Beantime –
Let your temptation, Becky, never fail you.
Loony Prunes
(an apology poem for my daughter)
We played the savage ludo which is known as Coppit,
Chatted, drank wine, ate lamb, played Beatle tunes
And then we started it, found we couldn’t stop it –
A contest to eat maximum loony prunes.
They weren’t just the ordinary, wrinkled, black,
Laxative fruit imported from – who knows?
But, floating in a stinging pool of Armagnac,
They were sozzled Français lunatic pruneaux.
Then, indoor fireworks, and the sharp flashes
Of three-second sparklers, dull horse-races,
A wonderful serpent, a frilly fern of ashes –
While the loony prune-juice flushed our faces.
As I was trying to put the fireworks out
We started arguing like sun and moon.
I grabbed you as the whole world seemed to shout.
You ran upstairs. I’m sorry. I’m a loony prune.
To Michael Bell
(my teacher at Greenways School whose motto was:
‘A Green Thought in a Green Shade’)
In the second year of the Slaughter
I attended a school in Hell
Feeling like King Lear’s fourth daughter
Strapped down in a torture cell
Then my blue and white mother appeared to me
And she saw I was all afraid
So I was transported mysteriously
To a green school in a green shade
And there I met a great mechanic
And he mended my twisted wings
And he gentled away my panic
And he showed me how a vision sings
And I thank Michael Bell most lovingly
For the mountains and lakes he made
And the way he shone the light of peace on me
Like a green thought in a green shade
Beattie Is Three
At the top of the stairs
I ask for her hand. O.K.
She gives it to me.
How her fist fits my palm,
A bunch of consolation.
We take our time
Down the steep carpetway
As I wish silently
That the stairs were endless.
SONGS FROM SOME OF THE SHOWS
Gardening
(FROM The Free Mud Fair at Totnes)
EVE: At the heart of the Garden of Eden
Lay a pool of golden mud
I was the pool
And my name was Eve
One day I stood up like a fountain
And began to mould my body
Till it felt right and good
Then I made Adam out of the same golden mud
I made him different for fun
ADAM: Thank you for creating me
EVE: Shall we make more people out of mud?
ADAM: Yes
You make some like me
I’ll make some like you
EVE: Let’s make them all different
ADAM: Why make them different?
EVE: For fun for fun
ADAM: No…No…
Two kinds is enough
Two kinds is plenty
EVE (to audience):
My secret name is Peace
(to ADAM)
All right, Adam
EVE & ADAM:
So we made children out of the mud
Thousands of children out of the mud
Two kinds of children
Only two kinds
All of them totally different
The Violent God
(FROM Move Over, Jehovah)
Barbed wire all around the Garden of Eden
Adam was conscripted for the First World War
And it’s still going on, and it’s still going strong –
Hail to the violent god.
The old survivor said: I was in Belsen,
I’m grateful to god because he got me out of Belsen,
When I die please bury me in Belsen –
Hail to the violent god.
The god of hunger eats the people of India
The god of law and order spends most of his time
Smiling at the back of torture rooms –
Hail to the violent god.
Children were smitten with parents.
The black man was smitten with the white man.
The white man was smitten with the motor car –
Hail to the violent god.
Spastics teach us how to have pity
Leukaemia teaches us the dangers of anarchy
Schizophrenia teaches us sanity –
Hail to the violent god.
Calypso’s Song to Ulysses
(FROM Lash Me to the Mast!)
My hands are tender feathers,
They can teach your body to soar.
My feet are two comedians
With jokes your flesh has never heard before.
So try to read the meaning
Of the blue veins under my skin
And feel my breasts like gentle wheels
Revolving from your thighs to your chin.
And listen to the rhythm
Of my heartbeat marking the pace
And see the visions sail across
The easy-riding waters of my face.
What is sweeter than the human body?
Two human bodies as they rise and fall.
What is sweeter than two loving bodies?
There is nothing sweeter at all.
Lose yourself, find yourself,
Lose yourself again
On the island of Calypso.
The Children of Blake
(FROM Tyger)
The children of Blake dance in their thousands
Over nursery meadows and through the sinister forests,
Beyond the spikes of cities, over the breasts of mountains,
The children of Blake dance in their thousands.
They dance beyond logic, they dance beyond science,
They are dancers, they are only dancers,
And every atom of their minds and their hearts and their deep skins
And every atom of their bowels and genitals and imaginations
Dances to the music of William Blake.
Happy
Birthday William Blake
(FROM Tyger)
When he was alive everybody used to put him down.
Now they’re writing volumes and they say they’re sad he’s not around.
But they wouldn’t know Blake if they saw him
And heard him
And shook him by the hand.
They wouldn’t know Blake if they took him
And tried him
And shot him from the witness stand.
For Blake was a man like any other man
But he trained his hands to see
And he trained his tongue to pop out of his ears
And he cried with his toenails
And the hairs in his nostrils
Danced to the music of the oxygen.
And they took a thousand million bricks
And they laid down Blake like a foundation stone
And they built a city-prison on his chest
But nothing could hold him down.
For he took a draught of explosive air
And he shook off London like a crust.
And he sang as he stood on the edge of the world
And he worked as he stood as he sang
And he built Jerusalem
He built Jerusalem
With his soft hard
Hard soft hands.
So it’s happy birthday William Blake
What you’ve done can never be undone.
Happy birthday William Blake
Tyger of Jerusalem and Lamb of London.
Happy birthday happy birthday
Happy birthday William Blake.
Poetry
(FROM Tyger)
Poetry glues your soul together
Poetry wears dynamite shoes
Poetry is the spittle on the mirror
Poetry wears nothing but the blues
It’s the gumboil gargoyle that falls off the cathedral
To land on the crown of the Queen.
Grab it while you can, it’s the magical needle.
It’s bitter sixteen and its flesh is bright green
Poetry glues your soul together
Poetry wears dynamite shoes
Poetry is the spittle on the mirror
Poetry wears nothing but the blues
Poetry’s a lion on the stage of the opera house
Doin’ a little jammin’ with his brothers and sisters
Hits you, slits you, almost never fits you,
you and your lover get covered in blisters.
Poetry glues your soul together
Poetry wears dynamite shoes
Poetry is the spittle on the mirror
Poetry wears nothing but the blues
Poetry’s the moon’s own bottle of gin.
It’s the purple ghost of Duke Ellington’s band.
It’s a bucket with a hole for collecting truth in
And the legless beggar army of Disneyland
Clinton hasn’t got it, but there’s plenty in Fidel.
Slap your sherry trifle on my sewing machine.
Bend it into bowlines but you’ll never break it
The only way to make it is the way you make it
Only thing that matters is the way you shake it
Poetry glues your soul together
Poetry wears dynamite shoes
Poetry is the spittle on the mirror
Poetry wears nothing but the blues
The Tribe
(from Man Friday)
The tribe changes
As a tree changes.
When the storm throws its weight against a tree
The tree bends away.
When the storm falls asleep upon the tree
The tree stands up again.
The tribe changes
As a tree changes.
The children are the blossoms of the tree,
They laugh along its branches.
The old are the fruit of the tree,
They fall when they are ready to fall.
The tribe changes
As a tree changes.
Nobody tells the tree how it should grow.
Nobody knows what shape it will assume.
The tree decides the angle of its branches.
The tree decides when it is ready to die.
Medical
(from A Seventh Man)
The fit are being sorted out from the unfit.
One in five will fail.
Those who pass will enter a new life.
One in five will fail.
Ride the Nightmare
(FROM The Hot Pot Saga)
I was zooming round the Universe feeling like Desperate Dan
I was bombing them at random looking for Charlie Chan
I looked and saw a continent without a single man
Which they told me was Asia but it looked more like Aberfan *
So ride the nightmare
Jump upon its hairy back
Ride the nightmare
Ride until your mind goes black
It’s the 21st century werewolf
21st century werewolf
21st century werewolf and it’s coming this way
Well the charity lady wiped the diamonds from her eyes and said
‘I’ve been saving all my money but the African dead stay dead
I’m sending them elastoplast and dunlopillo bread –
But they wrote me a letter saying: Send us guns instead’
So ride the nightmare
Jump upon its hairy back
Ride the nightmare
Ride until your mind goes black
It’s the 21st century werewolf
21st century werewolf
21st century werewolf and it’s coming this way
Well the rich white Englishman can easily ignore the rest
For the poor are just a bore and who can use the starving and oppressed?
They’re burning while you tell yourself there’s nothing you can do
When your turn comes they’ll do just the same for you
So ride the nightmare
Jump upon its hairy back
Ride the nightmare
Ride until your mind goes black
It’s the 21st century werewolf
21st century werewolf
21st century werewolf and it’s coming this way…
* This first verse was rewritten around 1986 and it now goes:
I was zooming round the universe feeling like Sylvester Stallone
I was bombing them at random looking for Gadaffi’s home
I saw a Royal baby in a cradle of silver lace
And I saw another baby with flies feeding out of his face…
A Song of Liberation
(FROM Houdini)
Padlocked in a barrel full of beer
And almost dying from the fumes –
He did not despair.
Lashed to the waterwheel
Tied to the sail of a windmill –
His skill did not desert him.
Chained to the pillar of a prison cell
Riveted inside a metal boiler
Stuffed into the top of a roll-top desk
Sewn inside a giant sausage-skin –
He out-imagined every challenger.
Plunged into rivers, handcuffed and chained
Strapped to a crazy crib by mental nurses,
Tied to a cannon with a time fuse,
Hung upside down in the water torture cell,
In a Government mail pouch,
Even in the grave,
Even in the grave when he let himself be buried alive –
Even in the grave
His brain and body worked so perfectly
That he broke free from the grave.
And when the body of a man
Has been buried in the earth
And that body reaches up to the surface
That body reaches up towards the light,
Towards whatever shines –
Joy fills the
people, magical joy.
Joy at the magic of his liberation,
Magic that touches the surface of your skin
With a magical shiver.
What is magic then?
What is magic? What is magic?
Beauty that takes you by surprise.
The Widow’s Song
(FROM Mowgli’s Jungle)
My husband was strong
My husband was warm
His loving was
A thunderstorm
But a fever came
And took him by the hand
Now he is dancing,
Dancing, dancing
With the ghosts in Ghostland
My baby could stand
My baby could dance
His hands and legs
Like little plants
But a tiger came
And took him by the hand
Now he is dancing,
Dancing, dancing
With the ghosts in Ghostland
And now I am poor
As poor as a stone
All day and night
Alone alone
Let dreams tonight
Take me by the hand
And I’ll go dancing,
Dancing, dancing
With the ghosts
With my lovely ghosts
With my lovely ghosts in Ghostland
The Truth
(FROM Love Songs of World War Three)
The truth is the truth
Is a strange kind of animal
The truth is the truth
Only comes out when people sleep
So I stay awake listening for the truth