A Pretty Kettle of Poetry

The Cotton Club
All the greatest there
from Billie to Dizzie
to Fats and Nat
to Ethel and Count Basie.

The chosen few there all ears
for jazz in its golden age.
Smoke veering with voices
and music crackling from an old vinyl stage.

But this isn’t about that
or those undisputed cool cats.
It’s not so upbeat
with clicking fingers or tapping feet.

This Cotton Club is different
where ears are kept in a cotton wool box.
A museum of air waves
where voices waft off.

When people don’t really listen.
When they can’t fix their hearing aid while it’s going wrong.
When it’s easier to circle round
and drown out words with a gong.

But this isn’t really even about that.
It’s about what happened this eve not long ago.
When cotton wool gets in ears
to float off thereafter as cotton cloud egos blow.
How we apologizingly admit it afterwards
and finally listen to what the other thought the other would or should know.

Better to voice it in time
with unplugged ears to get to some kind of clarity.
So back to the real Cotton Club
where in a dark smoky somewhere something might appear clearly.

So I’m especially wondering now
what this is really about.
Maybe it’s about cottoning on to songs they sing
and thinking it’ll all get simplistically sorted out.

Or maybe it’s about me
or maybe it’s about you
or maybe it’s about our own Cotton Club
and precious things kept in cotton wool.

Poem from new collection ‘Ventriloquist Dummy Voice Overs’

Poetry Archive Now Wordview 2023 Winners

Congrats to the winners this year!

I entered with ‘Mannequin Street’ and you can find the video there on Poetry Archive website.

Rock ‘n’ roll is about having fun.
If you keep yourself in one piece to live long enough, well done!
Parents told off by their children for pretending to be happily married at a local fair.
Morris dancers from Ipswich in a square.

Drop-out students, apart from one, flunk ‘Psychedelia; the rock-social revolution of the 1960s”
as they get pissed and take the piss out of hippies.
Moos and boos and baas and aaaahhs!
Don’t worry ’bout us; we’ll vote and cuss, but thank your lucky stars

we’re as revolutionary as our prospects are bright
being kept in the dark in soundproof drawers.
As trapped miners get pulled up into the light
They’re soon forgotten to a round of applause.

That was the age of Aquarius
but this of boardroom power and the how-dare-you-us.
It’s getting harder and harder to get up in the morning these days.
Must be those glass things of backward loops and handshakes they keep bringing on their trays.

We all die and the only thing not to know is how:
Some ‘cos they eat too much cow.
Some ‘cos they smoke.
Some ‘cos they don’t joke.

We all go to the undertakers:
Some ‘cos they’re unlucky overtakers.
Some ‘cos they’re sinking death rowers.
Some ‘cos they’re drowning maritime blowers.

We all get our card marked and have to punch it:
Some ‘cos they get sick.
Some ‘cos they’re alcoholic.
Some ‘cos they give up the ghost and the spirit.

We all curl up our tootsies and push up daisies:
Some ‘cos they freeze.
Some ‘cos they wheeze.
Some ‘cos they’re 1352-plagued with a sneeze.

We all kick the bucket and lay in a ‘coffin’:
Some ‘cos they fight cancer but give in.
Some ‘cos they end it all in a spin
not knowing where to begin.

We all meet our deliverer:
Some ‘cos they meet their killer.
Some ‘cos they die for someone like Hitler.
Some ‘cos they’re so careless they have no idea.

We all leave this mortal coil:
Some ‘cos there’s too much toil.
Some ‘cos they’re buried in soil.
Some ‘cos they get a boil.

We all cop it and die:
Some ‘cos they fry.
Some ‘cos they told a lie
and some ‘cos there’s no knowing why.

Well, there was the boredom
and the someday to someday humdrum
and the pointless points and the listless lists
and the what what matters? and the what does not.

Those who never go to prison but end their days in jail
who never shed a tear but tend to bawl and wail
who can’t ever do what everybody does
who’ll never ever be whoever ever was.

So, looking at the world across a meaningless moat,
it was as near as pen to paper as sometime someone wrote
just a little something and a little scribbled note
which somewhere got stuck in somebody’s throat.

She’d always be a teen
despite the passing, and doing of, time.
Such was the shock from the adults around
no reason for that action would ever be found.

He himself got off, never hung.
Deserved as much as her, highly strung.
A medieval case, the modern press shook
as her identity parade paraded on his facebook.

Amy Winehouse would have been celebrating her 40th birthday today. I wrote this poem soon after her death in 2011 as part of my ‘Side One’/’Side Two’ collection of the time drawing on my favourite music artists. Of course, I never met her or even saw her perform live, but tried to imagine what she might write That was the concept of that collection at the time – try and write in the style of the artist named or at least use them as inspiration for the poem.

Crinkled headlines on my forehead showing my tabloid age,
your front pages only had time for me when you were in my face.
So, now I’m memorable and kind of unforgettable
I’ve gone to another place.

Stars like me fall they say ‘cos we get so high
but stars like me shine in the big black sky.
I wasn’t always a picture of happiness
but you know what nor were you even at your best.

I had a great voice.
One of those inexplicable things that weren’t my choice.
So, as this circus waits for my posthumous third album release
for all my faults I’ll have to flop in the charts before you’ll let me half Rest In Peace.

Thanks to my family. Thanks to my friends.
Thanks to my fans. This is where the story ends.
Nobody has the right to write about me, especially a nobody who never knew me like you!
Only each and every one of us can understand what each and every one of us goes through.

As the kitchen staff go on the warpath
with the head chef leading the culinary charge
on the waiters and waitresses, under-staffed,
drawing their cutlery for a tomato blood-bath
The summer season’s over again.

All the deck chair’s now have been folded up
and the little old ladies with their lovely cup
have had their biscuit and their seaside nap
back home now for the wireless cat on their lap.
The summer season’s over again.

How very soon the bride and groom
pick out the moon.
and how very soon astrologers
burst their balloon.

As the Empire’s bathrooms across the land
turn on their taps and wash off the sand
with the first day back close at hand
uniforms ironed and bedtime stations manned.
The summer season’s over again.

How very soon
buckets ‘n’ spades become pencils ‘n’ pens
and how very soon
the summer season’s over again.

How very soon
holiday dads become marketing men
and how very soon
the summer season’s over again.

How very soon
ice-cream lolly sticks become the cane
and how very soon
the summer season’s over again.

How very soon
the summer season’s over again.
How very soon
the summer season’s over again.

(Original song: JDG vocals and drums, Chicco Fresu guitar)

Just ‘cos you’re to blame doesn’t mean you’re guilty.
Just ‘cos it’s not your fault doesn’t mean you’re innocent.
Just ‘cos you’ve got money doesn’t mean you’re worth a penny.
Just ‘cos they said it well doesn’t mean they said what they meant.

Just ‘cos you’ve got time doesn’t mean it won’t run out.
Just ‘cos the fun’s over doesn’t mean you can’t have a laugh.
Just ‘cos you’ve got a ticket doesn’t mean you’re a ticket tout.
Just ‘cos you’ve had a life doesn’t mean you’ll have an epitaph.

Just ‘cos you’re a pirate DJ on a sea-breeze
table-turning your flat-world vinyl sea-shanties
doesn’t mean a whale of a man will get any more noticed than a minnow of a bloke
through a back-to-front telescope.

Just ‘cos you beg doesn’t mean you walk the streets.
Just ‘cos you’ve got a good grip on things doesn’t mean you could hold a trapeze.
Just ‘cos you’re on a bus doesn’t mean you have the right to a seat.
Just ‘cos life is routine doesn’t mean you do it with ease.

In case you’re wondering, the chorus to this kiddies’ sing-song
is sink or swim, trick or treat, ding or dong, so sing along!:

“Keep your head above water.
Keep your head down.
Get it right
or you’ll drown.”

Won’t it end in a lie if truth be told?
Gold diggers say that when they don’t find gold.
I got a flea-market here that just won’t perform.
The sea is so rough they launch a shipwreck for the coming storm.
Accountants sack their horses and succinctly bolt for the door.
Writers have their feelings, but readers feel it’s all a bore.
I’ve got nothing to say; mimes for rhymes;
The seventh time it’s happened for several times.
Let’s lose ourselves to see who wins.
Let’s fillet a French film to see how it fins.

To see you again is such an again.
Shop around for love but, before you buy, get into Zen.
Workers working round the clock for way under
hate overtime and little wonder.
Do you think about what you’re saying before you have a fit?
Have you ever been at home and trashed it?
As broom sticks become crutches for witches
I’m in tears and in stitches.
Everyone and their learned and illiterate laughter
is canned for what’s to come and the hereinafter.

Should I regret my ‘suicide’ or ‘death by misadventure’?
Don’t ask; it’s just a benchmark for a bencher.
Wear a sweater mundane.
Keep it simple and plain.