Poetry

Improperly Vaccinated

 

When finding that you are

unfairly hated

The solution I found

is to get yourself

Improperly vaccinated

History reeks

Curated and discovered and sometimes

From under rubble

Emerges hidden knowledge

Not the utilitarian and sanitised types

found at, say

a teacher training college

Horseback history is all you’ll find there

History sat high

and making clean histories into courses

Saddle back enforcing

Equine strength and baton wielding

To ensure you know this history

Is endorsed in

All your schooling

You will struggle to find you in there

And that is the point

Your Silence today

Comes from throat throttled yesterdays

It’s hard to make a stand

When your feet are dangled in shifting sand

When your dreams

Are left searching for places to wake

Even imagination is kettled

And all you have at night

Is mares

And stallions

Their cross breed loveless union

At the head of battalions

Do you remember horse,

the thoroughbred part of yer

that your lineage is Arab, Asia and North Africa?

Now you stand as part of a line in the solidifying sand

A cavalry building sand pits from dunes

When you find yourself at the foot of the hoof

Beneath the bridle

Sore but not from saddle

Remember this

When finding that you are

unfairly hated

The solution I found

is to get yourself

Improperly vaccinated

It exists

The vaccination to a group that hates yer

Not quite immunity

Certainly no impunity

But through music, movement, voice and being together

We can realise ourselves as people soon to be

A not-yet

But always there

The virus in the ecology of an eternal now

The billion year old fight for survival that resists

Petrification

Stone forged from sand

Where love is boiled alive until it becomes a nation

With a flag and crown

and a remit to put down

All

that stand in the way of

this historical reinvention

of better yesterdays

A Casino, club med solution

Charged through with equine retribution

From baton, to musket, to lance

Carpet bombing and a uranium tipped dance

It will be this way

and your only option

Is to create

It is never ever too late

To take over what is abandoned

To know that your response to a horse back kettle

Is drum

And bass

And song

Or walk, just move

Out the range of a history that is meant to eradicate

You

To sanitise and cleanse and inject you with bleach

A whitewashed utopian ‘before’

That is always out of reach

Because it never existed.

We have a history

It is in the blood

and the body and the connection

between us

It comes from the acts you take through love

Without any official validation

Where horses roam free

And so do we

Once we inject an

Improper vaccination

New York 

From someone who’s never been  

 

New York has a king 

He’s tough too 

At least he was 

Looks like Christopher Walken 

But it’s not him 

Last time I saw Walken he was doing community service with Stephen Merchant in Reading 

Not the gaol  

which would be Wilde 

 

 They have gangs too  

The Gangs of New York 

Infamous these  

They like to wear colours but I am not sure which ones 

Never really specified 

I presume red and blue 

But not a clue  

and 

In West Side story it seems to be a lot 

Of finger clicking and to be honest they 

Do not look that tough 

A bit too dancy, prancy 

Singing as well 

More like a weekend in Blackpool than  

Welcome to hell 

But they have Other gangs that are based on countries of origin 

 

Italians like to eat pasta first 

Then kill in the dark with music playing 

Operatic slaying 

That’s what mobsters like to do  

Stabbed in the throat by a bloke 

In a shirt stained with Ragu 

 

The Russians like a tattoo  

Or two  

 

The King that made the biggest NY groove was not a gangster

The only guns he had he ate,

A presence so big he remains famous

A story that always remains great

Even today, when we doubt right and wrong

We can agree the best King

Is Kong

Those simian swings from gigantic ape arms

He took a bite from the big apple

But it only did him harm

This was before the greatest showman

When these circuses became cool

This was the age of the freak show when these maniacs were just cruel

That massive monkey was life encapsulated in a brief escapade

with a showman’s lifestyle

He didn’t get the good bit

The champagne, the tuxedos, the Broadway smiles

They chained him in an undersized cage and Kong got oversized piles

No wonder he was fuming when the big night came

Snapped those metal tie downs and hit the sky high tiles

Where does an angry mammoth monkey go when his anger is spiked

Hopper had not painted a bar big enough for this

Hairy nighthawk on a manic night

I mean why would you do this

Treat this giant so bad

Not a friendly face or a walk in the park

Sometimes you forget that this city can be so dark

No wonder Kurt Russel wanted to get out so bad

Kong was ahead of the bonfire of any vanities, he was going to pull this whole place down

As soon as he could find a tree

These human monsters needed some King Kong Karma

Ideally filmed by Brian de Palma

 

Then….

But then is it wrong? 

Kong? 

Seems it 

But what camera lucida I have to 

Draw my place  

My world? 

Coronation Street 

Gail Platt 

Her mum 

Long face 

 

And dead bodies in council flats  

 

And clouds  

and hard working put upon detectives 

divorced 

With errant children 

And sinks 

And hard angry friends 

And insight unheralded 

Worlds of grey cold and harsh surfaces 

And humour of the basest kind  

so Carry On looks like Beckett in comparison 

And Neil Fucking Morrisey  

As a fool with a heart but as thick as the custard  

In a Manchester tart 

 

Enough then 

Of dead chimneys and  

Empty solidarity 

And cheerless bonhomie 

Tuneless karaoke 

Black puffer jackets  

short back & sides 

Union flags 

Looks always snide 

And anger 

And petty  

and shadows not light 

And no fucking poetry  

And so many fights 

 

Yes 

It was wrong  

What happened to Kong 

But as he fell to his death  

Past every  

Empire  

State  

Plate  

glass 

window  

Glorious or bland 

I bet he thought  

it’s better than fucking 

Skull island 

Those small minded servile bastards treated me like a freak 

At least here I got to swipe out at geeks 

In biplanes 

And a love interest 

Inter species 

Beauty tiny, giant ape 

A Size impossible to overcome 

Differences they’d never allow 

But now that it’s done and the floor is coming at me like a bullet from a gun 

And even in that final descent 

Kong I am sure 

Not a single doubt 

Thought 

fuck skull island 

I’m still glad I got out  

 

Nothing chills the ego

Shows how dreary things can get

Than two hours of a Tuesday

Spent in the laundrette

In there the ambitious flounder

In fact ambition flees

finds a metaphorical shot gun

Puts it between its knees

 

But the universe is a mystery

Dharma lies in those fragrant metal drums

This Tuesday held fate itself

Between its powder softened thumbs

 

Through a plastic washing basket

One panel kicked clean through

I saw a vision in acrylic

Pink hair in curlers

said she was 52

or maybe 53

she lied about being a backing singer

one time with ABC

 

She puffed upon a roll up

Blew smoke rings on my smalls

Took a bottle from beneath the tabard

Cleared her throat and drawled

 

Want a swig of frosty jack?

She offered, broke the ice

I’d  been in there 90 minutes

I didn’t need asking twice

 

And off she went as we quaffed

and we chewed the fat

Of her cats n kids and weeping mould

Each a plague that ruined her

flat

Then the plumbing that rumbled

and the stench from out the pipes

The rent man she said was a rascal

Or something not so nice

I’ve rang the council a hundred times

For plumbing they’ll do fuck all

But it’s different if you’ve mice

They’ll be round once a fortnight then

Rats, they’ll make it twice

 

I was finding it hard

To want to go on living

Cider Gloom and Pink’s tales of woe

My joie de vivre had Joie de gone

Then she told a tale

That hit me like a stone

From her eldest’s catapult

 

“I saw my old man last week

He just appeared in the kitchen

He’s been dead five years

I shit myself

My eyelids would not stop twitching”

 

What the fuck

I thought I’d thought

It turned out in fact I said it

 

I know, the prick, That was me too

I said do you know you’re deaded?

 

“Did he speak?”

my eyes now wide

The dryers din now silenced

 

“Well sort of”

she whispered

Her fag smoke now a holy vapour

Wrapping her in mystery

from pink hair down to floor

 

He struggled and was raspy

He just said

 

DO MORE

 

I imagined what she’d seen

This octogenarian poltergeist

His long dead face all wizened

In that flat above the bookies

A fading ghost in puddles of ectoplasm

 

I felt the tearing of every last atom he had

In that

No

body

in nowhere

His Straining purgatorial persona

Every ounce of whatever he was

Boiled up in hellish fumes to go there

To Pink

One

Last

Time

 

All of that to whisper

To this princess in a tabard

Smoking Drum

Now was the time

To get it all done

A breath beyond the last allowed

Do more!

 

It cut me through like a jagged knife

This prophet from the afterlife

His words though few

Tolled all that’s true

A bell of doom

For me and you

He reminded me in that perfumed hell

Of lavender and alpine bluebell

That his words to Pink were for me as well

 

His bony fingers rapped out on his coffin lid

That today’s doing

Is tomorrow’s

I did

 

What this story needs is a dream sequence

And that my friends is what’s coming

A chance to escape the smell of fags 

and stories about plumbing

 

I felt myself transported,

the Laundrette melting away

a kaleidoscopic universe of colours

swept open the self locking door

and me and Pink were away

 

We flew above the rainy clouds

found blue beyond the grey

kept climbing higher

and further off

and then

I saw us both

Me on the deck laid out and Pink

In charge of a speeding Schooner

Her hard brown arms taut like the ropes

She pulled skilfully toward her

In golden sunlight dolphins bounced in the wake

Of this streamlined streak of fibreglass and honey

 

Me and Captain Pink,

Her, the chieftain of the Med

Deep green eyes plotting our course

straight strong back and billowing locks

This goddess steered us toward the docks

 

We moored in Tangiers for Martinis by the bay

Had aperitifs in a jazz club

then camels

to her mountain hideaway

 

This poetess of insight

this harridan of hope

she swam in pools of turquoise

on this perfumed Moroccan slope

 

Her paintings hung about us

Sinsemilla filled the air

A harem of brilliant wildness

Sprawled on cushions everywhere

 

Songs of harp and calabash

Birdsong and sweet melody

Played sonnets dedicated to her eyes

Her voice

Her transcendent beauty

We listened as she read her work

The prize she’d won at Booker

While a contortionist danced through incense clouds

Entertaining these ephemeral fuckers

 

Pink, now resplendent in her silken robes

A caravan of acolytes

arriving now in droves

Every one brought precious stones

Meagre gifts

To the one that knows

The true workings of our human souls

 

Truly, these ecstatic pilgrims

would proclaim

No one could do more

in this earthly domain

 

I watched and waited for Pink’s address

And then a snap and no more tenderness

As the words came out

 

Bollocks, coin slot’s jammed and pinched my quid

All that was done is now undid

That perfect world remains not yet

I see I’m back in the laundrette

 

Pink is struggling

cider sweat in every pore

I ask what she thought

he meant

when he had said

do more?

 

I’ve not a clue. The daft old get

I bet he means ring the council

But he’s off his nut

if he thinks they’ll do owt

It needs

a new boiler.