Collected Poems Page 13
past three.
Unlikely
It seems unlikely now
that I shall ever nod in
the winning goal for Everton
and run around Wembley with the cup.
Unlikely too
that I shall rout
the Aussies at Lords
with my deadly inswingers
that I shall play
the romantic lead in a Hollywood film
based on the Broadway musical
in which I starred
that I shall be a missionary
spreading wisdom
and the Word of God
amongst our pagan bretheren
it all seems unlikely now
and so I seek dreams more mundane
ambitions more easily attained
a day at the seaside
a poem started
a change of beard
an unruly orgasm
a new tracksuit
and at the end of each day
I count my successes
(adding 10 if I go to bed sober)
by thus keeping one pace ahead of myself
I need never catch up with the truth
It seems unlikely now
that you will enter this room
close the curtains
and turn back the clock.
Waving at Trains
Do people who wave at trains
Wave at the driver, or at the train itself?
Or, do people who wave at trains
Wave at the passengers? Those hurtling strangers,
The unidentifiable flying faces?
They must think we like being waved at.
Children do perhaps, and alone
In a compartment, the occasional passenger
Who is himself a secret waver at trains.
But most of us are unimpressed.
Some even think they’re daft.
Stuck out there in a field, grinning.
But our ignoring them, our blank faces,
Even our pulled tongues and up you signs
Come three miles further down the line.
Out of harm’s way by then
They continue their walk.
Refreshed and made pure, by the mistaken belief
That their love has been returned,
Because they have not seen it rejected.
It’s like God in a way. Another day
Another universe. Always off somewhere.
And left behind, the faithful few,
Stuck out there. Not a care in the world.
All innocence. Arms in the air. Waving.
Flying
from the ground
one sees only the arse end of clouds
those bits of the blanket
tucked under
Flying
one sees across the counterpane
rumpled, morning white,
as if the earth had spent
another restless night
Newsflash
In a dawn raid
early this morning
Gendarmes arrested
a family of four
found bathing
on a secluded beach
outside Swansea
Later in the day
tracker dogs
led German police officers
to the scene of a picnic
near Brighton.
Salmonpaste sandwiches
and a thermos of tea
were discovered.
The picnickers however
escaped.
Postcard
iceflow sighted
off Newquay
and they’re surfing
in the High Street.
It’s women and children first
in the T.V. lounge
and at lunchtime
there was an oilslick
in my soup
‘Having a wonderful time
Wish you were her’
dawnmare on 24th St
talking
like we’d known eachother for years.
One hand on your heart
the other on my guitar
you pledge your troth.
A prostitute
takes a swing at someguy
with a ketchup bottle.
No one takes much notice
least of all the guy.
4 a.m. already.
Known eachother less than an hour
when I stumbled into the last ounce
of Paul Colby’s party
(one of those Village Frontier scenes,
bagels, bangles and beans).
Someenchantedevening
acrossacrowdedroom etc.
I can’t believe my luck.
Then you tell me you need heroin
and could I let you have seven dollars.
Together we go to the counter
and I pay 50 cents for the coffee.
As we leave, the prostitute screams
and reaches for the ketchup.
It’s getting light.
I give you four dollars, all I have.
You kiss goodbye, no reason now to stay
i walk to my hotel, a poem’s throw away.
Incident at a Presidential Garden Party
Taking tea in front of the White House.
Uninvited, a forty-ton diesel truck
Bursts through the railings
and skids across the lawn.
Tables are turned. Salads tossed
to the grass, canapés to the wind.
Colonels and creamcakes
squelch in the mad career.
Senators scream, tyres squeal,
underlings crunched underwheel.
Out of control, the juggernaut
surges towards the President.
No one moves. Slow motion now,
as in a dream. Half-smiling
he turns to face it. Smash.
Smithereens. Then silence.
The Great Man dusts his suit
ensures his tie is straight.
The truck is given the kiss of life.
But too late.
There’s Something Sad
There’s something sad
about the glass
with lipstick on its mouth
that’s pointed at and given back
to the waitress in disgust
Like the girl with the hair-lip
whom
no one
wants
to
kiss.
What the Littlegirl Did
The littlegirl
pulled up her bellyskin
like a vest
and examined her chest
spleen, kidneys and the rest
as a measled child a rash.
Sugar and spice
and everything nice
that’s what littlegirls are made of
So she put in a hand
and pulled out a gland
and said: ‘What a strange girl am I’
The horse’s mouth
They bought the horse
in Portobello
brought it home
could hardly wait
installed it in the living room
next to knitted dinner plate
Next to ashtray
(formerly bedpan)
euphonium
no one can play
camel-saddle dollypeg
wooden gollywog with tray
Near a neo
deco lampshade
(a snip at
thirty-seven quid)
castanets and hula-hoop
trunk with psychedelic lid
Under front end
of a caribou
next to foam-
filled rollerskate
(made by a girl in Camden Lock
– she of knitted dinner plate)
Uprooted from
its carousel
the painted horse
now laid
to waste
amidst expensive bric-à-brac
and sterile secondhand bad taste
***
And each night as Mr and Ms Trend
in brassbed they lie dreaming
the horse in downstairs darkness
mouths a silent screaming.
Poor Old Dead Horses
Don’t give your rocking-horse
To the old rag and bony
He’ll go straight to the knacker
And haggle for money
The stirrups are torn off
The bridle and harness
Chopped up for firewood
It is thrown on the furnace
And the water that boils
Is chucked down the sluices
To wash away what remains
Of poor old dead horses.
My Busconductor
My busconductor tells me
he only has one kidney
and that may soon go on strike
through overwork.
Each busticket
takes on now a different shape
and texture.
He holds a ninepenny single
as if it were a rose
and puts the shilling in his bag
as a child into a gasmeter.
His thin lips
have no quips
for fat factorygirls
and he ignores
the drunk who snores
and the oldman who talks to himself
and gets off at the wrong stop.
He goes gently to the bedroom
of the bus
to collect
and watch familiar shops and pubs passby
(perhaps for the last time?)
The sameold streets look different now
more distinct
as through new glasses.
And the sky
was it ever so blue?
And all the time
deepdown in the deserted busshelter of his mind
he thinks about his journey nearly done.
One day he’ll clock on and never clock off
or clock off and never clock on.
My Busseductress
She is as beautiful as bustickets
and smells of old cash
drinks Guinness off duty
eats sausage and mash.
But like everyone else
she has her busdreams too
when the peakhour is over
and there’s nothing to do.
A fourposter upstairs
a juke-box inside
there are more ways than one
of enjoying a ride.
Velvet curtains on the windows
thick carpets on the floor
roulette under the stairs
a bar by the door.
Three times a day
she’d perform a strip-tease
and during the applause
say nicely ‘fares please’.
Upstairs she’d reserve
for men of her choice
invite them along
in her best clippie voice.
She knows it sounds silly
what would the police say
but thinks we’d be happier
if she had her way.
There are so many youngmen
she’d like to know better
give herself with the change
if only they’d let her.
She is as beautiful as bustickets
and smells of old cash
drinks Guinness off duty
eats sausage and mash.
But she has her busdreams
hot and nervous
my blueserged queen
of the transport service.
The Hippopotamusman
Into the world of the red glass bus
came a man with a face like a hippopotamus
Grotesqueeruptions made horrific
an otherwise normal ugly face
Wartsscrambled over his head
peeping between thin twigs of dry hair
like pink shiny sunsets
Hanging below the neckline
like grapes festering on a vine
And when he blinked
you could glimpse the drunken dance
in the whites of his eyes
like the flash of underpants
through unbuttoned trouserflies
Had the passengers been in groups
there might have been laughter
But they were all singles
and turning their faces to the windows
did not see the view
but behind the privacy of eyelids
had a mental spew
Limpinggropingly looking for a place
went the substandard man
with the hunchbacked face
and finding one sat
and beholding his mudstudded boots
the hippopotamusman
wondered whether it was wednesday.
The Icingbus
the littleman
with the hunchbackedback
creptto his feet
to offer his seat
to the blindlady
people gettingoff
steered carefully around
the black mound
of his back
as they would a pregnantbelly
the littleman
completely unaware
of the embarrassment behind
watched as the blindlady
fingered out her fare
***
muchlove later he suggested that instead
ofa wedding-cake they shouldhave a miniaturebus
made outof icing but she laughed
andsaid that buses werefor travelling in
and notfor eating and besides
you cant taste shapes.
Just another Autumn day
In Parliament, the Minister
for Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness
announces, that owing to
inflation and rising costs
there will be no Autumn
next year. September, October
and November are to be
cancelled, and the Government
to bring in the nine-month year instead.
Thus will we all live longer.
Emergency measures are to be
introduced to combat outbreaks
of well-being, and feelings
of elation inspired by the season.
Breathtaking sunsets will be
restricted to alternate Fridays
and gentle dusks prohibited.
Fallen leaves will be outlawed
and persons found in possession
of conkers, imprisoned without trial.
Thus will we all work harder.
The announcement caused little reaction.
People either way don’t really care
No time have they to stand and stare
Looking for work or slaving away
Just another Autumn day.
The Last Strike
On Monday next
Undertakers are going on strike
Crematorium workers and gravediggers
Will be coming out in deepest sympathy
A state of emergency is to be declared
Soldiers who can be spared
From driving fire-engines, trains and bread vans
Will be called in to bury the dead
Throughout the country
There have been reports of widespread
Panic-dying
Conservative Government Unemployment Figures
Conservative Government.
Unemployment?
Figures.
Work-to-rule
Owing to an increase
in the cost of printing
this poem will be less
than the normal length.
In the face of continued
economic crises, strikes,
&nb
sp; unemployment and V.A.T.
it offers no solutions.
Moreover, because of
a recent work-to-rule
imposed by the poet
it doesn’t even rhyme.
The Leader
I wanna be the leader
I wanna be the leader
Can I be the leader?
Can I? I can?
Promise? Promise?
Yippee, I’m the leader
I’m the leader
OK what shall we do?
A Fair Day’s Fiddle
Why can’t the poor have the decency
to go around in bare feet?
Where’s the pride that allows them
to fall behind on video recorders?
Such ostentation’s indiscreet
when we can hardly afford as
much. They all smoke, of course,
and fiddle while the nation burns.
(Electric meters usually, and gas.)
And note, most have central heating.
Moonlighting’s too romantic a word
for what’s tantamount to cheating.
It’s a question of priorities, I suppose,
give them money and it goes on booze.
Why can’t the poor be seen to be poor?
Then we could praise the Lord, and give them shoes.
out of sequence
A task completed everyday
keeps sin and boredom both at bay
is what his mother used to say.
In a shop doorway
at the back of Skelhorne Street
a man in his early forties
grinning and muttering
is buttering a piece of bacon
with a pair of rusty scissors.
They are only nail scissors