GOLEM HEIGHTS
Ah Golem, they call you Yossele
They say you can make yourself invisible
And raise spirits from the dead
Then you rest on the Sabbath
On your dark and bloody bed
Ah Golem, kneaded into your shapeless husk
Created by the sages
Return to your dust.
Ah Golem, man of clay
You bowed before us once
Give us our bread today.
IDLE MUSINGS
Right now,
I do not need the demon lover
Or the secret longings
Which call me from the deepest shadows.
I only want lies…
Sweet and sensual lies…
Easing me into peace.
Or make them truths if you so desire
But tell me nothing
That…
I do not need…
To hear
NOISE
Decibelisation was old
When Dresden’s china charred the ashes
When the war to end all wars
Turned Flanders fields to mushy poppies
When Cromwell’s convoys rattled on
The cobbled streets of old Kilkenny
And still,today, those echoes throb
When walking down a quiet lane, I hear
The rumbles of some distant noisy mob.
MILLENNIALS
Millennials are cool
Millennials rule
When millennials go to school
And when millennials get sick
They stay at home
Because they are not thick
Unlike non-millennials
Who do deserve some stick.
Millennials are never sad
Though they are sometimes bad
The way millennials can be
Because they have history
On their side.
Millennials are mostly bilingual
And sometimes nonwhite
Millennials are never racist
And they seldom talk shite
Millennials deserves some veneration
Because Millennials come bearing gifts
From the silent generation
IN 1963
In 1963
When Philip Larkin wrote verse
That nobody thought was twee
Christine Keeler was the girl for me
Though Mandy Rice Davis
Could just as easily ‘save us’
In 1963
Henry Cooper knocked down Mohammed Ali
Otherwise known as Cassius Clay
And Mr Profumo
When asked ‘who do you know?’
Said: ‘Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) –
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles’ first LP’.
(with apologies to Philip Larkin)
EINSTEIN’S EYES
Einstein’s eyeballs
Are in a jar
In a safe deposit box
Somewhere in New York
His brain is somewhere in the vicinity too –
not altogether in one piece admittedly –
A bacon slicer was allegedly utilised.
His wish was to be cremated
And his ashes scattered in a secret location
But if it happened
It was minus the aforementioned parts.
‘Having his eyes means his life was not ended’
He’s not dead because I have his eyes’
So says Henry Abrams
The current keeper of those genius eyes
(though rumours are that an auction is imminent)
‘He’s not dead because I have his eyes’
How creepy is that?
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HIT ME WITH YOUR SELFIE STICK
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
(With apologies to Ian Dury and the Blockheads)
HOCKNEY
High in the Hollywood hills
In the shadows of Sunset Boulevard
Hockney is dabbling again.
A copy of Mulholland Drive rests against the studio wall;
Outside, the land drops away;
A jungle of exotic palms and ferns
With a swimming pool at the bottom
Not much used anymore.
He doesn’t go out much these days, he says;
‘I go to the dentist , the doctor, the bookstore
And the marijuana store
And that’s about it.
I’m much too deaf to go out
I don’t really have a social life
Because socialising is talking and listening
And I can’t really listen any more’.
Okay David,
But really, the marijuana store!
I wonder if it’s the one on Venice beach
Where the aged musculatorians of Muscle beach
Tramp with regularity to the nearby marijuana clinic
To see the marijuana doctors,
In their neat green cross uniforms,
Who will prescribe some medical marijuana
For forty bucks
Or thereabouts
To anybody who needs it.
When I’m working again I feel thirty,
And when I smoke I feel like Picasso, he says
Yeah, David, okay
But that’s not the work
That’s the weed.
DRACULA AND OTHER NIGHT CREATURES
Nights when we were young
We raced the wind;
Banshees in our wake
Dracula lying in wait.
We had left him oozing blood
From the stake wedged in his chest
In the Rainbow Cinema.
But with vampires you could never tell
Hair slicked back, stiff with Brylcreem,
Newly perched on our Raleigh three-speeds
(with dynamo)
We explored the world,
Our winkle-pickers pointing the way.
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