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Poetry by Edward Hughes aka Bernard Badpoet aka BB aka my "significant other".
Geoff's Death (in memoriam Geoffrey France 1917-2006) Nov 6 2006
Exit.
Stage managed,
Without applause.
Footlights dimmed,
And then out.
It's over.
He's gone.
What was
Isness
Is now
Wasness.
There's no more business
To transact.
No show to transfer,
And no bow taken.
Forsaken?
We all are.
For each run ends,
And every House darkens.
Bernard Badpoet Nov 2006
The Human Delusion
I am Dawkins' Robot,
Complex in my way, it's true,
But I only exist to serve to serve my genes,
As they are the ones that do.
They allow my sham existence,
Whilst turning to their task
Of striding across the millennia
With a single-minded zest.
From Amoeba to Me they've condescended
To join in Corporate groups,
And even Albert Einstein
Was simply one of the troops.
My life story weaves a fiction
Spun out to delay the truth:
That genes are the be-all and end-all
As enshrined in Dawkins' proof.
Science thus trumps experience,
And I mustn't believe I matter.
Its the little cells who are driving me
In their eternal quest to scatter.
For what is poor Humanity
Save Natural Selection at play,
And ourselves are the merest vanity,
When the Chemistry holds sway.
So forget all Arts and Culture,
Love, Sentiment and Romance,
We duped apes are gigolos
In a life-long gene led dance.
Let us praise dear Dawkins
For revealing to us the Law:
That proteins are our masters
And shall be evermore.
Bernard Badpoet Nov 2006
Closer than any God
Is my street.
I can always return there.
It's my sort of prayer.
Unlike any phantom spirit
It hums with substance,
And rightness remembered.
It is Summer 1969.
My street, fittingly lit
By the twilight's fade.
And the hedges' perfume
Just tops the satisfying fumes
From cars still warm, but resting.
I stand alone on the pavement.
My bowels are tugging in that pleasant way
Which forces me to stillness
While it passes,
Allowing me to survey
This scene from my contented history.
But it's more;
It is the truth about me
Somehow transfigured,
Seeming eternal.
Because, in imagined time, it's always there to visit.
So, allow me this one delusion ;
That it might be there when all else fades:
My last illusion.
Bernard Badpoet Nov 22 2006.
Unwarranted Expansion At The Terminus Of Reducibility
Reduction
Seeks to banish Complexity,
Along the lighted way.
It clarifies;
Elucidates;
Makes limpid;
Explains (that)
Causes are always further back;
Once removed (again and again).
The Prime Mover remains hidden
Behind some litmus
Hinting at material change.
But why these elements?
Wherefore the change?
Who instigates the same?
And (again) who drives the instigator?
The First Cause,
Unbidden still,
Is not only irreducible,
But must possess
A quality of endowing
The overarching complexity,
First divined by our enlightened
Reduction
Along the lighted way.
This can only lead back to the Agent of all things,
(In themselves, and as we find them, so susceptible to Reduction).
Bernard Badpoet Nov 21 2006
Blasted tree stumps on my wire strewn Somme
Help me savour a bleak territory.
My modern imagination throws up:
Slaughter plus Electrification.
I crave its rationality
Its blood-iron logic
Its faith in the certain progress of the masses,
Who have arrived,
But are no longer guilty.
I dont trump up responsibility ,
I dont ponder helplessness,
I just get vaccinated,
And join the Writers Union
In this city of ten opera houses , but no private cars.
A safe brainhaven from Western Sky Powers,
Whose MEDIAWORLD conjurs up the globe
In a snowshaker of illusions.
Sheltered inside myself ;
Unable to see strawmen tried and framed for powercrimes
by the video lens....
Unable to hear disembodied voices tortured
By a thousand cuts , to lie in soundbites...
Unable to taste DISNEYCULTURE
Served up in raw gobbets of deconstructed belief.
On leave, in the mind's Beerhall,
Marx, Keynes , Bevan , and I ,
Can enjoy brief respite from the necessary trenches.
The lime topped lager in the cold angst bottle is shunned.
Whilst to hearty cheers for "Austerity, Modernity, and Social Progress",
The bright foaming keg , in the handled glass, is downed in one.
Bernard Badpoet 1992.
Acoustic, wistful, describes regret,
Pining for experience I have not met,
Yet is familiar as my room
Seen through dust in an Easter ray of sun.
Largo, elegaic, affirms being,
Believing in Redemption , whilst still not seeing,
Yet all things will be well,
As in the weary trudge home from the match.
Piano, mournful, confronts dying,
Wishing an end to all the crying,
Yet comforting as the smell of woodsmoke
From the half-term bonfire.
Voices, insistent, cite the case:
Fleeting joy and pain mark the human race,
Yet this banal truth holds
Like washing, stew and carrots on a Monday morn.
All the Rage Distilled.
Empty bottles
Lie
With my empty promises.
All Lies !
'Cept cans of lager
And Vodka Vodka.
I'm drinking now.
I'm thinking now,
Somehow.
Oblivion obliterated
In a torrent of booze.
A bucket of blood,
And an evasion later,
I'm still not sated.
So fuck off Doctor Lah-di Dah,
And carers, Natasha and Julie,
Intefering with my cherished chaos.
I'm not a bloody invalid.
I'm a death drinker
Drinking myself to death.
As Agencies spectate,
And the pubs stay open
All hours, for the Chancellor,
My Gremlins skulk amidst the empties,
Then nestle with my vodka in the fridge.
Finally,they're dancing with the rolling thoughts
Of my well proofed brain,
And everything is pissing down the drain.
Bernard Badpoet Nov 21st 2006
My Own Private Contraflow (River Pheonix died suddenly, aged 23 years. May he rest in peace)
River, accept my gratitude:
For the grace in your attitude.
For a beauty borne with fortitude.
You were snatched drying painted wings
Which never flew .
Yet your talent is a certitude .
And Death is but an interlude,
Where emptiness will soon intrude,
To seal in amber the fragile mood,
Which so demands my gratitude.
BB Nov 1993
Prayer inspired by the great Primo Levi (1919-1987)
Primo , I know what God is not.
Not:
The substance of dreams.
The image of poetry.
The 'x' of the intellect.
The idol who justifies.
The wish of fantasy.
The prop of Empire.
The prisoner of Scripture.
The subject of doctrine.
The refuge of the moral coward.
The construct of the insipid imagination.
Who then, my wakeful Dante , is he?
He is the reality of LOVE.
De profundis you cry, 'Where is love amidst this bleakness?'
Obscured in the mire, yes,
but found , as you found it, still:
Providence in Auschwitz.
Kindness in Treblinka.
Liberation in Dachau.
Solace in Dresden.
Salvation in Hiroshima.
Sanity in Sarajevo.
Truly, if might is right, then there is no love, and no God.
We want no part of it, saying, in despair, 'Thus is the world'.
The world is not thus, Primo . It is we others who have made it so.(I, Primo, have made it so).
Edward Hughes 1992
Canal Vision
At Lower Linthwaite Lock
A Kingfisher angle- darts
To an overhanging branch.
It waits ,
Allowing my shortsighted stare.
This smear of electric blue:
A Van Gogh touch on the slate grey canvas
Of December's days.
Acquitted, it rockets to the hidden bank across.
This pleasing cliché left,
And needing still to seal the Pastoral;
I imagine this vivid instant as redemption:
The point of all the winter day
Summoned before its close.
My witness to this climax:
Increment to the sum of thIngs intended.
Bernard Badpoet - December 5th 2006
'Love',
Never disinterested,
Charades as selfless.
But its pot bellied indulgence
Bursts through the fullest garb.
Love's petty, pretty, gaudy, frocks:
Mere dissembling weeds,
Which shroud a steely lingerie of selfishness beneath.
Below this again,
Foundation garments,
Fluffed up with sentiment,
Cover the nakedness of its base desire.
And we are to look
To some Deity,
To set our hearts afire
With this cheap corrosive bliss?
Dont take the piss!
Give me the combat gear of kindness
Any time.
For colder climes: Justice Trenchcoat.
Final touch;my Panama of reason,
To shade me from the migraine glare
Of the Nazi pulse,
Some dignify as 'Love'.
Bernard Badpoet Dec 2nd 2006
(Twilight 5th December 2006)
Above the brown cauldron of Cowlersley weir,
Replete with days of driving December rain,
Long-tailed titmice- nine-
Are in connected dance up-down
The dowling branches of a naked thorn.
An exquisite carousel in miniature:
Each tiny pink-black mount
Perch-flitting, in well drilled roundelay,
Above the waters' boiling broth immensity.
For me; a privileged glimpse of bonsai delight,
An animated ornament to light up the gathering gloom.
To campaign hardened birds;
A disciplined, but desperate , forage.
Their winter mission:
To thrive till breeding,
With an endless dance of feeding
On the go.
And so I leave them to their arduous patrol,
With anthropomorphic thoughts of beauty*,
And its unremitting toll,
Weighing down even my, most skeptic, soul.
Bernard Badpoet Weds 6th December 2006
*beauty arising from struggle at its peak performance- a natural aesthetic.
Autumn
On the field with the dogs:
A sense of decay keens a lust for life.
Whilst a sweet warm air, replete with rain,
Frames mortality, making me sane.
On the field with the dogs:
Alone but not separate.
Whilst the deepest green, atop a giving earth,
Validates frailty, conferring worth.
On the field with the dogs:
I'm a steward who belongs.
Whilst ripe fruit, signalling tomorrow,
Discount futility, dissolving my sorrow.
Bernard Badpoet 4th Oct 1992
Solipsism
Laughter in a languid moon,
And then, thought came;
Like a full-blown animated rose
To button-hole him,
Its wagging finger
Unwilling to soften
The necessary steel
Of pointless, self-inflicted, pain.
Bernard Badpoet Jan 2006
ER and BJ go PNG*
The Queen and Boris Johnson
Sat down to wine and dine.
The joint on display, from PNG,
As , sadly, was the wine.
To eat a Chief is not so bad
Thought Boris, ruefully,
But to drink a grape from that far-off Cape,
It's just insanity.
'Ne'er mind',said the Queen, in German,
Sensing BJ's despair,
'You can come next week, for a bite to eat,
We're dining on Tony Blair'
Bernard Badpoet Sep 8th 2006.
* BJ in diplomatic hot-water for inferring 'longpig' was still on the menu in Papua New Guinea.
The Hours
We cannot own time,
Not even the moment ago.
So my past, and yours,
Belonging to no-one,
Is priceless.
And its value cheapens all the stories
About it,
We would like to buy and sell.
BB Dec 31st 2006.
Resolutions
Weak will wants what we
Cannot wait for,
But comes to us anyway;
Unhurried,
Unburdened,
Unwelcome,
From out there.
And we always reject it.
BB Dec 31st 2006.
Unwittnessed Vindication
It's only a Thatcher copse;
One of those early 80's sops,
Tossed scornfully to the jobless
She created,
Whilst Tory misery went on unabated.
Now; a laboratory for crow family feuding.
Of course, I'm alluding
To the Magpies,
Maggie's brash and gaudy legates,
Raucously tebbiting the Aristo Crows,
And milksop Jays,
Into craven submission.
No! The Magpies are not for turning
Away, from their freebooting frenzy,
Aimed at forcing fellow crows' flight
To the bleak moor above.
They will have monopoly of this tawdry wood,
Just as the red-bracered City Shits,
Maggie's first disciples,
Cornered England's corpse, for their devouring,
All those sorry years ago.
I'm not depressed.
Untamed aggressions all, will be redressed.
In a far off humanless generation,
An austere, determined Corvidae,
Will , in unthinking reparation,
Banish, at last, the wretched Magpie,
Leaving, the ageless Northern Forest,
A blessed space,
For all the other crows,
To thrive, now Thatcher- free, in grace.
BB 8 Jan 2007.
Domestic Economy
Desperation in a bowl
Is a breadless adhesive
Of Branston , cheese and mayo.
For, in Cowlersley, the cupboard's bare,
And the fridge's yield seems set
On the road to indigestion.
Still; supine, and trouserless,
In a 'Kiss' T-shirt,
He, the victim of two taxi rides,
With a therapy filling in-between,
Must eat.
But, on the radio, 'Late Junction'
Is not helping.
Set, as it is, in irritating organ mode.
And the dog, lying beside him,
Adds a malodorous note,
Piping out the ancient stench
Of black canal.
A musk gleaned from her recent fall
Into, that drained and stinking ditch.
Off stage, but still rankling,
The Christmas bloated bin demands
An attention it's not getting.
And all this,
Makes eating a two-spoon operation,
But, at least, defying the stats, the bowl's intact,
Unlike the fence without,
Waving in the gale, to signal its distress.
Or, is it pointing up this household's many failings?
He prefers to see it as austerity.
Practised, as now, with an elegant economy,
(But, chiefly, an economy of action, and the elegance of sloth,
He must agree).
Yet, tomorrow he will act:
Fix fence;
Feast on food, friends will fetch;
Fettle Freya (the dog);
And, find fulfillment;
In things at home that must be done;
Releasing him from the tyranny of thinking,
And the threat of ever going out.
BB 11th Jan 2007.
An Irishman's Lament For His Trousers.
Or: 'An Irish Fresh Air Man Cheats His Death'
Apologies to WB.
As I stood in me shorts in Manhattan,
Folks stared like a wave of the sea.
Me brother a brickie in Ennis,
Me sister a nun in Galtee.
Of all that I'd left back in Erin,
Me friends, and me dear family,
God love, what I really did miss so,
Was me cord kegs of size 33.
For in NY, I'd to share a found pair with Micky,
From Galway, and similarly defrocked,
He had the day-shift well covered,
Wi' mesel', on the gad-about, just socked.
As luck would have it , I'd a night job,
As bog cleaner at the WTC,
So 2am until ten in the morning,
I was about with a quiet modesty.
One evening me routine was threatened,
When Micky went off on the booze.
Still no sign of him well after midnight,
And me job, I now stood to lose.
I was full facin' a horny dilemma,
So I made me a prayer to St. Jude.
He said, ' Frank get yersel' off to old Ryan's Bar,
Shor' he's used to his patrons being rude.'
As I sat there bare arsed and drinking,
(All me skids were laid up to be washed),
There was a sudden commotion in Ryan's,
Soon, all the boozers, round the tele, were squashed.
So half-naked, but full-nosey, I got up,
To see what the fuss was about,
And one squint at the screen left me reeling:
The Twin Towers; falling victim to cruel rout!
Somehow, I got full compensation,
(I believe me name was found on the list),
And as Fergus, I've now plinty of trousers,
With money enough spare to get pissed.
Once, I rued the loss of me strides,
Left back on the floor, in Killrenn,
But,God held them back with good reason,
For I'm alive, cleaning bogs at the UN.
BB Jan 10th 2007
Advice To The Ever Anxious
Rythm, routine , and ritual,
With novelty arising
Only from necessity.
Keep your needs few, and constant,
Holding change at bay.
Only thus, will moot things be done timely.
BB JAN 2007
An edifying study
Of our money-fetish times,
Is dear Jade Goody,
The hoodless hoodie.
Unleashed in CBB quarters,
She muddied the waters,
With her feral, thought-free, ranting,
Which provoked eye-popping,
Near universal,
Canting.
And Channel 4
Made sure
The punters, who were shamelessly baying,
Would end up guiltily paying,
For Goody to be shown the door.
BB Jan 2007.
Condensed Fizzicks
(Apologies to Science)
All stuff there is,
All potential forces,
All folded up dimensions,
In a small vessel;
Not Pandora's box,
More of a grapefruit.
Something, then.
But, no Where,
No Time.
Next:
( An accident waiting to happen?
Terrorism?)
BANG !!*
Now, ISNESS:
Stuff in a large vessel
The size of a universe,
Held in place by unleashed forces,
And appropriate dimensions.
It's all here.
And the clock,
Still unimagined,
Is counting down.
BB 1st February 2007.
'
Is that a goat?',Dad, with rhetoric, exclaimed,
When an Attenborough image,
Of some elegant gazelle,
From his armchair perspective,was framed.
'The tune the cow died to',
Dad would wearily conclude,
When a modernist plink-plonk,
On my Radio 3, assailed his ears,
And he wasn't in the mood.
'They're not ready for Independence yet!',
That was Dad, almost crooning,
When a hapless Royal,
He saw from his seat,
Was faced by the Maoris' mooning.
'It 'd have the hand off yer , as soon as look at yer',
Dad would decide,
When the lioness confronting him,
From behind the screen,
Was up for hunting, and leaving the Pride.
'I combed me hair with the leg of the chair..',
Dad-Macormack, would sweetly sing,
When,as a tenor distracted,
He was shampooing my eyes,
And making them sting.
'Your Dad thinks Napoleon was born in Conisborough,'
Was Dad's 'winning' retort,
But Mum was back with,
'There's no fool , like an old fool',
And so a row defused, became a verbal sport.
'In bed not sick, tousers torn, come quick',
It's us on the phone, mostly pleading for cash,
So Dad's praying this verse,
And soon thanking God,
That there'd been no crash.
Yes, my Father delighted in play-speaking,
And was master of the pointless embellish,
He taught me the skill of 'The Litanies',
And I use them now with great relish.
BB February 1st 2007.
A Rabelesian Litany of Monarchy
William Domesday.
William Arrowpierced.
Henry Goodwriter.
Henry Bishopkiller.
Richard Ransomed.
John Jeweloser.
Henry Parliamented.
Edward Scothammer.
Edward Favouritebummer.
Edward Franceworrier.
Richard Castlecaptive.
Henry Acne.
Henry Basincut.
Henry Babeking.
Edward Tallchap.
Edward Towerthrottled.
Richard Crownloser.
Henry Welshman.
Henry Sixwives.
Edward Boyking.
Mary Calaisfretter.
Elizabeth Nonooky.
James Jockmeister.
Charles Headloser.
Charles Treehider.
James Papist.
Mary Dutchusband.
Anne Kidloser.
George Krautmeister.
George Sonhater.
George Madhatter.
George Fatbastard.
William Marinecurser.
Victoria Albertmisser.
Edward Cardcheater.
George Buggerbognor.
Edward Yanklover.
George Stammermeister.
Elizabeth Vowelcrusher.
BB Feb 2007
Not Having A Licence.
Shin-kicking going on,
In silence.
A therapeutic violence,
Set up by Stan and Ollie.
Soon, cathartic chaos in their wake,
They flee the scene in the same pair of trousers.
Heroes? Yes!
By not putting the world to rights,
They unleashed,
As a gentle twinned-Prometheus,
A salve of unworldly delights,
Into this Age of Cruelty
For so many 'little' men, like us and them.
BB Feb 2007
Another Fine Mess.
Their Tin-Lizzie-Dustbowl world,
Is still haunting me.
As now; all is tedious, fuss-filled, aimless action,
Keeping nemesis, in (vain?) hope, at bay.
But, back then, briefly,from the outside, and only on film,
They came,
They saw;
And Stan scratched his head.
Ollie, with more insight,
Nervously flicked his tie.
Together, they tried to knuckle down,
Endlessly, and without result,
Save Comedy:
Episodic triumph of the powerless in defeat,
And antidote to the Twentieth century, and beyond.
We laugh, and the wisest of us, learn, because:
There will be no licence for street music.
Piano Shifting can only take place in the step-ridden Hollywood hills.
Fishing boats will never leave the Scrapyard.
Fitting an aerial must involve demolition.
Education will always be regulated by a broken sash-window.
A hospital treat is hard boliled eggs and nuts.
Bible selling will not get you through the Depression.
Whilst they're doing all that failing,
The world, they never connect to, is ailing,
And sinking into Auschwitz-fever.
Now, once again, the light of Reason is snuffed out all round,
And, in the eerie fundamental darkness, new terrors abound.
Nervous laughter will not do,
We need bravura mirth;
And must belly-laugh with all our worth,
To burst naked-power's baleful balloon.
As an aid, recall Laurel and Hardy,
As celluloid innocents abroad,
Armed with only tin tacks to defeat the Mahdi:
Their raspberry, blown in the face of power-soaked fraud.
(And that's why , down the years, these 'little' men have been adored.)
So, let's steel ourselves with laughter now,
Remembering, as bewildered Ollies, all,
What Stan once sagely said;
'You can lead a horse to water
But a pencil must be lead'.
BB Feb 2007.
You there,soldier!
Exit , now!
Desert!
It's gone too far.
By now,
With brio,
You should've got the CO:
Perhaps with a fist in his monocled eye,
Or, by shoving his death-whistle
Down his throat,
And his Browning,
Fittingly, up his arse.
Of course,
It's all about class:
Mass over-topping
By surplus labour,
Stops share price dropping,
Re-invigorates shopping
For munitions,
Blunting all petitions
For peace.
And the alarum Rentier geese
Honk for slaughter,
Knowing it's you for roasting
In the Flanders grease.
So, Halt!
Go join the Bolshies in the East,
That all of Europe may be released.
BB Feb 2007
Twentieth Century Subjective Express.
It was something of a turbine in the noughties,
Propelling us, dreading nought, to all Ports, unpassported.
At home: things less steel-clad certain.
Workers, Women,The Irish:
Striking, slashing, and conspiring,
Just before the starting pistol's firing,
Sent them all racing:
To Pals' platoons, munition works, and Regiments, sectarian.
No sleepy summers then:
Mostly manic;
A flustered shuffle of deck chairs on the Titanic.
It was something sending us to Field latrines in the teens.
D.O. R. A. , pushing through, gave no quarter, leading us to Flanders slaughter.
Elsewhere: Chaplin flickered mockingly on all screens.
Tommies, Fritz and the Irish:
Dying, dying, and dying.
All around, Empires are,flu-cursed, expiring.
Condemning survivors
To unfit homes, Inflation and freedom fighting.
No 'Dulce et Decorum' then:
Mostly shameless waste,
And Haig, cynically, left undisgraced.
It was something false-boom frantic in the Twenties.
We flapped exhausted, normalcy unreached,
Through tin-plate changes.
Abroad: Nations and Ideas are wracked; twitching and writhing.
Burdened Germans, Red Russians and the Irish:
Dark brooding, despised exemplars, fraternal killers,
Charleston dancing,
To Jew hating, Electrification, and Catholic fascism.
No jolly Jazz Age then:
Mostly sleepwalking,
And the nightmare of flickering images, talking.
It was something threatening in the Thirties,
Depressing us, fearing the worst,
To Appeasement, morally unsupported.
At home: things desolate, dirty-low, and divided.
Dripping, Auden,and diptheria:
Shaming, warning, multiplying.
In the shadows: terrors unfolding; revealing,
Rationing, exile, and emergency addressing.
No fledgling affluence then:
Mostly margarine misery.
An ailing Empire led by hollow men.
It was something fought for in the Forties,
Total-warring us, filling out appropriate forms,
To National Health and National Service, (The Yanks were lending).
Everywhere: Austerity, in place of Socialism, became the resented taste.
Planners, Yanks, and the Labour Government:
Half-baking, subverting, and post- war rearming,
Just before the Cold War's malign invention, sent them, unquestioning,
To Council flats, Eastern England,and Korea.
No fair shares for all then:
Mostly exhaustion.
A nation jaded and silently invaded.
It was something we ran out of in the Fifties,
Rock 'n' Rollin' us, Suez humbled,
To the shops, on hire-purchase.
Empire: hidden behind shabby skirts, soon fleeing.
Conscripts, Women and the Workers:
Spud-bashing, Home-making, and Welfare-taxed.
Next we know, they're all unleashed, and soon competing,
For private housing, washing machines,and the latest Saloon.
No more making-do then:
Mostly Sputnik optimistic.
A distracted seeking for diversions round the Bomb.
It was something turned on in the Sixties,
Whirring us, Bomb-shadow brave,
To possibilities: would they be thwarted?
Ambience: Mono-chrome to Stereo- colour, from chemicals.
Students, shop-stewards, and the Irish:
Dropping out, wildcatting, and marching.
Should've sent them all, in solidarity, to Revolution.
Instead: drug-hell, future- dole , and senseless outrage.
No summer of love then:
Mostly Utopia's mirage.
A fragile flower scorched by re-asserted power.
It was something super-soaraway in the Seventies.
Sizzling, funky and sexy....
No! That's the edited version, on 'We Love..' TV.
In truth: a kind of anarchy in the UK.
Miners, Maggie, and the IRA:
Overthrowing, plotting, and bombing.
Soon, oil-price shock would lurch them, fatefully,
To hubris, Pyhrric victory, and the Grand Hotel.
No Sex- Pistols Silver Jubilee then:
Mostly cracked consensus.
Long haired Job Security to Redundant shaven head.
It was something poisonous-pernicious in the Eighties.
Driving us; dejobbed, demoralised, degraded,
To policed apathy,unsupported.
Everywhere: Thatchertebbits goaded, to City-shit applause.
Jobless, Scabs, and the Irish prisoners:
Desperate, undermining, and shite-smearing.
Next: hawking themselves in Market-Freedom Square,
As No-tech, No-shame,and No-uniforms.
No 'Simply The Best' then:
Mostly a ' wall's down', gleeful, 'TINA' incantation.
An underclass wrought, then ghetto-decanted.
It was something of a sleight of hand in the Nineties.
Spin-Doctoring us through Maggie's mugging, and Smith's demise,
To 'BLIARISM' , via Bathos-Major.
In short: Murdoch-meejah paints Thatcher-Tony as whiter than white.
Old Labour, Tories, and Trades Unions:
Sidelined, stripped naked, and short-changed.
The PC Ice Age dawns,and these dinosaurs hurriedly scurry to,
The Lords, UKIP, and selling usurious Loans.
No 'Things Can Only Get Better' then:
Mostly rusty-reaction, with a false-progressive coat.
At century's end,the same old picture: plebs well sorted, the rich growing richer.
BB February 18th 2007.
The locked- out CAUSE
Attracts unsought adoration.
There can be no answer.
Lacking feedback,
The Stalkers relapse
Into fevered speculations.
Their diseased imaginations
Reshape these messages schizophrenic,
Into dogmas, craftily branded, not generic,
Hailing them as 'Divine Revelations'.
Enter:Religion, with its endless tribulations.
Bernard Badpoet Fri 22nd Feb 2007
Auden in Oxford exile,
And already interred in his belted coat.
A shuffling plinth with an Epstein head,
Using the language of Cramner
To reform the Twentieth Century.
The Holocaust, an affront.
The badly constructed sentence, a tragedy.
He knew nought of Love,
And so wrote it up, endlessly.
Why did he flee England in 1939?
Perhaps, he looked at the messy real, and retreated.
Or, like, and unlike, Yeats, he was away with the fairies.
His Poetry changed nothing.
After Spain, he made sure of that.
BB Feb 27th 2007.
I must have no Lovers;
Nor, any brothers.
Unkindness becomes benevolence,
When I refuse to give of myself
To the unsuspecting others.
Though the Steppes are just a rumour in my atlas,
I'm still the wolf.
Unthinking predator, aloof.
I must not connect,
If only to prevent
The baleful affect
Of my unsummoned intent,
To rent,
Into blood-soaked pieces,
Any government,
Save my witless own.
I'm content with a bitter bone
To gnaw on, undistracted,
Whilst the blithe world passes me by,
Unmolested.
All hope for me, of intimacy, is now divested.
I cannot be tested
At some proposed communion.
I'll never be part of any union.
Just leave me in my solitary lair,
At peace, and rested.
BB Feb 2007.
Inheritance Fever
Ideals;
So keenly bought,
And easily worn,
In youth,
Are a bugger to sell.
In the end,
It's simply best to pass them on,
Like a benign influenza,
To the young and close.
Just charade the grumpy cynic,
And the kids will tear them off you,
Slipping them on, with relish.
Please note:
Your responding disdain must be all embellish.
BB March 2007.
Bette Davies
Was adored by all the Navies.
Her diva attitude,
Earned their undying gratitude,
Whatever the latitude.
Claude Rains
Adored trains,
But loathed planes.
Boris Karloff
Loved stroganoff,
But, went all-a-quiver,
When he was served up liver.
Stanley Holloway
Lived a full-block away
From Ethel Merman,
But heard her sermon,
Even on leave, in Stornoway,
Full 21 days sail away.
Katherine Hepburn
Slept with her Intern.
When not with Tracey,
She really was quite racy.
Humphrey Bogart
Had a slow start,
In Hollywood,
But, betimes,
He came good,
Mastering his art.
Clark Gable
Kept an excellent table.
It impressed Betty Grable,
And she became part of his stable.
David Niven
Was a given
When a Limey was needed,
But, when his country called,
He straightway heeded.
John Wayne
Was terribly vain,
And yes, Hello?
The red-baiter
Was all yellow.
Sidney Greenstreet
Had a very mean streak.
He wouldn't lend Peter ,
10 cents for the meter.
So Peter's lorry was towed away- sorry!
James Stewart
Nearly blewit
In Pictures,
But Ginger made him,
Despite his stictures.
Randolph Scott
Drank an awful lot,
And, even on set,
He liked to have a bet.
Doris Day
Learned to play
The cutesy blonde,
But she couldn't turn Rock,
Who, sadly, was too gay.
Joseph Cotten
Always had a lot on.
Never one for shirking,
When not sleeping,
He was working.
Orson Welles
Played the Tubular Bells,
But it didn't help him any,
The time he played,
Hidden in shade,
Harry Lime.
Greta Garbo
Stowed away amdist the cargo,
On a steamer,
From her native Sweden,
Sailing, by choice, alone,
To her New World Eden.
Jean Simmons
Always put up trimmings
In November,
So she'd remember,
Midst all her slumming,
Christmas was coming.
Errol Flynn
Liked to sin
With the Gentlemen,
And the Ladies.
So it's my guess,
He's buckling his swash now,
Down there in Hades.
Edward G. Robinson;
Mc Carthy's pinko-commie man,
Was , in truth, an impeccable Monsieur,
And, to boot,
A cultured connoisseur,
Sooo there!
Mae West,
Sexy siren,
Female Byron,
Always wore a vest.
Fred Astaire
Had a torrid affair,
With Gene Kelly.
When he twigged the hoofer was a chap,
There was a terrible melee.
Van Heflin,
In roles;
Hard as Teflon.
At home;
Happy to put the kettle on.
Marlene Dietrich;
Bestockinged, Anti-Nazi bitch,
Brought fresh Weimar kitsch
To a jaded Tinseltown,
And received, in return,
Congenial Lebensraum.
BB March 2007.
Crowmagna
For me,
A sojourn;
Down streets,
Through the years,
Each daylight hour,
In every season;
Is accompanied by:
Solo crow; cawing,
Or, crow-chorus of caws.
Sometimes,both:
Caw and Caws.
This crow.
That crow.
Those crows.
Omnicaws,
Causing me,
Not to stop,
(I walk, and never pause),
But, to think about,
'The Cause'.
Of course!
'The Cause' flows from Crows.
All of a piece:
Black Initiators,
Corvid Spectators,
And, never silent,
Raucous commentators,
Rasping violent,
Endlessly cawing:
Encouragement, disapproval,
Appreciation, derision.
It's their decision
To bring all into being,
And all to pass.
The core of the point:
The point of their caws; is pure CAUSE.
Crowithout, all would cease:
No caws,
No Cause
No course.
BB March 2007
I Went Gently.
Night fell,
All those years ago.
I remember the Twilight,
Hazily,
But the spectacle,
No. It's gone.
Of the day,
I cannot recall.
I imagine:
Scenes,
Events,
The Promise;
Illuminated.
There were things.
I was in some,
And saw,
I must have,
All of them.
I think, in light, I was encouraged.
I know, enlightened, I was led to believe.
But, then, gradually,
(In memory, instantly),
Night fell.
And now; presence, and absence, alike,
Unseen, and no false dawn.
I'm done with holding out for morn.
BB March 2007.
I Was There.
Red Lion Rampant
Golden Crowned
Set in green
In the sixties
(By the sandmartins)
On the Deltic
Swinging left
At Balby Bridge
Through the redstone cut
Before straightening
And roaring swift
To distant fens
And London beyond.
BB May 2007
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