Inheritance and repentance and putting up fences, the farmers and harmers wrote their therefores and sentences. When the cows came home, bull’s blood would flow and pop-panal pundits would throw
coins into the sheep-dip, and dip their hooves and paws into the market. Chauffeurs, for their stars, would wallow in it as bird tables would get auctioned off as rare antiques, chiselled out by master woodpeckers at the top of their beak-peaks.
At requiems, those famous last words turned out to be sold in stores as would-be music-critics turned out to be film-buff bores who’d whistle and hum sleeve notes they’d later download to their favourite album.
First of all, don’t wear black. Have an egg and spoon race, or a race in a sack. Get together on the coast (near the countryside) somewhere at your convenience. Anywhere will do; a seagull residence.
‘A Day in the Life’ is the song for me, but play what you like. Peddle what you can sell whether a unicycle or a 7-wheeled bike. Have a toast to what you’ve already had. Go crazy but don’t go mad.
Get my favourite chef to cook gilt-head bass. Recite a poem in fancy-dress after a glass. When you can’t stand no more, sit down, play pass the parcel. Or pretend to the throne and make up a joust in a castle.
That’s about it, just don’t wear black. At midnight, get your grandmother’s best knitting pattern and go looking for a needle in a haystack.
II If by tragic accident
That’s the way it goes. Cross your fingers and cross your toes.
If run over, come by foot. If died in the kitchen, come with a dish to cook. If in a car, drive and park. If electrocuted, switch on lights if dark.
Whatever the accident, that’s how it goes. Cross your fingers and cross your toes. Watch out for the seagulls from up above! If I died tripping up, send a postcard with love.
Funeral arrangements as if by natural causes, except (if known) keep away from anyone accident prone.
III If by murder Difficult one. If still dangerous, come with a gun. If murderer caught, you’ll find out in court. If still on the loose, hope the chase isn’t wild goose. Whoever did it will have had their reasons so no need for revenge or treason seasons. Just hope it was a good murder and I didn’t suffer. Who knows, the years ahead may have been rougher?
For funeral, carry on as if by natural causes but put in timely Harold Pinter pauses.
IV If by suicide
Blimey, what a turn up for the books! Nobody more surprised than me! At time of writing, it must have been by misadventure, surely!? However, for now, I’ll go along with the autopsy.
So, here’s my note; “I’ve never wanted to carry out the unthinkable ‘cos I’ve always thought I never wanted to leave anyone feeling responsible. You’re not. I’ve been very lucky having had you all. So makes one wonder why. Well, you can stand on a balcony for years but when you jump off you fall. In the end, anyway, we all die. Sorry if I’ve made it a difficult farewell. Don’t make a song and dance of it but feel free to do so at the do afterwards. And remember I won’t be going to heaven, purgatory or hell. I’ll just be with a pair of scissors, pencils&pens, watercolours&camera, records&drums in a rented flat at home abroad.”
For funeral, try to act as if by natural causes but, if I left an unlikely will, invite a lawyer for those complicated clauses.
Vittorio Emanuele II turns in his grave at the right royal turnout of riff-raff on his ‘corso’. A fashion designer’s funeral collection is all the rage as celebrity paparazzi police ferret out paparazzi lying low.
Obituary page bound, a favourite 60’s Britpop star has just popped his clogs; His life was mostly ups crossed by one terrible down. Your average got lucky, got legless, then lost the use of ‘em Joe Bloggs.
Inside out, the sandwich-board loudspeaker self-publicists get it off their chests with megamouths to match, as upside down big-top amateur pavement parachutists get penalised for having no-one there ready to catch.
Even so, the irate whistle-happy tramp, in his heaven knows how he got it traffic-warden’s uniform, wastes his breath cautioning all and sundry. Whereas he’s found his paradise in an inferno of car engines and car horns that’s not my cup of tea.
I woke up to flashes of what I’d dreamt. They were flashes I fell asleep to in my head. I woke up to flashes of what I’d dreamt of that night. Flashes I’d fallen asleep to, snuffing out the candlelight.
You can have success and failure in public and a failure in private and all alone. It leaves you cold and bitterly cold and ready to wrap up for winter. It keeps your heart on its own.
Whistlestop Plumbridge
birds grip telegraph wires pigeons lean on ledges have a name answer to another sneak off behind hedges bump into your nextdoor neighbours and feign a chat on the day’s labours have your first kiss and take a drag away from prying eyes get married and have kids where something lives something dies.
State school came to its compulsory conclusion that summer as I took my ‘O’ Levels and CSEs. Apart from a U in Biology, anatomically a bummer, my grades weren’t bad; a B in History, passes in Maths, French and English Lit, A CSE grade 1 in French (encore!) and another in what was civilly called Citizenship. Grade 2 in Photography, a 3 in Biology and Chemistry a 4. Add the English Language ‘O’ level I’d got in January and a considerate employer may well have considered me.
As it was, I went careering down the non-career path and started Exeter College and Further Education. I had no idea what I wanted to do apart from learn and laugh and the world of work seemed a Victorian world of degradation. The only world that struck a chord was music and, having started my first part-time job at The Countess Wear Lodge Motel, at last I had money to afford records. In came The New Romantics as Punk died a death. But all that was immaterial. The only group I wanted to splash out on was The Beatles. The year of John Lennon.
Every two weeks I’d buy two Beatles albums and play them back to back, on my bed. Maybe I played air guitar (I certainly hadn’t started playing the drums) but heading for WH Smiths of a Saturday, something popped in my head. But what am I writing? Wilfully or not, I’m lying! I only had the red and blue collections before he was shot! Everything else I got later in ’81, that’s when I started buying. Sgt Pepper was the first proper L.P I got a few days after that dark wintry morning when Mum woke me up, yawning.
The news she brought was it must have been drugs. Only when I got to Dave Robinson’s English lesson did the fact he’d been murdered reach my lugs. That evening on TV, coverage of his demise was incessant. I still have the front pages of The Daily Express (Yellowing and crumpled now) with its Death of a Beatle. Old enough to understand the previous generation’s shock at Dallas I recorded, and still have, his interview with Andy Peables. I was 16 at the time, and despite my being, then, an ‘A’ Level student in History I hope you’ll pardon this poem being a little out in its chronology.
Once upon a day he ate meat but fell off his feet. So he stopped eating meat and got back to his feet.
Cows, pigs and sheep woke up from their sleep and heard the good news that he’d stopped eating meat for the good of his feet.
Once upon a day everyone will think on their feet when they’ll be a front-page headline from head to toe and a new no meat sandwich board will be the line to tow.
A Pretty Kettle of Poetry 