All aboard

After several weeks of writing on some fairly heavy topics (WW1 & macroeconomics in particular), here's a little bit of dirty doggerel about the introduction of a bus run on biogas from human waste and thrown-away food, a short and silly piece about the value of waste which I used as light relief to finish last night's Show Me The Money exhibition-related set.

Poo bus

Humanure and dustbinned food,
fermented dung replacing crude,
unwanted BOGOF don’t just bin it,
join the waste race, better, win it.

Come passengers, roll up investors,
see the new bio-digester,
fed with passed organic crap,
pumps out methane, sewage gas.

Let lorries, coaches, vans and cars,
even speedboats run on farts,
CH₄ in every vehicle,
Fuel of the people, faecal,

Our motions give its motive power,
use the rest to grow rose-flowers,
be proud to flush a well-formed do,
and hop aboard the Number Two.

Remembrance when there's no-one to remember

Last night I performed a sequence of new First World War poems as part of Eastleigh Museum's WWI centenary exhibition. Whatever your feelings about the centenary events and remembrance, for many people it is a deeply emotional issue. So, when I was asked to write on this subject I knew it would be difficult, not because of my own feelings, but because (a) the audience was likely to care what I did in a way that probably isn't usually the case, (b) it would be a 'traditional' audience - not what I'm used to, and (c) it risked breaking one of the golden rules, namely 'write what you know about'. I was fairly confident I could take care with (a) and (b) - there are times to seriously challenge an audience, but this was never going to be one of them, so 'contemporary but respectful' was the tone to aim for. However, (c) was tricky. I don't come from a military family, my historical period of choice is early medieval, and 'the horrors of war' were covered by the poets who were actually there - Wilfred Owen and so on - and I have no urge to compete with them! However, after a bit (well, a lot) of thought I came up with the idea of everything being second-hand as no-one who experienced WWI is still alive. Everything we know is from books, recordings, film, photographs, eye-witness accounts, museum artifacts etc. This became the underlying concept for my writing and, even though my set was book-ended by Geoff from the Chameleon Theatre Company reciting a selection of well-known poems of the time (yes, those I didn't want to compete with), the positive reception suggests it worked and I'm happy with the way the set turned out. So, here is the opening poem from my set - I hope you enjoy it.


Spectres

What is left?
Now all the eye-witnesses have gone
everything is second, third, fourth hand
and so on. Black-and-white photos,
grainy stills from rare films,
clips of aerial reconnaissance
or TV documentaries,
interviews made just in time,
books and files of history and opinion
filling shelf-miles,
terabytes of networked drives,
and artefacts preserved behind museum glass.
Post-bombardment celluloid from Paaschendale,
Photoshopped and mashed up with
War of the Worlds tripods
ignites a YouTube debate about
what is dissing or respectful.
For this is ancient history to most,
something abstracted
on interactive whiteboards,
as homework,
in GCSE revision notes
and weekend battle re-enactments.
The era of slow massed ranks
encouraged by threats
and prods of officers’ revolvers
has passed unmourned
along with Haig and Joffre;
no more suicidal nods
over-the-top tugs
of a thousand, million forelocks,
for ‘our betters’ are passé,
and the post-traumatic
casualties of nerves and mind
have at least been pardoned, still
the idea of some sort of heroism lingers,
the echo of, for good or ill,
our martial ancestry,
all those who chose to fight and fall,
and as poppies fade at last from red to white,
what is left?
Remembrance, not memory, is all.

Chrome poles and foxholes

With the West now bombing Isis, whatever good that will do, I couldn't help noticing that Southampton has a lap-dancing club of the same name, and so a little satire was born - currently a work-in-progress...

The day the West dropped bombs on Isis

Cash in the wasitband’s medieval,
objectifying, shallow – yes, but not evil,
seedy, that’s true, thoughts unclean,
small uprisings, some scenes are obscene,
barbaric acts need reprisals it seems
but such punishment’s too harsh, in extremis,
high explosives used on unarmed ecdysists,
the day the West dropped bombs on Isis.

Some general somewhere, deep in the Pentagon,
bullet-headed, a limited lexicon,
lost by long words, confused the terms
Terpsichore and terrorists,
gyrators and jihadists,
shaking their fundaments
doesn’t make them fundamentalists.

Military Intelligence didn’t check their facts,
planned the attack using Google Maps,
managed to mix up bunkers in Iraq
with a slightly cheesy city-centre strip-shack,
as dancers wiggled on laps and tables,
missiles were launched from a secret Naval
base, seconds later, dumb target’s struck,
one interrupted a private booth-fuck,
shenanigans costly, rude, uncouth,
the other hit the dancefloor via the roof
and exploded, scattering sequins and G-strings,
middle-aged men who seek releasings,
ripped by lip-gloss shrapnel, no more sleazing
at the go-go girls blown through the ceiling,

peeling off layers of lurex and rubber,
shredded epidermal cover,
no teasing rhythm to this stripping,
as club-beats are cut,
lust lies bleeding,
all gone Pete Tong, gold thongs
hang limp from rubble,
lager and worse dripping
from stag-night posses caught, gaping in fishnets
and rags of High Street smart-casual,
congealing as the dust settles, dead confetti,
flakes of foundation, orange as amaretti
no longer concealing crisped skin,
smoke black as Kate Moss’ caked mascara,
Rimmel’s London Blitz look,
billows from kitsch curtains
and pink satin pillows as they shrivel,
shrink like recreational dental-floss knickers

and the emergency light’s first tentative flicker
illuminates a lone perspex platform stiletto
lying on its side, still clasping something varnished,
chipped but glitter-sparkling,
part of a daughter of Isis,
goddess of slaves and sinners,
mother of Horus,
who could not be protected by doormen
or hands-by-your-sides no-touching rules,
all just damaged collateral,
another day in the death
of the War of Error,
mongered by fools.

I don't write songs but I wrote this one

I write poems, lots of poems, and occasionally short stories. Songs, really not. But, information coming out of Palestine about what seem to be unquestionably Israeli war crimes (I'm not planning to discuss the issues here - go have a look beyond the mainstream Western media if you're not sure what I'm talking about, and visit the Palestine Solidarity Campaign), upsets me in a way that very little does. Angry, yes. Energised, yes. Rantsome, definitely. But proper, tears-welling-up, frustrated-at-the-sheer-brutality-and-injustice upset? Not often, but this does it. So I've written a song - it's a bit of a work-in-progress, but is easy to put chords to, and I hope you like it.

Free Palestine

The wall must fall, send the settlers home,
close the checkpoints, regrow the olive-groves,
doves over Gaza, not drones and jets,
missiles-v-fireworks is not self-defence,
Palestine’s unarmed, it has no armed forces,
like charging down tanks on cavalry horses.

Chorus:
Free free Palestine,
you can’t get to Zion by genocide,
Free free Palestine,
bombs on the beach,
dead kids on the strandline.

Netanyahu, like Sharon before,
stop your war crimes, close the door
on billions of dollars of military aid,
killing civilians with every raid,
tying children to the front of jeeps,
I hope it haunts you when you try to sleep.

Israel tear down the giant screens
broadcasting atrocities for all to see,
feeding your populace fear and hate,
dehumanised by a terror-state,
destroying hospitals, schools and homes,
is the devil’s work, built on bones.

Repeat chorus

So we boycott, march and protest
for human rights in a land once blessed
with sun, sea, milk and honey,
now blown away by guns and money
and the prejudice of politicians
who think extermination’s their God-given mission.

But on the streets of Tel Aviv,
ordinary people just want peace,
shootings and torture not done in their name,
warmongers and media steeped in shame,
refuse their propaganda, resist the lies,
show solidarity, and organise.

Repeat chorus to fade

BNP, then EDL, now this...

After the BNP and EDL, now we lucky denizens of Britland have Britain First (whose loathesome webpage I'll not grace with a hyperlink) pretending to defend us. Just the latest far-right bunch of fruit-loops ranting about brown people and Muslamic Rayguns, they differ only by wearing bin-liners and flat caps instead of the usual Nazi memorabilia, piss-soaked sportswear and tinfoil hats. Here they are mocked appropriately in verse. I await the usual incoherent rage and impotent inbox abuse.

Blithering Fringe

BNP fragments
begin faulty
binary fission,
breeding fools
bleating formulaic
belligerence, forming
Britain First,
bottom feeders
belching forth
bulldog faeces,
barking fiercely
‘ban falafel’
but finding
burqas frightening,
‘bloody fatwas’.
Being fervent
baby-Fuhrer
Belsen fans,
bullyboys foster
brownshirt fetishes,
bugle falsehoods
blindly from
behind flags,
broken Furbies
becoming furtive
beacons for
bitter failures,
bunglecunting fucknuggets
breathing fallacies,
believing fearmongers’
brittle figments
because fables
bolster fragile
bigots’ feuds
by feeding
bad feelings,
blaming foreigners,
blackening friendships
between faiths.
Bastards. Further,
boasting fake
bonhomie for
‘brave fallen’ –
big fail;
berks forget
battling forefathers
beat fascism
back – flaunting
bullshit finds
barely flinching
Brits feisty,
bringing fisticuffs.
Benevolence foremost,
better find
bloodless finale
before fights,
boots, futile
beatings, faces
bruised, fatalities.
Benevolence foremost,
brew fruity
beverages for
bozo foes?
Bake fairycakes?
Build friendly
Bollywood festivals,
blending families
by familiarity
bridging fear,
brown-flesh
blinkers flung
beyond far.

Britain First’s
brown-trousered force?
Brief farce,
best forgotten.

Cogtastic shenanigans

It's possible I've been listening to too much Professor Elemental (should that be possible)... here's something recently performed at the ever-lovely Art House - enjoy the warm steampunk goodness!

World Exposition Cog Jamboree

Crinolines and bustles, toppers and tweed
snake across the lawns of Turnham Green,
Olympic-standard queueing, an English scene
to see mechanical contrivances driven by steam,
captured lightning, electrical streams
streak between terminals as whistles scream,
tea pavilions, scones, jam and cream –
it’s the World Exposition Cog Jamboree.

A great glass hall, wrought-iron beams,
cathedral to inventiveness, mind’s-eye gleams,
keen teens weaned on cunning schemes
by artisan teams weaving clockwork dreams,
difference engines sew numerical seams
in between dimensions past the usual three
where esoteric airships soar high above trees
borne aloft by formulae with strange phonemes

sung by thaumic mathematicians on bended knees
while crowds cheer to see the springs and keys
of modern technomancy, vast brass machines
from automaton insects to submarines
and odd extremes like talking monotremes,
platypus enhanced by neurochemical means
deemed unseemly, what next, walking anchovies
or chickens laying eggs full of French centimes?

So let’s relax at Old Hakim’s
Coffee House, styled like a hareem,
with rugs, hot beverages and fine ice creams,
praline, tangerine and mangosteen
served on voluminous cushions of velveteen
by metallic waitrons Tesla 1.3
instead of odalisques in diaphanous sheen,
then a tot of green fairy keeps your palate clean

before a zoetrope film of the Sistine ceiling,
3D screen backlit with fluorine
lamps through lenses of tourmaline,
a show heart-stopping as atropine
watching seraphim dancing on trampolines
sipping poteen from gold tureens,
afterwards a visit to the Black Museum,
secrets gleaned from reams of long unseen

tomes illustrated with obscene themes,
unredeemed, lean in, hear tales of esteemed
adventurers visiting warrior-queens,
selling London Bridge for magic beans
pursuing idols thought lost for sixteen
centuries in deep Polynesian seas
presented to delight in huge marquees
at the World Exposition Cog Jamboree.

Passion playtime

Written to be performed at the Art House-hosted launch of Grant Sharkey's album Free Nuggets - the 3rd of 40 albums planned to be released over 20 years. The theme of the night was 'passion' and it landed around Easter...

Rhyme of passion

Passiflora edulis,
flowers' elaborate sex-organs,
botanical baboon-bums
on display for all to see
and sniff
and lick (that’s bees),
fruit split and parted
by deft fingers, practised thumbs,
sticky seed-mass probed with tongues,
while Easter Sunday mornings
are more fun
with tousled tumblings,
duvet bundlings
than Via Dolorosa sufferings,
a two-thousand-year old tale
used to summon church-roof funding
from ex-Brigadiers,
broad-‘tached and grumbling
that ‘eating’ wasn’t so messy in their time
but hey – pleasure isn’t guilty
and passion’s not a crime.

Pointing and laughing

UKIP live in a world of playground politics - ganging up, pointing and name-calling - so I decided to wade in and do the same, but I hope more humorously. UKIP - mock them hard, then mock them some more. And there's a nod to one of my favourite poems. A recorded version can be found here.

Naming of prats

You portray playground politics,
all name-calling, throwing sticks
and stones
at easy targets,
rich kids more than old enough to know better
getting off on being dinner-money bullies,
good training for creepy little wankers
who grow up to be bankers
and bigots,
en masse victim-pickers.
Well, I can play that game –
no, not bludgeons today
but getting murky with words
and messing with your name,
‘cos I’ve spoken to one of your
old-school classmates,
not a friend, you don’t have them,
and he was more than happy to get low-brow,
said you were a twat then and a twat now,
a direct quotation,
first hand, no edit, unabridged
from someone who knew you
as Nigel Farage
‘til you were fourteen or so
and decided everyone should know
you as Farage.
What an arse.
Since then, 35 years of verbal discharge,
so it’s time we voted you in a new label,
a monicker more fitting,
I’ve got a few options to put on the table
so we’re able to pick what’s best
to rebrand a kipper,
a prejudicial pest
with an overactive bile duct,
sucked up to
by Nazis in carpet-slippers –
let’s see how well you stand, plucked
tarred and shamed,
named like a 70s krautrock band,
a poorly translated takeaway
or a disturbingly alternative stripper,

for today we have naming of prats.

Negro Farrago, Nudger Phalange,
Niggardly Fridge, Nougat le Flange,
Nigerian Farmyard, Numbskull Fubar,
Nasally Fidget, Knee-jerk Fucktard.
Nein-schnell Faux-fuhrer, None-shall Fear-race,
No-naff-all Frau-urge, Own-goal Frog-rage,
Nacho el Fart-arse, Nutjob Forecast,
Knickers-from-France, Unnatural Farce.
Nautch-girl Far-ugly, Nodule-of-Lard,
Schnitzel Most-flaccid, Knuckled Visage,
Nile-edge Farooq, No-go the Hajj,
Nazgul Vajazzle, Nine-hells Fromage.
Nach Eine-pfennig, Nickel For-forage,
Unchilled Flaneur, Nastier Frottage,
Nightgown Foul-fudge, Night-soiled Finger,
Nincompoop Large, Niggly Frigger.

Though I like ‘nazgul vajazzle’,
I figure
the last one suits
a purple-badged fruit-loop –
I want to niggle you with it,
jiggle it about
and watch as you wriggle.

Niggly Frigger NiggleNiggleNiggleNiggleNiggle
Niggly Frigger NiggleNiggleNiggleNiggleNiggle

Niggly Frigger, you’re right there’s something rotten
in the UK, but you’re wrong on what’s the problem,
it’s your bat-shit gang of National Front-bottoms,
but it won’t be long ‘til you’re gone and forgotten
by everyone, from Timbuktu to Totton
and their pets, all watching you lose the plot on
sex, race and climate – it seems you’re not too hot on

science, rationality or reason,
have you got some sort of cerebral lesion,
foaming at the mouth like you’ve swallowed caesium
you try to censor the world, treat evidence like treason
when it doesn’t suit, though you must have a lot on
your plate, so much to hate, when you’re not on
this planet, not a party, just a virulent blot on
our political landscape, a bigotry dot.com
bubble that’ll burst like a pus-filled spot on
some spoiled brat’s chin, dripping your ill-gotten
votes, grabbed by fear-mongering any old clot on

the electoral list,
hunched over Maggie’s grave with an aching wrist,
every day another gaffe piling up the grist
for my satirical mill, from the ramblings of your pissed
youth wing (one zitty little twit who’s never been kissed)
to your life-long loathers in their white-tinged mist,
who need knocking down with a lyrical fist
and mockery, make sure they’re thoroughly dissed
online, on our doorsteps, wherever they exist,
you cite freedom-of-speech so listen to this –
the public is awake, not somnambulists,
you’re rumbled, done, nowt more than a twist-
ed bucketful of isms, no libertarianists,
getting a ballot-box order to cease and desist.

You get the gist?

Inspired by Strummerville

Performing at Strummerville didn't only induce me to write about evil spaniels, it also got me writing some more political fare, a follow-up to this one. Audio version here.

Social surgery II

I’ve got a criminal mind but not criminal intent
and the sorts of convictions that’ll never be spent
on sucking up to bosses just to pay the rent
‘cos my sharply worded mockery’s sincerely meant.

When the law becomes a gag it’s our duty to defy,
shout out official secrets, broadcast far and wide,
expose the Selfservatives, the ConDems’ lies,
they only represent themselves, we’ve no reason to comply.

So, I fought the law and the lawman threatened,
winked at a crony and then a second,
there was no-one watching they must have reckoned
but their truncheons went limp when YouTube beckoned.

The powers-that-be, they like to throttle
out the life from dissent until they’ve got all
of us cowed, so whack ‘em with a champagne bottle,
a posh cosh to show that not all

Magnums are the same – ice creams, Dirty Harry,
Guy Fawkes in the Bullingdon, clubbing all the barri-
caded toffs, Moet on cranium,
crowds gather round, mushrooming like uranium

clouds – dark skies over Eton,
larval future ministers lie buggered up and beaten
by a black-masked man like Michael Keaton,
but not the sort of batman they expected to be meeting,

doesn’t care about the Joker, the Penguin, the Riddler
when there’s bricks to be lobbed at smarmy cufflink-fiddlers
like Hugo Boss ads made flesh in the middle of
Whitehall, soul-less suits who should consider a

change of career, break their drone-programming
like Red Dwarf’s Kryten, Ed Snowden, Bradley Manning,
pick up a spray-can, get culture-jamming,
give the world something more than fake orange tanning

and TV – reality’s much better
than game-shows and Noel Edmonds’ sweaters,
so don’t worry about whether ‘they’ will let us,
permission’s not required, and they are not our betters.

Hound of hell (with the softest ears)

Spaniels are all docile and friendly, right? Wrong - this one hails from the fiery doom-filled depths and manifested at the Strummerville all-dayer in The Joiners last weekend... Audio version here.

Hound of Hell (with the softest ears)

Sir Teddy Devil-Spaniel
swallowed the manual
on evil, and he liked the taste –
don’t let the soft ears fool you,
he’ll eat your face,
if you don’t offer him snacks,
he’ll bite and Darth Maul you,
piss on your remains
and in dog-speak call you
‘breakfast’, ‘cos that’s how he rolls,
a blood-sucking demon who’ll drain your soul,
then look at you like a harmless pup,
but approach with caution or he’ll fuck you up,
if you stare into his eyes you’ll pay the price –
give him onion rings as a sacrifice
but never let him get his fangs into your wrist,
so wear gauntlets and bring an exorcist.

Tell me a story, frackanory

At the weekend I was invited to perform at a wonderful all-day benefit gig for the Frack Free Solent campaign group. This happened about the same time that residents around Fernhurst in Sussex had effectively surrounded a fracking project with 'No Fracking' pledges despite creepy C*meron's attempts to lie, bribe, lie, cajole and lie about the pros (there aren't any) and cons. So, a good example of NGO and grassroots campaign groups working well together - and an excuse for me to write a poem especially for the event. Enjoy!


Frackanory

Oil-and-gas executives,
mosquitos in dengue-fever pinstriped suits
seek to pierce the earth,
to suck out its lifeblood
through a mechanical proboscis –
like malaria
they cause tremors
and make bad air,
pissing their toxins into the water
to create
an ungreen,
unpleasant land.

Hiding behind their
first-past-the-post parapets
and waving frackers’ flags,
politicians are Neros,
fiddling while our home burns,
spouting their free-market rhetoric
of selfishness and greed,
spilling lies about fuel bills,
land rights,
pollution,
climate change –
dinosaur minds
and tunnel-vision eyes
that can’t see
beyond the next
share-dividend report,
fossil fools whose fingers-in-the-ears
la-la-la-it’s-not-happening
means they can’t hear
the approaching roar
of the people –
we are their doomsday meteor,
and it’s time the Cuadrillasaurus went extinct.