Make a note of that.
New film. Now look, now he’s fourteen.
Work out the energy required
To make him grow that tall.
It could have been used
It could have all been used
For the good of the firm and he could have stayed small.
Make a note of that.
Age thirty. And the waste continues.
Using his legs for walking. Tiring
His mouth with talking and eating. Twitching.
Slow it down. Reproducing? I see.
All, I suppose, for the good of the firm.
But he’d better change methods. Yes, he’d better.
Look at the waste of time and emotion,
Look at the waste. Look. Look.
And make a note of that.
Ode to Money
Man-eater, woman-eater, brighter than tigers,
Lover and killer in my pocket,
In your black sack I’m one of the vipers.
Golden-eyed mother of suicide,
Your photo’s in my heart’s gold locket.
You make me warm, you keep me cool,
You cure the terrifying dream.
Nature and art await your call.
Money, don’t lead me to milk and honey
But a land of drambuie and icebergs of cream.
The Palm Court Planet’s orchestra whines
The Money Spangled Money
And The Red Money. In my silver chains
I always stand when I hear the band
Play Money Save the Money.
South Kensington Is Much Nicer
London, you hurt me. You’re the girl
With hair fresh-permed and every curl
A gold ring in its proper place,
But spread across your poker face
A net of scars. A dress of smoke,
Your body an unfinished joke.
I love you, but I cannot sing
That money-splendoured hair is everything.
For I’ve walked through the alleys of Poison Town,
They led me up, they led me down.
The colour of the air was brown.
Reply to a Canvasser
Cats are spies for something dark.
Rabbits are wiped out.
Captain Cousteau scares the shark
With an underwater shout.
Snakes slide over jagged ground
Making the same sound as grass.
Elephants are pushed around.
Fish are hooked, or circle worlds of glass.
Hyenas have a nervous laugh,
Corruption is their only need.
Worms get fat, then cut in half.
A dog’s a footman on a lead.
I’d rather be a stag at bay
Daubed in colours brown and gory,
Or any creature any day
Than be a bloody Tory.
Look at the View
Like the memory of a long-dead clerical uncle
Reclines St Paul’s Cathedral
In the blue smoke from London’s frying-pan.
Climb to the dome, and then you can
Watch the dull length of Blackfriars Bridge.
See the flat girl approach the edge,
Jump, fall, splash, vanish, struggle, cease.
Do you bet she’ll be saved by the River Police
Who ride the tides in a humming launch?
Or an oil millionaire without a paunch
Will dive and take her wet to lunch?
Save her and leave her, and she’ll be seen
Next day on the bridge near that tarnished tureen
St Paul’s Cathedral, glowering in the rain.
She will take off her shoes and fall again
The Observer
A tattooed Irishman still
Shaking from his pneumatic drill.
From his mouth
Saunters sweet talk
As he stretches the chained spoon
To his mug of tea again.
Talk as sweet and warm as tea
Floats in bubbles from his mouth.
That his working life has ended.
Bubbles burst. His tongue’s light tune
Stumbles and does not rise. Deep in his belly
The molten tea solidifies.
His tall face lowers slowly
Like a red wall collapsing in the rain.
A young Guards officer
Shaking with long-imprisoned anger.
From his mouth
Marches, in step, his conversation
As he taps a silver plate
With his menthol cigarette.
Talk as white and soft as smoke
Pours from his educated mouth.
His Colonel claims that the Brigade
Might well recruit the unemployed.
The young man’s facial veins inflate,
His talk moves at the double, sweating,
Mad keen, but disciplined at that,
As his whole face opens letting
Free a smile bright as a bayonet.
In the café and the mess
A liberal hears what each man says.
He notes the navvy’s imagination
And he smiles.
Notes the Guard’s well-drilled conversation
And he smiles.
With memories of Wimbledon
He says under his pleasant breath:
‘Why don’t both men just jump the net,
Shake hands, and say the class war’s won?’
He lights a Woodbine from a Ronson.
His eyes bulge, large with vision,
Seeing both sides of every question,
One with his left eye,
One with his right,
The cross-eyed, doomed hermaphrodite.
Song About Mary
Mary sat on a long brown bench
Reading Woman’s Own and She,
Then a slimy-haired nit with stripes on his collar
Said: ‘What’s the baby’s name to be?’
She looked across to Marks and Spencers
Through the dirty window-pane,
‘I think I’ll call him Jesus Christ,
It’s time he came again.’
The clerk he banged his ledger
And he called the Cruelty Man
Saying: ‘This bird thinks she’s the mother of Christ,
Do what you bleeding well can.’
They took Mary down to the country
And fed her on country air,
And they put the baby in a Christian home
And he’s much happier there.
For if Jesus came to Britain
He would turn its dizzy head,
They’d nail him up on a telegraph pole
Or he’d raise the poor from the dead.
So if you have a little baby
Make sure it’s legitimate child,
Bind down his limbs with insurance
And he’ll grow up meek and mild.
Meek and mild…meek and mild…meek and mild.
We Call Them Subnormal Children
(FROM The Body)
They are here, they are here,
they are very far away.
Perhaps they see exciting visions
in the hollows of their hands.
Perhaps they can hear music we are deaf to
but I think their hearts trudge
and that their days trudge
for the way they sort of stand
the way they sort of speak
laboriously expresses one word only
wounded wounded wounded
We are taking a deep breath before the long slow dive through space to Mars.
We have not yet explored these island people.
They are here.
They will not go away.
In Other Words, Hold My Head
‘Capitalism – ,’ I started, bu
t the barman hopped out of a pipkin.
‘Capitalism,’ he countered, ‘that’s a flat and frothless word.
I’m a good labourman, but if I mentioned capitalism
My clientèle would chew off their own ears
And spit them down the barmaid’s publicised cleavage.’
‘All right,’ I obliged, ‘don’t call it capitalism,
Let’s call it Mattiboko the Mighty.’
‘Exploitation – ,’ I typed, but the Editor appeared unto me,
A spike in one hand, a fiery pound note in the other.
‘I’m a good liberal, but you’re going out on a lamb –
You don’t catch Burnem Levin writing about exploitation –
A million readers would gouge their eyes out,
Think of that, like two million pickled onions in the cornflakes.’
‘Hold the back page,’ I surlied, ‘sod exploitation,
I’ll retitle it The Massimataxis Incorporated Supplement.’
‘Oppression and mass-murder – ,’ I opined straight into the camera.
‘Cut!’ yelled the director, cutting off his head with a clapperboard.
‘I’m a good fascist, but if you use that language
Half your viewers are going to
Tear the lids off their TV sets,
Climb inside, pour Horlicks over their heads
And die of calculated combustion.
Too late now to balance the programme
With a heartsofoak panel of our special experts
Who are all oppressors and mass-murderers.’
‘You know the market,’ I wizened,
‘Oppression and mass-murder are out this year –
I’ll christen them Gumbo Jumbo the Homely Obblestrog Spectacular.’
This was my fearless statement:
The Horror World can only be changed by the destruction of
Mattiboko the Mighty,
The Massimataxis Incorporated Supplement
And Gumbo Jumbo the Homely Obblestrog Spectacular.
Audience reaction was quite encouraging.
A Party Political Broadcast on Behalf of the Burial Party
SPOKESMAN:
Already our government has enforced the four freedoms:
Freedom to speak if you have nothing to say.
Freedom from fear if you stay in your shelter.
Freedom from want if you do what we want
And freedom from freedom.
But yesterday we, the British Government,
Detected, thanks to our spider’s web of sundaypapers
And bloodshot radar traps,
Two mutineers scowling from your moderate ranks.
POLICE CONSTABLE BOOTHEAD:
At two in the morning I found the accused,
A man and a woman, both unclothed,
Sprawling across their mammoth bed.
(The mammoth is being held in custody at Disneyland.)
Their eyes were shut, and they grinned
Like a couple of pink grand pianos.
When asked why they were smiling with their eyes shut,
The accused informed me (in song):
‘We are happy.’
I made a note of that at the time.
JUDGE:
What was that word again?
PROSECUTOR:
Happy, milord,
An expression common among delinquents.
It means – irresponsible.
Extensive chromosome and corpuscle counts,
Exhaustive spiritual testing
And a touch of the old Doctor Scholl revealed
That the male and female citizen were both addicted
To one of the most dangerous drugs on the list –
Exhibit A – Love –
Highly addictive, producing hallucinations,
For example:
Fats Waller fornicating downwards
At the wheel of a purple-striped cloud
To play The Resurrection of South America –
This love-drug can remove
The user’s interest in moneyandproperty
And in killing in order to defend
Moneyandproperty.
JUDGE:
Stop it, I can’t bear it.
SPOKESMAN:
The lovers were found guilty of not being guilty.
Their obscene craving was hard to cure
But a succession of secret licemen did their best.
They can hardly be blamed if the gasping lovers died
After ten days apart, ten days apart.
They died with their grins on, both of them drowned
In the same daydream,
The same degenerate lagoon.
Freedom to speak if you have nothing to say.
Freedom from fear if you stay in your shelter.
Freedom from want if you do what we want.
Freedom from freedom, freedom from sanity
And freedom, finally, from life.
IT IS LIKELY THAT DURING THE NEXT TEN YEARS
YOU WILL BE CALLED UPON TO DIE FOR FREEDOM.
Old Age Report
When a man’s too ill or old to work
We punish him.
Half his income is taken away
Or all of it vanishes and he gets pocket-money.
We should reward these tough old humans for surviving,
Not with a manager’s soggy handshake
Or a medal shaped like an alarm clock –
No, make them a bit rich,
Give the freedom they always heard about
When the bloody chips were down
And the blitz or the desert
Swallowed their friends.
Retire, retire into a fungus basement
Where nothing moves except the draught
And the light and dark grey figures
Doubling their money on the screen;
Where the cabbages taste like the mummy’s hand
And the meat tastes of feet;
Where there is nothing to say except:
‘Remember?’ or ‘Your turn to dust the cat.’
To hell with retiring. Let them advance.
Give them the money they’ve always earned –
or more – and let them choose.
We could wipe away some of their worry,
Some of their pain – what I mean
Is so bloody simple:
The old people are being robbed
And punished and we ought
To be letting them out of their cages
Into green spaces of enchanting light.
Now We Are Sick
Christopher
Robin
goes
hippety
immigrants hoppety
bring down
the value of
property
Involvement
QUESTION (from the London Magazine): In most European countries, and in America, writers are becoming involved, one way or another, in public manifestations of protest. As an English writer, do you feel that working on your own terms is more important than taking a practical part in organising public opinion?
In other words, in the continuing debates – about race, class, violence, war, financial priorities – that crucially affect our lives, are you for the writer in any way as polemicist, or do you believe that his instinct as an artist is ultimately the real test of his integrity?
ANSWER:
SCENE: an alley.
(A MAN is being beaten up by TWO POLICEMEN. An ENGLISH WRITER approaches.)
MAN: Help!
ENGLISH WRITER: Well, that may be what you think you want. But I’ve got to work on my own terms.
MAN: Help!
(TWO POLICEMEN put the boot in.)
ENGLISH WRITER: Look, I don’t like this any more than you do. But I’ve got to follow my own instinct as an artist
MAN (spitting teeth): Yes, well that’s ultimately the real test of your integrity.
&nbs
p; (The beating up continues. ENGLISH WRITER pisses off to write a poem about ants.)
CURTAIN
Divide and Rule for as Long as You Can
Glasgow.
Trade Unionists march through the Square
Towards the City Chambers.
Police. Police. Police.
And in the streets leading off the Square –
Scottish soldiers with rifles.
Live ammunition.
They may be ordered to shoot into the crowd.
And behind the Scottish soldiers –
English soldiers with rifles.
Live ammunition.
If the Scottish soldiers refuse to shoot into the crowd
The English soldiers will be ordered
To shoot the Scottish soldiers.
Oh, but that was long ago.
That was in the future.
The Ballad of Sally Hit-and-Run
A train pulls into town and a woman jumps down
Her leathers are shining and her eyes are shining
With the body of a goddess and the cool of a nun
Everywhere she goes they call her Sally Hit-and-Run.
She moves down the street with a shuffle and a beat
Of her feet on the concrete – she’s a creature
With senses that respond to every sound in town
And a hit-and-run habit when the sun goes down.
Sally Hit-and-Run on a barstool perch