Tag: society

A suitable case for treatment

I left the house of childhood
In a coat of black porcupine quills
I had a builder’s brick to chew on
I came from the cement floor of the new crematorium build
I crawled into the hedge like a slug

It was the sun on a cold day
Not a kiss, not a hand to hold, not an embrace
But the sun on a cold day
That made me cry for my

Lonely skater on the ice rink of a dream
Of a crushed matchbox
With a soul inside that had no eyes

It was the sun on a cold day
A replacement for
Bubbles and froth and mumbled baby words
Taken like bits of cheese by rats in a slum
Into the human shadows of hunger

And that was that
They removed the food from my plate
And substituted dead flies
They pushed me under the factory machine
Like a gum wrapper

I began to search for a name
For the sunshine on a cold day
For its tepid heat against my tears

And that was that
I was promoted to the dole queue
In the sun on a cold day

Jag lämnade barndomens hus
I ett skikt av svart Porcupine spolar
Jag hade en byggmästare tegel att tugga på
Jag kom från cementgolvet i den nya krematorium bygga
Jag kröde in i häcken som en snigel
Det var solen på en kall dag
Inte en kyss, inte en hand att hålla, inte en omfamning
Men solen på en kall dag
Det fick mig att gråta för min
Lonely skater på isbanan i en dröm
Av en krossad tändsticksask
Med en själ inuti som inte hade några ögon
Det var solen på en kall dag
En ersättning för
Bubblor och skum och mumlade baby ord
Tas som bitar av ost av råttor i ett slummen
I människans skuggor av hunger
Och det var att
De bort maten från min tallrik
Och substituerade döda flugor
De sköt mig under fabriken maskinen
Som ett tuggummi omslag
Jag började söka efter ett namn
För solskenet på en kall dag
För sin ljummet värme mot mina tårar
Och det var att
Jag befordrades till Dole kö
I solen en kall dag

मैंने बचपन का घर छोड़ दिया
काले साही quills के एक कोट में
मैं एक बिल्डर की ईंट पर चबाना था
मैं नए श्मशान निर्माण के सीमेंट मंजिल से आया था
मैं एक स्लग की तरह बचाव में रेंगते
यह एक ठंडे दिन पर सूरज था
नहीं एक चुंबन, नहीं एक हाथ पकड़, नहीं एक गले लगाने के लिए
लेकिन एक ठंडे दिन पर सूरज
कि मुझे मेरे लिए रोना
एक सपने के आइस रिंक पर अकेला स्केटर
एक कुचल माचिस की
अंदर एक आत्मा के साथ कि कोई आंखें थी
यह एक ठंडे दिन पर सूरज था
के लिए एक प्रतिस्थापन
बुलबुले और झाग और मुंहासों बच्चे के शब्द
एक झुग्गी बस्ती में चूहों द्वारा पनीर के बिट्स की तरह लिया
भूख के मानव छाया में
और वह था कि
उन्होंने मेरी थाली से खाना हटा दिया
और मृत मक्खियों को प्रतिस्थापित किया
उन्होंने मुझे फैक्ट्री मशीन के नीचे धकेल दिया
एक गम रैपर की तरह
मैं एक नाम के लिए खोज करने के लिए शुरू किया
ठंड के दिन धूप के लिए
मेरे आंसुओं के खिलाफ अपनी गुनगुना गर्मी के लिए
और वह था कि
मैं डोले कतार में पदोन्नत किया गया था
ठंड के दिन धूप में

Halleluiah, Britannia

Here in my isolation with my broken tattooed mind
Across the road from paradise with the love I’m trying to find
I see the marriage in Cana from the stop across the street
As if time itself had hit me in my drowning broken teeth.

Yes and England, you’re a long way down the road
Way ahead with your windows on the shoulders of the poor
Your rolling stock don’t pass this way no more
And I stand here on this crossroads screaming floor.

I’m looking up to heaven I suppose that’s what it is
I’m seeing the kind of vision that your grandfather slept with
Halleluiah, Britannia, with Jerusalem at your shore
But you cling to the economy and to war.

I pick up my right foot I leave the wedding songs behind
I pick up my left foot and go where England cannot find
The guests of the party dancing or the miraculous vats of wine
Across the road in another patch of time.

Halleluiah, Britannia, with Jerusalem at your shore
But you cling to economy and to war.

Yes and Halleluiah, Britannia, with Jerusalem at your shore
You struggle to survive the world’s fast-changing law
While the song thrush sings bravely on your highest telephone wire.
The jet plane comes screaming through broken cathedral spire.

Halleluiah, Britannia, with Jerusalem at your shore
But you cannot follow those ancient feet no more.

2004

The Inner Child has shrivelled

The inner child has shrivelled like a palmate leaf set on fire by the gardener and is burning within.
I feel it always, slow burn, tears dry when they should be wet; falling upon Loves shoulders.

Did you see an inner child running, running through the streets of London on fire?
Did you follow him back into the dark oracle cave womb of the inner mind heart dream?
Carrying Piccadilly’s Eros statue
Carrying Nelson’s column and the four lions
Carrying a sack full of Prince Albert’s on horseback
Carrying ancient Charing Cross
His family now, his friends are those stones
(Spit on the Elgin marbles, send them back to Homer’s cradle, replace them all with lead imitations of Cadbury Tins and comic book superheroes, for Britain had an empire too).

No, I didn’t see an inner child running through the streets of London in the winter rain chasing the shadows of dancing bears followed by winged white turtles in black Victorian suits.
No, I didn’t see an inner child who crossed himself with a sword and became an optical illusion of endless depth.
No, I didn’t see an inner child wander lost through the streets of London stealing the light from all the windows of town and feasting on them.
No, I didn’t see an inner child clinging to the tomb of the unknown orphaned mother of England.

In this prose-poem, the inner child is the core component of the adult, if society grows to be too centred on being grown-up can that society be whole.

The blind country boy

A blind country boy in the city of love
Touches no one and no one touches him.
The world passes by, so much blinder than he,
Weighed down by worry but not doing anything.

When Gods word came forward and divided the sky
To make the moon rise as he stood by the way
Standing on a corner singing his song
Not knowing the light from the day.

The earth spun around like an acrobat’s ball
Beneath his feet spinning on the overhang
And the blind country boy in the city of love
Imagined the world as he sang and he sang.

He touches no one and noon touches him
The world passes by, not doing anything.
He’s the blind country boy in the city of lies
He’s singing his song – until he dies.

The train was angry

The train was angry because of the stress
Gone is the humour, the quaintness
In came the rules, the strict regimes
The paranoia of modern times.

The train felt angry, it was horse whipped
Spurred on by the driver like the old horse
Starving and tired under a cruel master
With never any freedom never any leisure.

The nights were shortening the pressure grew
For high speed journeys from Glasgow to Crewe
But just before entering the junction at Stoke
The train lost its temper and off the tracks broke

Why did it happen? A reason we need
Why did the train crash at such a high speed?
Perhaps like the carthorse pushed to the edge
It reflects how society plays games on the ledge.

Nov 10th

I’D LIKE TO JOIN A RAILWAY LINE

I’d like to join a railway line and never have to stop
Or languish in a siding or sold off as scrap

With fuel to keep me going, water to slake my thirst
Through the night with fires alight I would travel around your lap

I’d like to join a railway line a classic model one
A line so beautiful in design that circles round the sun

To never ever tire, to ignore the tick of time
To dispense with any schedule,
Oh yes, I’d like to join a railway line

Steaming to the buffer on a private track
With carriages of sumptuousness, upholstery of black
To spend my time on the railway line
With no need of turning back
Oh yes I’d like to join a railway line

The summer would be timeless without the need of work
Just to travel round and round the railway line

The nights would be endless as we’d listen to the sound
Of stars alive forever until the end of time
Oh yes, I’d like to join a railway line

27 Nov 1995

 

The White Rabbit Blues

Love burns in the kitchen light in the twilight the cold silver moon, love burns in the night forests catching fire. The white rabbit in a white collar swinging from the gallows grinning a deadly grin. The white rabbit on counter clockwise fairground rides where candle flames quiver in the night air. Love burns the white fur, the eyes stare like exploding ovens. In the kitchen light the white rabbit skydives through clouds of burning oxygen, the ghosts of ancient flowers dancing in the slamming door light. Burning corpses of sensual love dreams roll down the edge of the sea of tranquillity, the white rabbit hops across moon glassy universes.

The white rabbit blues

The bluest food of white rabbits falls in love with charging moons in fields of thistles where bulls are sliced to bits by scythes of flashing morning sun. Love burns holes through hoops of love where white rabbits bleed to death like melting mini cars in cemeteries. White rabbits bring flowers of moth-silk petals fluttering in the wind like turpentine fire bombs. In the shoes of white rabbits, legless ducks on stilts walk through world war blitzkriegs seeking golden eggs, crashing meteorites of stag fights in motorway collision courses.

The white rabbit blues

Enamel onions with tongues of hydrogen-fires cry with jelly babies in pond water tombs. White rabbit love affairs of planets crashing through meteorite storms with thunderous waiting wolves in King Arthur battlegrounds. Love burns in worms of neon lights rolled around balls of wool in blood filled skies of autumn snowdrifts. White rabbit sings of sleepless loneliness everlasting on islands of gloom pierced with cannibal’s spears, cries of eagles in featherless bodies.

White rabbit blues.

Crystal chandeliers in melting kettles filled with love bites attract plagues of flies that die in holes punched into old love letters. White rabbit toys litter play-school dreams like armies of marching peppermints into the overgrown gardens night. Love burns hot iron brands in outer body hallucinations of operating tables amongst waiting armies of angels, where white rabbits grow like snowflakes from volcanic ice explosions in the undercurrents of Antarctica.

White rabbit blues

White rabbits within white rabbits with flaming tails of white whales where lovers on death beds kiss the necks and shoulders of deep sea monsters. White rabbits like flakes of flaming skin stampeding against full moon darkened nights of rocketing evergreen trees. True love white rabbits with human feet roasting on spits of shooting stars where half-awake Romeo’s hang like sofas from coconut trees in wheelchair scrapyards. White rabbits like enamel cannonballs mutiplicate in exam rooms like calculator production lines in dairy farms, flowing like glaciers in raging forest fires where tigers with bloody jaws are lit like street lights.

Invasions of white rabbits whose bodies fill living rooms in royal palaces like cotton bales in high speed carriages of old steam trains on iced over lakes in mountain ranges. Love sold on sticks like lollipops in white rabbit eyes of dripping boiler room walls that crash down bottomless crevasses of vacuum filled ancestries. White flourish, hanging by their ears from trees in foxy eyed jungles where human armies lie like decomposing fleas in seas of blood. White rabbits like fields of Australian sheep melt into honeymoon couples in gothic Parliaments where aborigines wrestle with writhing crocodiles that swallow the heads of mating chickens. The white rabbit blues sung in telephones in bottles ringing with shrieks of rooks that swallowed old women in graveyards vigils. White rabbits rolled out like turf around castles of tumbling cards.

1994

A Stranger at the Dinner Table

Several people re sat around a dinner table. I do not know who they are; they seem nice, friendly, unassuming. I do not see their preoccupations with each other.
They pass the salt, they pour the coffee, I like that the sun is shining, at how relaxed I feel with them, at how well the meal was so well organised; a family meal that has been happening every day for years.
Their clothes are clean and well fitted. The table cloth is clean. Items on the table include a pen and paper, a radio, a bracelet.
At one point in the meal they were all passing something to each other, their arms were folding at the elbow, swinging from the shoulder a motion that surrounded the table like a paper chain. Then they put their arms down and began to chat.
The wife spoke and as she spoke the salt cellar exploded like a small volcano and everyone was surprised, she though, not seeing the miracle or the response to her table talk just laughed.
The husband a few minutes later said something. The olive jar cracked open and the olives rolled over the table’s edge. The birds from a nearby tree flew down, do birds eat olives, and ate them.
The dinner resumed. The two twin girls started arguing over the chocolate mousse which stated to bubble and in the bubbles could be seen dark wicked eyes appearing. The mother told them to stop squabbling and be quiet.
The guest began to tell a story of his recent travels abroad. I was in Valencia recently he said and the gravy boat capsized like a ship and spilled over into the lap of their son’s new girlfriend.
This all hinted at the secret life of the family. I asked for captions to appear above their heads to show what they were really thinking.
The husband liked the son’s new girlfriend.
The wife was having an affair with the guest.
The twins were both in love with their tennis coach.
The group dispersed to various rooms in the building and the husband to his garage. The attractive maid came out to clear up the table. Suddenly on a distant hill a house caught fire. A fire engine passed by and all the firemen were singing