Strange that Tennyson should be
Remembered for his poems really,
We always thought of him
As a golfer.
There hasn’t been much time
For poetry since the Twenties
What with leaving the Communist Church
To join the Catholic Party
And explaining why in the CIA Monthly.
In 1963, for one night only,
I became the fourth Liverpool Marx Brother.
There was Groucho McGough,
Chico Henri, Harpo Patten
And me, I was Zeppo,
Yer, I was Pete Best.
Finally I was given the Chair of Comparative Ambiguity
At Armpit University, Java.
It didn’t keep me busy,
But it kept me quiet.
It seemed like poetry had been safely tucked up for the night.
What Is Poetry?
(for Sasho, Daniella, Vladko and Martin Shurbanov)
Look at those naked words dancing together!
Everyone’s very embarrassed.
Only one thing to do about it –
Off with your clothes
And join in the dance.
Naked words and people dancing together.
There’s going to be trouble.
Here come the Poetry Police!
Keep dancing.
Autumnobile
The forest’s throat is sore.
Frost-work. Echoing shouts of friends.
October, in her gold-embroidered nightie,
Floating downstream, little mad flowers shimmering.
The silky fur of her
And her hot fingers curling,
Uncurling round and a sudden shove –
There goes my heart tobogganing,
Down snow, slush, ending stuck in the mud,
That’s love! O dig me out of here
And glide me off down Pleasure Street
To the sparkle rink where bears go skating.
I ate pancakes at the funeral.
I ate pancakes and ice-cream too.
The mourners drank like musty flies,
All round Summer’s coffin, sucking and buzzing.
The days of dust and nights of gnats
Are over and, covered with raindrop warts,
My friend, the most unpopular Season in school,
Smoking and spitting – Autumn’s coming.
How do I love that fool, the Fall?
Like Paraquatted nettles. Like
A two-headed 50p. Like a sick shark.
Like a punchy boxer who can’t stop grinning.
Sunshine’s rationed. Get in the queue
For a yard of colour, a pound of warm.
Deathbed scenes on the video-sky,
Sunsets like Olivier acting dying.
I feel weightless as a child who’s built
Out of nursery bricks with ducks and clocks on.
I eat more sleep. I slap more feet.
Autumn – my marzipan flesh is seething.
I open a book and splash straight into it.
The fire reads all my old newspapers.
I freak across the galaxy on Pegasus
And see the cracked old world, rocking and bleeding.
The saloon doors in my skull swing open,
Out stride a posse of cowboy children
Bearing a cauldron of the magic beans
Which always set my poems quivering.
Now my electric typer purrs,
And now it clackers under my fingers’
Flickering. And now the oily engine
Throbs into hubbub. The Autumnobile is leaving.
Nobody on earth knows where on earth they’re going
……
(a hell of a long way after Pushkin and Derzhavin)
Land of Dopes and Loonies
William Shakespeare was loony
Burns was a maniac too
Milton was thoroughly crackers
Yeats was a loony all through
Edward Lear, Shelley and Coleridge,
Whitman and Lawrence and Blake
What a procession of nutters
Looning for poetry’s sake
All of the poets were dafties
Dafter when the going got rough
All except William Wordsworth
Who wasn’t nearly crazy enough
Leonardo was loopy
So was Toulouse Lautrec
Bosch had all of his screws loose
Van Gogh’s head was a wreck
Pablo Picasso was batty
Just take a look at his work
Rembrandt was out of his windmill
Brueghel was bloody berserk
All of the painters were bonkers
In the barmy army of art
All except Sir Joshua Reynolds
And he was a wealthy old Humpty Dumpty…
To a Critic
You don’t go to Shakespeare for statistics
You don’t go to bed for a religious service
But you want poems like metal mental mazes –
Excuse me while I nervous.
A song can carry so many facts
A song can lift plenty of story
A song can score jokes and curses too
And any amount of glory
But if you overload your dingadong song
With theoretical baggage
Its wings tear along the dotted line
And it droppeth to earth like a cabbage
Yes it droppeth to earth like a bloody great cabbage
And the cabbage begins to rot.
My songs may be childish as paper planes
But they glide – so thanks a lot.
A Sunset Cloud Procession Passing Ralph Steadman’s House
1. A cigar-smoking porker drags a small hay-cart from which a jewelled crocodile smiles and waves.
2. A black fried egg struts by, one woolly eyebrow raised like Noel Coward.
3. An emaciated caribou clanks along.
4. An ant-eater inflates a smoker’s-lung balloon.
5. Eskimo Jim pulls Auntie Hippo tail-first, but she hangs on to her perambulator full of hippolets.
6. They are pursued by a neolithic Hoover.
7. And followed by Leonardo’s Tin Lizzie and Michelangelo as a tumescent frogman, pride of the Sexual Boat Service.
8. A simple mushroom shape, rising one inch every four seconds.
9. Father Time with a crumpled scythe.
10. A whale spouting black shampoo all over its own humpy head.
11. A cocker spaniel taking a free ride on the backbone of a boa-constrictor.
12. And up from out of the dark hill’s shoulders rise the shoulders of another, larger, darker hill.
Ode to George Melly
If Bonzo the Dog got resurrected he could leap like you
If Satan the Snake ate Adam’s birthday cake he would creep like you
If Liz Bat Queen wasn’t pound-note green she’d hand the Crown to you –
For nothing on earth falls down like George Melly do.
For the Eightieth Birthday of Hoagy Carmichael
(22 November 1979)
Hoagland – white waterfall piano keys!
Old rockin’ chairs to help us all think mellow!
Always-Fall forests of star-tall trees
Growing chords of gold, brown, red and yellow!
Yes, Hoagland, friendliest of all countries.
Casual is, I guess, as casual does,
And you casually sing and casually knock us sideways.
Rolling songs riding the river’s tideways,
Mist-songs gliding, city-songs that buzz.
I wander Hoagland pathways when dusk falls.
Celia strolls with me as wild and tame
Hoagland bird-folk enchant us with their calls.
Anyone who has ears grins at your name.
Eighty years of great songs! I wish you would
Live on as long as your good Hoagland life feels good.
NOTES: a. Hoagland is Mr Carmichael’s official Christian name.
b. Celia is my wife’s name.
Happy Fiftieth Deathbed
D.H. Lawrence on the dodgem cars
Sniffing the smell of the electric stars
Cool black angel jumps up beside
Sorry David Herbert it’s the end of your ride
Thank you very much Mr D.H. Lawrence
Thank you very much
Thank you very much Mr D.H. Lawrence
For The Rainbow and such
D.H. Lawrence with naughty Mrs Brown
Trying to play her hurdy-gurdy upside-down
In comes Mr Brown and he says Veronica
May I accompany on my harmonica
Thank you very much Mr D.H. Lawrence
Thank you very much
Thank you very much Mr D.H. Lawrence
Back to your hutch
D.H. Lawrence met Freud in a dream
Selling stop me and buy one Eldorado ice cream
Siggie says you ought to call your stories
Knickerbocker Splits and Banana Glories
Thank you very much Mr D.H. Lawrence
Thank you very much
Thank you very much Mr D.H. Lawrence
Keep in touch
The Call
(or Does The Apple Tree Hate Plums?)
i was standing in my room
the whirling tape was singing:
i’m never going back
i’m never going back.
i read four lines by Elaine Feinstein
the tears jumped in my eyes.
i read eight lines by Allen Ginsberg
and electricity sprang
from the soles of my feet
and the electric flames
danced on the roof of my skull.
someone calling
my self calling to myself
the call i’d been hoping for
let yourself sing it said
let yourself dance
let yourself be
an apple tree
i wrote this daftness down
then smiled and smiled
and said aloud
thank you thank you
you may want money
you may want pears
you may want bayonets
or tears
shake me as hard as you like
only apples will fall
apples apples and apples
Lament for the Welsh Makers
WILLIAM DUNBAR sang piteously
When he mourned for the Makers of poetry.
He engraved their names with this commentary –
Timor mortis conturbat me.
DUNBAR, I’m Scot-begotten too,
But I would celebrate a few
Welsh masters of the wizardry –
The fear of death moves inside me.
‘After the feasting, silence fell.’
ANEIRIN knew how the dead smell.
Now he has joined their company.
The fear of death moves inside me.
TALIESIN, born of earth and clay,
Primroses, the ninth wave’s spray
And nettle flowers, where is he?
The fear of death moves inside me.
LLYWARCH’s sons numbered twenty-four.
Each one was eaten by the war.
He lived to curse senility.
The fear of death moves inside me.
TALHAEARN and AROFAN,
AFAN FERDDIG and MORFRAN
Are lost, with all their poetry.
The fear of death moves inside me.
MYRDDIN sang, a silver bell,
But from the battlefield he fell
Into a deep insanity.
The fear of death moves inside me.
GWALCHMAI, who sang of Anglesey
And a girl like snowfall on a tree
And lions too, lies silently –
The fear of death moves inside me.
CYNDDELW’s balladry was sold
For women’s kisses and men’s gold.
His shop is shut permanently.
The fear of death moves inside me.
HYWEL chanted Meirionnydd’s charm.
His pillow was a girl’s white arm.
Now he is whiter far than she.
The fear of death moves inside me.
PRYDYDD Y MOCH would smile to see
An Englishman – if he was maggoty.
Now he is grinning bonily.
The fear of death moves inside me.
DAFYDD AP GWILYM did women much good
At the cuckoo’s church in the green wood.
Death ended his sweet ministry.
The fear of death moves inside me.
GWERFYL MECHAIN wrote in cheerful tones
Of the human body’s tropical zones.
She shared DAFYDD’s hot philosophy.
The fear of death moves inside me.
IOLO GOCH wrote of any old thing –
Girls, feasts and even an English King.
They say he died most professionally.
The fear of death moves inside me.
For the North of Wales in her poverty.
He was a bird from heaven’s country.
The fear of death moves inside me.
LLYWELYN GOGH’s fist dared to knock
On the heavy door with the black steel lock.
A skull told him its history.
The fear of death moves inside me.
SION CENT, who sang thank you to his purse,
RHYS GOGH, who killed a fox with verse,
Sleep in the gravel dormitory.
The fear of death moves inside me.
IEUAN AP RHYDDERCH so scholarly,
GWERFUL MADOG of famed hospitality,
LEWYS GLYN COTHI who loved luxury –
The fear of death moves inside me.
DAFYDD AP EDMWND’s singing skill
Thrilled through all Wales. Then it fell still.
LEWYS MON wrote his elegy.
The fear of death moves inside me.
BEDO BRWNLLYS, IEUAN DEULWYN,
GUTYN OWAIN, TUDUR PENLLYN,
All exiles in Death’s monarchy.
The fear of death moves inside me.
Life was dark-coloured to TUDUR ALED.
WILLIAM LLYN brooded on the dead.
SION TUDUR mocked all vanity.
The fear of death moves inside me.
DIC HUWS dedicated a roundelay
To a girl by the name of Break of Day.
Night broke on both of them, remorselessly –
The fear of death moves inside me.
And hundreds have since joined the towering choir –
Poets of Wales, like trees on fire,
Light the black twentieth century.
The fear of death moves inside me.
Oh DYLAN THOMAS, as bright as nails,
Could make no kind of a living in Wales
So he died of American charity.
The fear of death moves inside me.
Terror of death, terror of death,
Terror of death, terror of death,
That drumbeat sounds relentlessly.
The fear of death moves inside me.
Since we must all of us ride down
The black hill into the black town,
Let us sing out courageously.
The fear of death moves inside me.
The black lungs swell, the black harp sighs,
Whenever a Welsh maker dies.
Forgive my nervous balladry.
Timor mortis conturbat me.
LOVE, THE APEMAN, CURSES,
BLESSINGS AND FRIENDS
Good Day
the day was like molten glass
i sauntered around with a carnival heart
picking up the puppies other people threw away
and arranging them in my pouch
yes the day was like molten glass
so i took my spade down the old peninsula
dug a channel across its neck and watched the sea jump through
then drank to the health of a new island
well the day was like molten glass
sunshine greeting me like a big irish doctor
blackberries tapping out a rhythm on their leaves
tight enough and bright enough to set a donkey dancing
i said the day was like molten glass
the fingers of the cruising breezes
massaged the tensions out of my head
and i loved my love with an a and an ab and everything down to zed
Celia Celia
When I am sad and weary
When I think all hope has gone
When I walk along High Holborn
I think of you with nothing on
Footnotes on Celia Celia
Used to slouch along High Holborn
in my gruesome solo lunch-hours.
It was entirely lined
with Gothick insurance offices
except for one oblong block of a shop
called Gamages,
where, once,
drunk, on Christmas Eve,
I bought myself a battery-operated Japanese pig
with a chef’s hat on top of his head
and a metal stove which lit up red
and the pig moved a frying pan up and down with his hand