THE WALL
I stopped by our wall again today
Staring
Just staring
I saw an image of you
Fleeting
As you hurried by
It was like somebody
Had stood on my grave
You in all your finery
Mirrored on a blank wall
Blank
Just like your face.
Writing
COWBOYS AND INDIANS
COWBOYS AND INDIANS
The Wild West has migrated east
The Middle East near and far
Where the horse has been superseded
By the pick-up, the land cruiser and the car
They race across vast deserts firing bullets in the air
If there’s a name on any bullet
Well, no one seems to care
Shooting up the town was once the pastime of the bad guys
Now it is blowing up the houses
And killing little girls and boys.
The bombs rain down on everyone and everything
Where once it was just arrows
Fired by some pesky redskin
Looking down the barrel of a gun
Can be intimidating
When it’s eighteen foot long
There are no six-guns or shotguns any more
But rocket launchers, machine guns
And others of such enormous bore
Playing cowboys and Indians was once a pleasant game
But when your opponent must be beheaded
Then it isn’t quite the same.
DECIBELISATION
DECIBELISATION
Decibelisation was already old
When Dresden’s china first charred the ashes;
When the war to end all wars
Turned Flanders’s field to poppies,
And when Cromwell’s convoys rattled
The cobbled streets of old Kilkenny.
And still the echos throb today.
LEAKING CIVIL SERVANTS
CIVIL SERVANTS SHOULD NOT LEAK
He said it, my God he said it!
Brazen-faced, to the watching nation
‘They should not leak’, he said
‘After all, they are servants of the Crown’.
Leaking in public? How revolting!
And where would it begin?
A seepage from the ears perhaps?
Or a welling-up from beneath
All those virginal starched collars?
Or would it occur in the nether regions?
Visible only as a steady trickle
Down around the ankles.
A telephoned enquiry brought no joy;
‘I can assure you, Sir, we have
No leaking Civil Servants here
Why don’t you try MI 5’
A DIFFERENT RACE
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
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
SHOULD OLD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT
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!’
FIVE MINUTE POEM
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.
MORE OLD MATTRESSES
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
CLUBBED BY KINDNESS
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
My Writing Life 