ON
A BIRTHDAY
I
Now,
like a classic Chinese sage,
I’ll
turn to verses to defy old age,
Scorning
the raw disordered city
For
the true poet’s envy, spite, self-pity.
And
this is fitting for a sad old fart
Since
art itself’s a dying art.
For
soon the maker’s role will be
Killed
by the Singularity –
When
supermarket checkout tills
Outdo
Rubens on our baked bean bills,
And
any bar-room stool ad libs
Dirty
jokes to crack your ribs;
The
lonely hotel guest’s beguiled
By
wardrobes wittier than Oscar Wilde,
While
every lift’s a soloist
With
better melodies than Brahms and Listz.
Yet
let our younger art creators
Lose
their livelihood to elevators –
I’ll
cruise through these final days
Of
history’s temporary literary phase
In
which inflamed imagination
Strong
from pre-Web masturbation
Served
a readership who’d never seen
Pixels
flit across a
screen.
For
nowadays who feels at home
Hugging
alone some droning tome
All
in immobile monochrome?
Given
the choice,
Who
but losers toil through Joyce?
What
wilderness of empty days
Drives
a man to Auden’s plays?
No
one good at outdoor games
Endures
the gruesome Henry James.
Only
folk that love forgets
Wrestle
the dreadful Four Quartets.
Of
those who groan through Wordsworth’s Prelude
High proportions
look like hell nude.
Already
see the world forsake
Verse
like a turbid ox-bow lake –
A
place of mayflies, gadflies, fly-by-nights
And
intestinal parasites,
Where
we, with self-inflicted futile duty,
Fish
the infected pit for truth and beauty.
And
this is why: beauty and truth
One
day slapped us through the gloom of youth;
Amid
this dolor, dead men’s verses
Eased
our adolescent ache like curses;
Leaving
grief we’d briefly dwell
In
walls of words where all is well,
Where
love and lust and the world’s wrongs
Are
vented outward into songs,
And
secret teenage dreams and doubt
On
legs of lines can stride about.
So
come with me, you sorry crew
Bereft
of better things to do,
Your
lives and loves so much amiss
You’re
sitting here and reading this.
Unkillable,
the need to speak
Drives
our tireless treks that seek
Through
sumps of dullness undeterred
These
machines for being heard –
Poetry,
the perfect word.
II
I’ve
rhymed for lust, for praise, for gain
But scribble
nowadays to check my brain,
Penning
each sonnet, song or saga
For
reassurance that I’m not yet gaga.
I
might unknowingly conclude a line
With
some deluded not-quite rhyme,
Or
reach for rhymes I can’t quite hold
Like William
McGonagall pursuing his hat in a strong breeze that is also cold,
Or
like McGonagall in a Dundee tavern groping drunkenly for an exit,
Or
like some would-be humorous versifier who pictures McGonagall drowning in
the silvery Tay and splashing blindly for the lights
of a far-off shore and
thereby hopelessly over-eggs it.
For
though composing through our charmless youth
Clammy
voidings we confuse with truth
(The
notions trite, the rhyming hackneyed)
Comforts
us for being acnied;
And though
through deserts of our middle years
We
pump our output into Beauty’s ears
(Our
hair departs, our bellies sag
But
handsome stanzas might secure a shag);
Yet
how much more old age
Demands
a recompense across the page –
Here
where a whip of wit confines
Our
disappointments in a cage of lines;
The
rabble multitudes of rage and woe
Kicked
into regimented row on row;
Compressed,
condensed, our pain so terse is
Crystallised
at last to verses.
So
let the fact I’m balder, sadder, fatter
Tame
itself to subject matter.
A
wasted life – ill-begun,
Bungled,
fearful, left undone –
Shaped
until a grace
appears
That
lays an absolution on these sixty years.
A
VERY HIPPY CHRISTMAS
Written
on a Christmas card, 1972
Here’s
hoping, Clive, they’ve stopped your dope and dole,
And
scrumpy’s what there’s awful lack of, Annie.
If
not, I’m sending from this northern hole
To
the land of clotted cream and black Afghani,
Of jam and acid tabs and skinny dips,
GREETINGS AT CHRISTMASTIME begrudged through twisted lips.
“Sid,”
you say, “so tell us, how’s the weather?
Raw
we suppose, all icicles and sleet,
And
the snow, down here a swan’s shed feather,
Is
ready-blackened when it meets the street.
Ice cracks the cobbles and the sunrise stalls,
And dogs with lifted legs are welded to workhouse walls.”
True.
And clearer means colder. Rivers freeze,
Running
in a tunnel under dull glass
Round
bicycle bones. We’ve teeth on the eaves
And
spikey like a bed of nails the grass.
A low sun in a corner of the day,
As weak as watercolour yellow, turns away.
Today
I nipped outside to grab a nice
Shovelful
of coke and nutty slack.
Instead,
with contact lenses formed of ice
And stalactites
of snot, I staggered back
To hug the empty hearth and curse in vain
(Through windows double-glazed with panes of frozen rain)
The
tribes of fearsome folk who crowd the town,
Who
toil upstream against the level gales,
Coughing
creatures with a barbed wire frown
And
faces like places where April fails,
Who spring and summer through will still complain
For the lead necklace of December days again.
Tonight
I risked my life and had a jar.
The
landlord’s wife was cheering on a fight.
Her
husband hadn’t time to tend the bar
With
helping someone set a cat alight.
It was a girl trying to get it lit:
One of the posher sort, the type that doesn’t spit.
I
blushed: she laughed. I shook: she bit my ear.
With
football forwards’ thighs she pressed my knee
Till
I ejaculated thus: My dear,
Your
weight is wealth, it’s like gold, like rich fee,
And heavy as treasure your precious head.
“Are you trying to say I’m fucking fat?” she said.
I
said, Oh tell me how to serve you best,
What
track to take till Time’s tread shall tire;
What
foe to fight, what golden fleece to fetch;
Tell
me, tell me, I’d win you your desire
Though bought with crimson coins my dead head bled.
“All right. I’ll have a pint of bitter then,” she said.
I
said, Oh party of my life and soul
Remove
the ticking apple of my heart
And
bite. We are one of a kind, a whole,
A
part of a heart that is never apart.
“The only thing we have in common,
Is you’re a man and I’m a woman.”
So I
left, wheezing through the freezing night
Where
winds will whittle you to the white bone;
Where
the streams and the smiles are locked up tight
And
cold enchants whole bus queues into stone.
A skull-like moon leaned over with a grin
On suffering Sid, alone at the cold world’s rim.
But
stop: through all this summer only hides,
Waiting
where May-blooms clutch their roots and hold
And
keep the secret – Life – that still abides
Though
mean mid-winter grips, vice-cold.
I too will clutch my root and hold and stay
And be daft with the daffodils, dreaming of May.
It’s
a dream of how Eden begins:
Bursting
the doors of dawn on the first day,
His whiskers
filled with lightning-bolts and grins
On
green scene, flower bower, hoe-high hay,
The lord of Devonshire mornings has come
Where I lie, smiling at last, asleep in the sun.
from … SEX
CHANGE AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL
Who
All
those years had the use of you?
On a
train of London windows,
Through
suburbs of rooms, and beds like meadows,
How
you galloped bareback both astride
Love’s
curly-haired hide!
**
London
muttered in its slumbers
As
the pre-med pulled me under.
Rain,
Along
gutters, down drains
Clattered
like an anchor chain
As I
soared
Over
the roar of the Whitechapel Road,
Treading
water
Above
the Ripper’s favourite quarter
(Whose
murders
They
say betokened a surgeon’s),
And
thought I saw
In the
London Hospital far below –
**
Down
in the morgue the Doctor leaning
Over
the ladies softly breathing:
“What
is the meaning, the meaning, the meaning
Of
gash and ass?
Her
one and zero, semi-colon, exclamation mark, vowel and consonant, dot and dash?
And
who dared brave
Alive
this binocular gaze?”
**
Whose
hair fills the quilt
On
the bed in the house that Jack built?
Why
does water flow so slow
From
the big sink on the second floor?
And
the room of whose shoes?
And
why by the bath the dentist’s tools?
And
damp as a pubic pad
Whence
this wad in the shower trap?
Nevertheless
Spying
a spider in the bridal bed
Oh,
his dilemma of disgust
The
live spider or the spider crushed!
**
Whenever
he wanders Wapping strand
Mussels
squirt on either hand.
At
Greenwich Reach this dapper walker
Opens
oysters underwater.
He
strolls alone the Southend shore
And
liquid spills from the winkle stalls.
He
winks, now, and tips his cap
And
shapes stir on the fish-shop slab
To
watch Jack pass,
Flat
faces pressing the glass.
**
My
heart exposed
Is
chambered like a Chinese word.
My
guts depict
The
names of God in Arab script.
I’m a
monochrome tome
Trailing
a Playboy centrefold,
A
page from Gray’s
But
in a state of nature, though, without the names.
‘Look!’
Says
Jack: ‘Here is my book.
I
leave behind a
Bible
for the finder.’
**
Who’s
he
Shook
this shape from your belly tree?
Around,
carnivorous eyes of rivals, but
He
plucked you from those hooks.
Bared
like a butcher’s parcel,
Seeing
his hard-on
All
you wondered was
Oh,
oh, is this what I have to want?
**
In
fish-skin slippers
She
skips across the river glitter,
Splashes
snapping at
Her
ankles like a shark attack,
A
man-trap or hang-man’s hatch.
Later,
Insoucantly
as one might take a
Heathrow
Airport travelator,
Under
loins of London bridges
(Whiffier
than Oxfam britches),
Passing
black Embankment steps
(Water
lifting like a dress),
She
sees her lovers fall
Through
petticoats of spreading foam,
Submerging
there
To
choke on a rope of woven air.
**
On my
belly something like the words ‘I am’
Consisting
of two little roundy bits and one long one,
Which
is a sort of tap or spout
For venting
madness out.
**
Virginally
shy,
I
tried to hide my wet insides
(Full
as an egg,
Frail
as a Safeways plastic bag)
That
multi-coloured
Fell
out like a full cupboard,
The
cut
Smelling
of love.
**
The
old go slower and slower
And
here like bicycles at last fall over.
But
bright-eyed,
Under
the high tide of his hair line,
When
searchlights found
Zeppelins
swelling over London town,
And
the bulging truncheon
Of some
constable on point duty at a busy junction,
And
bursting from earth the Tube between
Aldgate
East and Stepney Green,
Girls'
flanks
Were
tauter than motorbike petrol tanks,
Their
lovely lack astride
Like
the missing bit on women's bikes.
The dick
is homeless now
That
he fought for once with the sweet girls of London town.
**
It’s
where her curves
Tighten
to a spiral, where her limbs merge.
It’s
a home’s heart,
New
loaf, gold bar, warm hearth;
Is
floating like a frisby where
Her
lovely lack, propped on nothing, surfs on air.
Is
hidden as the new moon
That
nevertheless rules;
Gathers
the world like an eye
Then
looks away.
Among
her limbs like loaves
It’s
a caper or clove.
God
gave her dough
One
fold more,
Though
the seal
Never
quite healed.
(Or
did a doctor
Cut
Cupid’s wound across her?)
It’s
the stair
That
isn’t there;
It’s
her drowned mouth,
Little
vowel, thatched house.
Her
smile glitters,
Where
she circles it in ripples.
It’s
lipped like a splash:
They
will rock in its outwash;
And
read between
Its
nested parentheses;
And
let it fly,
From
limbs they hope to untie;
And
revive
Her
sleepy middle eye,
Crying, ‘Lord let me pass
Her belly’s Welcome mat!’
**
The
tide was down like trousers
So we
crossed the rocks like razors
To
poke in raggy pools that smelled of pee.
Then
the moon silvered the sea
So
the pools were mirrors,
With
polyps, oysters, blind devourers –
Until
I woke,
The
sheets foaming over our throats.
**
I
dreamed I waked
As
lovers on my counterpane,
Little
as fingers, in single file,
Fell
to their fate from my inner thigh.
Then
from my window saw
The
river’s course below
Appeared
an empty trench because
Its all-enfolding
waters were
Our
common element like air.
A
wind of water lifted flags,
Bubbles
like balloons flew past,
And
over neighbour buildings swirled
Migrating
men instead of birds.
**
In
hospital gardens, weak and slow,
Roses
cold as crystals grow.
For
thirst
They
suck dirt.
Their
food
Is
sun, that pale soup.
Thin,
in rags,
They
shiver by the path
Where
I run to my love
Sick
with our rich blood.
BRIEF
Stale,
passionless and
grey
Ageing
flesh rehearses clay.
Tamed
thereby I make my way
Uncomplainingly
towards decay.
**
Whatever
thrills your body brought you
In
the end it turns to torture.
Joints
dissolve and hearts attack,
Our
bones our own relentless rack.
But no disease
Stings like these
Lacerating memories.
**
I
feel the fate of things I hold,
This
plate in bits, this table sold;
The
falling curtains, broken chair;
These
socks are lost, these trousers tear;
My rancid
underpants a wreck;
This
hat in rags around my neck.
And
then one day
A
soiled mattress dragged away.
**
It
leaves the bladder
Slides
down a ladder
Stops
for a smoke
Laughs
at a joke
A
donkey-back ride
The see-saw
and slide
Watches
TV
Swings
on a tree
Never
thinks about me
Oh
hurry up pee.
**
If a
man is snatched away,
Back
into yesterday,
And
yesterday flies back
Like
a lit window by a railway track
With
the small figure lost within,
How
is it for him
And
all the glad loud folk,
Gone
like smoke?
**
Goodbye,
goodbye,
Scar
on my left thigh.
Hail
and farewell,
Armpit
smell.
And
faithful legs and pigeon toes
Weak
eyes and pointy nose –
Goodbye
all those.
And
bye-bye likewise gob and knob
And
every hidden inner blob
That
mostly (thank you) did its job.
Farewell
flesh that did okay
At
giving me a place to stay
But
starts to whisper, “On your way,
I’m
tired of hauling you around all day,
Let me
be clay.”
**
Dead,
that bastard master who
Suspended
me from grammar school.
Dead
the railway gaffer pea-brain
Who
nearly crushed us with the steam crane.
Dead
or daft the magistrate
Who
fined my ass for ABH.
And
all those girls who turned me down –
Grey
and fat and dowdy now.
Thus
consoled
I
grow old, grow old.
**
Once upon a time my cock
Was happy as a cuckoo clock.
But cogs of time that once renewed it
Caught my wedding gear and chewed it.
Now my dick’s
Forever stopped at half past six.
Once it brimmed with optimism,
Spouting gouts of joy and jism,
Self-delighting, self-annointing,
Now this fountain’s downward pointing –
Just a hose
Ensuring urine clears my toes.
Once I chanted thrilling bits
From manuals for Airfix kits,
Extracts from the Highway Code,
The shops along the Old Kent Road,
The causes of the Civil War,
Requirements for a leg-before,
The workings of the off-side rule,
And half-forgotten junk from school
To stop me coming.
Now lady parts are only plumbing.
How I shouted, ‘Praise the Lord!”
How I came a spinal cord,
Bumping down from heaven’s gate,
Pumping out my body weight,
To hit the floor.
And here I’m stuck for ever more.
**
He’s
a
Sad old
geezer,
Past
lust or praise –
But
how chatter fills his days!
How
he chatters, clatters,
Flesh
in tatters
Just
a yellow old jaw bone
Dropped
by his headstone,
But
clackety-clack without pause
On
the pit’s rim his nasty jaws
And
yellow teeth and pointy chin.
Let’s
kick the thing in!