I'm just putting some poems together for my trip to the Beehive tonight....
....
the education of norma
she's too brass tacks banged into the head
but there's something else
seen over coffee
a stifled creative thrust
which if allowed to fly free
would shatter the basis of everything
you see it peel the curtain aside
in stories of school mistresses
redolent with tapioca topped with jam
and cold backsides
in coal-tarred outhouses
she just wants to be heard
wants that fire
instilled in her daughters
to somehow reflect upon herself
but she's too brass tacks
....
then
just before we parted
in the space between the final word
just before a blackbird sang
evening rose with a sour milk moon
the countryside beyond
stood but a single broad bounded step
just before that final word
in that time
when our as yet unremembered day
trailed out to the low grassland
a shrouded whiteness fell
as cobwebs on happiness
threaded by the hope of love
that final word that breaks the glass
from which none can go back
and in which there is only parting
...
joy division
fuck I used t'....
well fuck isn't the right word
for the fifteen wanks I could get through
potentially fuck is better
imaginatively fuck is more precise
though actually fuck doesn't come into it
when you are thirteen
and wanking
it's more a case
of seeing if you can hit the wall above the headboard
and after six or seven
seeing if your balls have anything left
but when all of that is out of the way
you would scan the transistor
we were more open in those days
before t'internet
you might find yourself drifting off to sleep
with radio berlin
or moscow
or some whacky dutch dj
and it wasn't until the signal changed
or the announcer started talking
that you realized you were a cold-war traitor
a degenerate
a self radicalized lover of bavarian oompah music
....
dogma of the holocaust
and as I speak I feel the guilt
not for what I have to say
but for stating it in this way
that contradicts all gone before
to place the human within war
with all it's grimy soil and silt
lapsed greatness of the will
idealised in the urge to kill
and purify some ancient myth
of faux science merged with
liberal ideals of the perfect man
the polite state in which we can
discuss the higher things
on which our spirit on gilded wings
soars above the banal of wit
the kitsch reality of our shit
...
sonnet of the separated dad
you knew I was taking charlie fishing
so it's your fault I spent the night drinking
- sixteen lagers since you ask -
not that you care for me or the kids
I could drink myself to death for all you care
- the way you treat them is a farce -
call yourself a mother - we'd be better off rid
of you - god knows how I let you snare
me - oh don't worry charlie we just talking -
go play with your sister - that's my lad -
that boys a bag of nerves - that's your doing -
he needs a man's touch -you've made him soft -
you never were much use - too bad
you took it out on them - right I'll be off
...
you have to be fair
you forget - in those stories in which you were the hero -
how much of childhood is spent following and not leading -
how often it was you standing by the drinking fountain
watching others run laughing - in a time out
or the wasted time spent trying to be friends
with your friends - and the compromises -
that as an adult are unacceptable - because -
well just because you've got better things to do
than worry about the opinions of people who don't matter -
and you want to say - because it's the reality -
it doesn't matter - you did 127 sums on friday
and nobody has ever done more - and I'm so proud of you
but you see the sadness - and try and cuddle it out -
and remember those times when socially awkward
you ran in the perfect direction that would win the game
but tasted the unfairness of those who would not be tigged
...
the beehive poets meet at the new beehive inn on westgate - at 8pm form an 8.30 start
all welcome
peace:)
The Blue Book
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