A Pretty Kettle of Poetry

My photographic excuse for soundventures into nighty nights.
My wayward warrior selfishly fighting fights regardless of plights.
My sweet, sleepy and reliant stargazer.
My astronaut patiently waiting for the moon to retire as a hell raiser.

My reason to be, my responsibility.
My ears and eyes, my steadfast surprise.
My guilty and abandoned.
My reunited and tandomed.

My stalker and stranger.
My all bets off and wager.
My not eating disorder
fussy taster connoisseur.
My killing machine serial killer wrapped up in fur.
My ever faithful film star waiting at the dressing room door.

My unimaginable goodbye when I go.
My miss you reminiscence come back show.
My seeing, my being, my home comforts routine while rebelling.
My mad cap comic capering and pointless staying ups with no meaning.

I play this in moments of overwhelming sadness
to give me energy for my rechargeable battery’s battered flatness.
Take them with a pinch of salt on my daily dish
while wallowing in it ‘cos it’s a life-long playlist death wish.

Lighten up and see the light.
See all things dark and make them black.
Like both and go with either, or take either and both for a breather?
In moments of overwhelming sadness, it’s black ‘n’ white
while daytime’s vivid colours have a stroke of moonlight heart attack.

So, why live? Why write?
The first question is easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy because it’s maniacal fun.
The second is a mix of WB Yeats things: the need to think and the need to act and fight.
Anyway, as yet, I’ m not John Donne.

Was I waiting for you?
Or had you already gone?
Did you just miss me like a phantom phew
or haunt me forever like I was the one?

The older we get, the more our memories go back to childhood.
The leafier nature is, the more it grows like wood.
Say something and tender.
You know it’s a winner and won’t ever surrender.

Whoever you were, were you guilty?
Did you pick yourself out in your mirror?
Give us a tenner for an alibi
and give us a line up instead of standing in fear.

Playing in the playground.
Mighty strong and puny weak.
Running round the playground.
Playing hide’n’seek

Playing in the playground,
Geting in a huff.
Rolling round the playground,
getting ready rough.

Playing in the playground.
Do not want to play.
Sitting in the playground.
Bullies have their way.

Playing in the playground.
Big kids, they will rule!
School bell rings, classroom-bound.
Nothing learnt at school.

New Year’s Eve fireworks explode
and shell the midnight skies
after grammatically thicko teenage terrorists with their little bombs throwed
have already beated ear drums of jumpy elderly passer-bys into submission and into hiding.

Funny how in a world claiming to want peace,
the new year is seen in
to a planned frenzy of endless war sounds to fire ceaselessly
in a massive bombardment of crackers din.

Pets too have given up on their so-called human superiors and gone into hiding
running to the nearest refuge in a home of intoxicated revellers.
New year resolutions slurred out like no more predictions earnestly promised by fortune tellers
and hopes for new year conquests by war mongering lovers.

We had a quiet night in
on the home front, eating and drinking
as midnight mayhem was counted down to blast off from ten.
Met you before but don’t remember who. Saw in 2026 but don’t remember when.

Cesare street-bellows
above the bells;
Red wine has reddened his tonsils.
His blackened lungs tarred by Camels.

He’s the local lunatic
around whom stories circulate:
Of a life ruined all too quick.
Of a foreign legion escapade.

Were his dice destined bad
playing fortunes dicey game?
Or did he risk all he had
with no-one but himself to blame?

Now he gobs, the gobshite fool,
Fumbling phlegm from his chin.
An underdog is nothing new
nor the in-crowd who outcast him.

My first year in Italy was in Monza in 1992-93, and I wrote this poem about Cesare. I went back to Monza last week after 32 years. Met Roberta there who remembered Cesare who’s, not surprisingly, since died.

About to go back to a torrential rain a month after 33 years ago
wondering why stereotypical summers didn’t last as long as autumns on a tin
coastal birds swirl over cliffs down-beating down to earth in a pantomime show
with a why don’t they give me credit for doing what they wanted me to before it ended up in a bin?

Waking up with an alarm clock head at the same time every morning
afternoons go by as quick as an evening disappearing into evening
working is a long-winded way to get to a pensionable age
with a visionary workforce with x-ray eyes seeing through the pointlessness of a blunt edged wage.

If everyone wrote what they thought in a diary
or said what they’d ever written on shredded office paper
there might not be so many trips down lanes lost to memory
or so many tombstones jumping up and down in a comic who the hell were they? caper.

Tomorrow is a day with a concert ticket
and a flight of fantasy which could end in disappointment if over worrying wins.
I’m going back to a place I never liked but which now holds out a hand nostalgic
and I’m going to love being tortured and having to pay for all my sins.

I live with my muse in a music box.
I live like a duke in a juke box.
I sit within walls of sound in my bedsit.
I turn my factory 45s churning out hit after hit.

Feel as close to a return paradise ticket there and back
as a record player needle to a record track.
As fictitiously far away from human contact
as a ghost-written autobiography to fact.

Listening to your voice in my flatlet
is like eavesdropping the one next door
through a paper thin record sleeve wall
while reading sleeve notes to a kindred spirit.

It’s been a day-by-day year, dear darling
and being remote is a way to control it.
Dreams overnight might not make it
but long-playing ones might resound like music.

Sitting in my summer garden of an afternoon
and feeling safe in my middle class mother mountain father cocoon,
I daydreamed with the lawn mown
and all my neighbours a silver jubilee clone.

Long long later and of an after
and, once again, passed by for the Nobel prize for Literature
there I sat in a garden, daydreaming
listening to the coo of consciousness streaming.

Passer-by footsteps are a beat
while printed lyrics, straight out of a songbook,
flutter on nearby window curtains over a paper street.

Couples hand in hand talk of fingers in a pie
while babies in their prams deafen sighing parents as they bawl and cry.
A hat on the pavement coins a musical refrain,
but market forces won’t change till a chorus kicks in again.

I just sit and listen and chain smoke till it breaks.
Forget what’s going on around the world cos it’s a load of (rhymes with this busker rocks)
and is nothing to do with me as, elsewhere, money bag criminals on red carpets seem to always be getting away with it to fanfare handshakes.
Meanwhile, feet on the ground, another song is a-foot played by an afternoon busker in old socks.