Mikes New Web

Along the pharaohs road
I saw ten maidens crying
I saw six clowns
All breaking down
I saw a falcon flying

Along the pharaohs road
I saw a mountain burning
I saw a priest, his clothes on fire, said
Oh, the ladies not for turning
No, the ladies not for turning

I found a frog
In a bowler hat
It said its name
Was Kerouac

A pen quill
And a Hat-shep-sut
Ran into
The workers hut

Along the pharaohs road
Along the pharaohs road

A band of slaves
Came marching
With tambourines and flutes
With the ghost of last year’s Pharoah
In his latest boots

As the river Nile
Crocodile
Ate up its saviour roots
Ate up its saviour roots

The battleship
With the gorilla
To sail it
Into the wood chippings

Now it has four legs
To walk on land with
As hyenas’ mob it
With cut throat razors

The grave calls out
Leave your shells behind
The grave sang out
Come visit me, sailor

The battleship
Was fed through the wood lathe
No, no, don’t throw me into the skip
Said the albatross to the deck hatch

Worms, dangling from the radar mast
Sang Tamla Motown songs
As the sea blew a kiss

In the morning, arrived
Many hubcaps
With boarding passes
To eat the ships mess
And to drag the battleship
Through the streets

That line from the poem
“Not waving but drowning”
Is stuck in my gizzard
Like a branch grafted onto a vine

Not of the vine
But of even more sorrow
Growing, still growing
In the guts of tomorrow

I think it’s a Stevie Smith poem

You’re paying tribute
to the goddess
a supernatural lie
there is no sex
in the supernatural
spirits don’t have flesh

you’re paying tribute
to the goddess
gathered as one
into a dancing crowd
you can see it
the imitation

the heavy makeup
the style of hair
the golden bracelets
the gowns she wears

now you’re walking the boards
singing for your supper
to the thumping beats of old
so bold, so cold
as you wash your faces like flies
and jump about like frogs

you’re paying tribute
to the goddess
her marble replica
on a mountain top
the Chaldean goddess
the kind that laughs a lot

oh, how it hurts your lover
your husband too
knowing that there’ll never be
a way of really knowing you

there is no constellation
the stars all seem to be men
or mythical beasts
there is no Hollywood constellation
you’re a look-a-like
you’re a poor relation

the doomed sister of cleopatra
the girl child thrown into a river

but keep paying tribute
to the goddess beast
that beauty sleeps
Cinderella wasn’t so bad
She fell in love
With the stable lad