A DIFFERENT RACE
The lighted first-floor windows illuminate them
Their good sides always facing outwards
Like so many beautiful birds they perch;
Silently caged,
Mouthing ‘For Sale’ pleasantries
Outside
Others less beautiful ply the darkness
Stalked by vermin
And the ghosts of their childhood
There is a rage
Unfurling flags of despair;
‘Look at what you have done’
Some are shouting
‘Don’t you care?’
These articulate ones are the ugliest
The least loved
And the loneliest
SINGER WITH THE BAND
I grew up and Ambrose grew older
We were together when he died
I was left alone to cry
I don’t know who I am
Please let me speak to Lord Delfont
I have been swindled
A fortune has slipped through my fingers
‘Lord Delfont is on the other line
Can he call you back?’
Mr Eric Morley please;
‘Eric, I have been evicted from my flat
I have nowhere to go’.
‘But Kathy, my dear,
You must have thousands stashed away’.
Now they have sent me to St Lukes Mental Hospital;
‘Kathy Kirby’s here – in a mink coat,
I mean, has she come to entertain us?’
What’s the matter with your hair, Kathy?’
‘It’s mummy, she’s been pulling it out again’.
‘When I wear dark glasses, don’t you think I look like Norma?’
‘Norma?’
‘Norma Desmond, you know, Sunset Boulevard’.
Someone has stolen my legs
I cannot possibly go on stage
I am not the real Kathy Kirby
All the girls in the street have Kathy Kirby legs now.
I am being held prisoner in my flat
I am being possessed by Ambrose
The Queen Mother is in me.
“Well, tell her to piss off!”
http://www.kathykirby.info/index.php?id=4
OLD ACQUAINTANCE
I see they have sent him down – again
A two stretch this time
I sold a typewriter for him once
And got six months for my trouble
(he got three, but swore it was my idea)
Then there was the time he
Asked me to burn his house down
‘Two hundred quid’ he said ‘easy money’
‘The insurance won’t twig it’
(when I declined, he did the job himself)
After that we lost contact for several years
He removed his wife and daughters to another town,
Where he was just as big a bastard – to them –
And to the world in general
Drinking, gambling, big-mouthing and beating,
Mostly his wife,
Till she put a slit near his throat
With a carving knife
Left to his own devices
He hung misery about him like a shroud;
He went to Knock for a week
And returned a changed man
Flowers from Interflora, presents for the girls,
Flannel for everyone else.
She relented of course.
They don’t speak much about him in the town now
A nudge and a wink
When his wife appears;
‘She must have known what was going on…
Doing that with his girls….
And she had him back!’
a poem in five minutes; yeah, I know, it shows!
FIVE MINUTE POEM
The Holy Spirit uni-sexed
And Christ cross-dressed
The liturgical variations are endless
Perhaps Mary sporting a head-dress?
Bring back sin
Masturbation is in – again
Not that it was ever really out
It’s just that people don’t like to flout
Their little peccadilloes ad nauseam
Otherwise we could surely expect a wanking symposium.
OLD MATTRESSES
They have raised a highway
Across our valley
And landscaped it
With blocks of windowed concrete.
Beneath, the river strangles itself
With shopping trolleys
And bits of old bicycles
Worn-out mattresses
And smashed-up pallets are everywhere
While a bloated condom
Flutters by on a piece of driftwood.
Painted hoarding-women
With rotating eyes
Compete for attention
With pram-pushing young love,
Their stilettos tap-dancing the hard shoulder
On a clear day
Juggernauts gleam in the sun
And rolled-up tabloids
Tell tall tales about Royalty
Or football….and Sex
I POSTED THIS POEM BEFORE BUT WITH THE CONTINUED POPULARITY OF THE SELFIE STICK I THINK IT IS WORTH ANOTHER POST. (WITH CONTINUED APOLOGIES TO IAN DURY AND THE BLOCKHEADS)
THE WAND OF NARCISSISM
In the deserts of Sudan
And the gardens of Japan
From Milan to Yucatan
Every woman, every man
Hit me with your selfie stick
Hit me, hit me
hit me now you selfish prick
Hit me, hit me, hit me
Hit me with your stupid stick
Hit me slowly, hit me quick
Hit me, hit me, hit me
With your stupid fucking selfie stick
.
Stephen Edgar has always been a favourite poet of mine. Born in Sydney in 1951 he spent a number of years in London, forming a friendship with fellow Australian poet Clive James, before returning home. This is a fine poem, as is Man In The Moon.
THE KISS
How can she do this now that it’s all changed,
Present her lips to kiss
As though that known face were the same as this
From which you’ve been estranged?
Of course it is. Here, now? Or then and there?
How can she sit down in her cloud of hair
And watch you as though you were someone else?
You are, of course, to her.
You were this rendezvous’s commissioner
And nobody compels
Your self-distressed attendance here but you.
So watch her do as only she can do.
She lifts her left hand to her left earlobe
And tugs the earring, slides
The hook half out and rubs at it and glides
It in, as its purple globe
Swings back and forth to tantalize your sight.
Soon she will do the same thing with the right.
A silver bracelet rides along one arm
Or settles at the wrist,
And lest adornment should seem prejudiced
The other has its charm
As well, made somehow perfect by the dent
That mars the curve of its encirclement.
And those two combs holding her hair in place,
Two combs of tortoiseshell—
And when she took them out, oh how it fell
At night around her face,
Which she would lift to you and shut her eyes,
That beauty come to seem beauty’s disguise,
And whether by desire or candlelight,
Her skin took on a glow,
An alabaster lucency, and so
She leant back to invite
Your open-mouthed assent. And you would hold
That pose like two Klimt lovers cloaked in gold.
And that first night you slid the purple shift
Over her shoulders and
Peeled gently downwards, leaving her to stand
In Aphrodite’s gift,
And sinking with her garment to the floor,
Made moist the shadowed fold you knelt before.
How can she do this now that you’re estranged,
Stand in her cloud of hair
As though she were the same, though well aware
That everything is changed
(Of course she is), presenting for your kiss
The mouth that was the mouth that is not this.
CLUBBED BY KINDNESS
Clubbed by kindness
I sit here stunned
By the knowledge that
You loved me once
Possibly.
No room for any doubt on my side
But you were forbidden fruit
About to fall from the tree
Trouble was
I never tried to catch you
Not really.
And now I have fallen further
Than you ever could
And there you are
Somehow
To pick me up
PEARL ENCRUSTED GATES
It’s the waiting you see
For something to happen
Or not, as the case may be
This limbo life limps on
Nothing changes
But another day gone
Maybe tomorrow I’ll wake
Without a new ache
And think – ah nothing’s wrong
But the delusion persists,
Or is it illusion?
That a mighty fall awaits
Outside these pearl encrusted gates
FROM THE WORD MUSEUM
Shivelat’s-hen
Shammocking dog
Shanks’- pony
Shuttle-gathering
Ramfeezled
Raw-gabbit
Redder’s lick
Rattle-bladder
Puke-stocking
Pulpitarian
Postillion
Pseudologer
Pizzle-grease
Pismire
My Writing Life 