I I was at the Royal Court today and saw Harold Pinter
2 Oh yeah?
I He spoke to me.
2 What did he say?
I Asked me where the loo was.
2 No, he fucking didn’t.
I You’re right, he didn’t.
2 He asked that American shitbag Le Butt…Le Bute…Labute
I How do you know?
2 He told me.
I Who…Labute?
2..Yeah.
I No, he didn’t.
2 You’re right, he didn’t. He wasn’t even there. Fuck, I wasn’t even there.
Harold pinter wrote the following poem as a comment on the Gulf War and the USA involvement in it.
It was rejected for publication by the Independent, the Observer, the Guardian (on the grounds it was ‘a family newspaper’), the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. The last named, in particular, aroused Pinter’s ire by accompanying rejection with the assurance that the poem had ‘considerable force’ and that it shared the author’s views on the United States.
Harold says; ‘I started to write this poem on the plane going to the Edinburgh Festival in August 1991. I had a rough draft by the time we landed in Edinburgh. It sprang from the triumphalism, the machismo, the victory parade, that were very much in evidence at the time. So that is the reason for “We blew the shit out of them.”‘ Most editors used the words ‘obscene’ justify its non-publication. But that is the whole point:This poem uses obscene words to describe obscene acts and obscene attitudes.’
I GUESS NOT MUCH HAS CHANGED SINCE PINTER WROTE IT IN 1991
AMERICAN FOOTBALL
Hallelullah!
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
We blew the shit right back up their own ass
And out their fucking ears.
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
They suffocated in their own shit!
Hallelullah.
Praise the Lord for all good things.
We blew them into fucking shit.
They are eating it.
Praise the Lord for all good things.
We blew their balls into shards of dust,
Into shards of fucking dust.
We did it.
Now I want you to come over here and kiss me on the mouth.
I KNEW KENSAL GREEN BEFORE ITS RISE
I knew Kensal Rise, or is that Kensal Green
When upward mobile and genteel
Were hardly to be seen
When Harlesden was such a pain
And we all avoided poor Scrubs Lane.
The Harrow Road was long and lonely
Fit for trucks and tractors only
Most estate agents did a swerve
And said that sellers had a nerve
To say it was just off Queens Park
Where gentrified had made its mark
The cemetery stood gaunt nearby
With its patchwork bricks
And walls so high
Though Ladbroke Grove might still be seen
By standing on a mausoleum
Queen Victoria and Mark Twain
To Kensal Rise they both came
And a library they did endow
That’s the talk of London now
Today there’s cafes, bars, boutiques
And Chamberlayne’s the hippest street
Where Lily Allen and Sophie Dahl
Rub shoulders with the great and small
And Ian Wright and Zadie Smith
Have made the area quite a hit.
I wonder if they all will stay
Like Harold Pinter to decay
With William Makepeace Thackeray
My Writing Life 