TIGER BAY
How long have they sat there,
Unnoticed?
Granite haunches
Tensed in the sand
Brunting the snarling sea
Washed over again and again
Licking endless salt wounds away.
From these high cliffs I see them clearly
Wild creatures
Waiting patiently for prey
Yesterday it was desolate;
Now there are tigers in the bay
IS ED SHEERIN AN ANDROID?
Everywhere you look these days he’s there
Ed Sheerin
Strumming his plastic guitar
Smiling his geeky smile
Singing in his whiny voice
Best Album, Best Solo Artist
Come on, get real!
Writing his colour bling lyrics
Peddling his simpering vanilla sound
Sounding like his tongue got stuck in a mouse-trap
Then there’s his inane grin
His funky waistcoats
And his sexless chin
There’s more sex appeal in a pillow case
And he’s not even gay!
I suspect he is an android
That makes soothing noises when you pluck a string on its back
And I bet that close up he smells of WD40
GIGGS BOSUN COLLIDER
Yeah, I met Giggs
He was a bosun wasn’t he?
Plying the East India route
Yeah, that’s right
Rebooting the particle smasher he was.
I saw him doing it once;
Not much scope for that kind of malarkey out here
I thought at the time.
And what did the rebooting do?
What did it find?
Nothing that I could see.
Maybe because there something else on his mind
And now they call it the Bosun Giggs Collider.
Large Haddock Collider, I think you will find
So what happened to Giggs?
Giggs? Oh he disappeared somewhere in the South China Seas.
Now he tells me! Do you mind if I sing?
If I die tonight bury me
In my favourite yellow patent leather shoes
With a mummified cat and a cone-like hat
‘Cos I’ve got the Giggs Bosun Blues…
WIDE, WIDE WOMEN
What is it with young women with buggies?
Both seem to get wider with each passing day
And use the pavement as a playground
Where their feckless children can play
Skateboards, scooters and other diverse playthings
Are added to the cigarettes – usually Kings,
That hang permanently from pinkified faces,
Beneath this rainbow gathering of hairpieces
Adorning those many empty spaces.
The pavement, somehow, seems smaller these days.
REALITY CHECK
Busy hips and pouting lips
Powder the streets of cruel illusion
Sideways smiles and dark alley wiles
Add spice to the confusion
Of the boy who thought sex in the park
Might be a bit of a lark
Until he got unpleasently surprised in the dark
‘Hey! My heels are longer than your dick,
So put it away you scurvy little prick’.
CHASSEUR
Chasseur
Skyshrine
Gold-plated muzzer
Briglith
Brigand
Mantle of Kronsek
Stingers
Draconic Recognition
Drakota slingers
Void-sheltered stud
Night so Tender
Darklight wood
One of the best books I have read on the theatre, and on the people who people it,
is John Osborne’s DAMN YOU ENGLAND. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly.
Surprisingly, he has plenty of time for Brendan Behan. Here he is on their first meeting;
“Brendan Behan lurched into my life early one Sunday New York morning. Pounding on my hotel
room door. ‘Is anyone in this fucking cathouse alive?’ he roared. ‘My name is Brendan Behan.
I don’t smoke, I don’t eat and I don’t fuck, but I drink. You can always tell the quality
of a country by two things;its whores and its bread. And neither of them are any fucking good here’.
Brendans life was a ballad, the wild outpouring of a pure, forgiving heart. Who is there in Ireland
or England to take up his matchless song now?
SAN QUENTIN
Johnny Cash wore black because it was raining
Not to protect him from getting wet
But to show solidarity with the elements
Which to his mind had darkened perceptibly
Since he had begun to sing
San Quentin, he roared
I hate every inch of your name
And the prison bars responded
Reverberating down the endless corridors of shame
HE DREW FIRST
He drew first
But I drew better
Then, he always did fire blanks
While I put my trust in French Letters
C’est la vie
NIGHT LIGHT
A car pulls up to a red light
The owner has a feared animal look
Something screeches
For fourteen days now
The tiger has prowled
A gruesome half torso
Floats in a pool of blood
Somewhere close is an imp of the perverse
Buying a return ticket but not going anywhere.
He looks at his alarm clock
Blood red in the four a.m. nearly light
The hands are rotating backwards
Backwards
While all around him the candy-stripes flap in the breeze.
My Writing Life 