Death of an atheist

With a puzzled frown, he faced the gloom
No more books, or riffs, too weak to attack
His bags were packed. He left the room
He walked into the night. Did not come back
It was the dark time, before Christmas
He was stoical. Bravery was his thing
The Higgs boson still eluded us
He was Prometheus – man is king
God is not great, he said, we are
In this, he was wrong – and right
It was a lonely place to park his car
For God is our breath. God is light
The song of birds. Every particle
Each word we write. Every article

Sir Rick of Parfitt

Wealth was the measure of our success
Better amps, bigger shows, louder, faster
The villas and pools I've had; the palace
Where I played my Telecaster
We were celebrated and loud, yes
But we were modest avatars
Being ordinary served us best
Lads in denim – big German cars
Life was better when we played in bars
There is no art in the gluttonous
The powdery crunch of our guitars
Was so simple, powerful, numinous
I do not seek too much, as before
To sustain my craft and art, less is more

Life on the road is pretty healthy these days. ‘We always take a chef with us – I don't eat any pasta. I don't eat any potatoes. I rarely eat any bread. I give myself a break once a week and have something with more carbs in it, but for the most part I just stick to protein.’

Rick Parfitt of Status Quo quoted in Guitar and Bass magazine, December 2011

Bulbophyllum Nocturnum

For Fergus

A night-flowering orchid, the first of its kind known to science, has been described by a team of botanists.

Experts say the "remarkable" species is the only orchid known to consistently flower at night, but why it has adopted this behaviour remains a mystery

How they oppress, the prisons of the hills
They are so easy to overrate
We have opened up the satanic mills
In all honesty, I have learnt to hate
William Wordsworth's fucking daffodils
I find no romance in tranquility
There is no poetry in my poetry

You'll see no metaphor or simile
In my work. They have served us ill
For they are delusions merely
Pathetic fallacies. My skill
Is in describing the ordinary
There is much to be said for banality
There is no poetry in my poetry

In our corrupted universe
They are deluded who turn to the light
Merely in their tedious verse
Let us praise flowers that bloom at night
Not sunsets, angels or Celtic slush
And explore strangeness not beauty
There is no poetry in my poetry

A vision of ignorance

The Euro swooned. It felt unwell

Greece was sick and going to hell

Bad times for traders in red socks

Flapping arms and falling stocks

From the bankers came solutions

Less help for higher contributions

To keep them rich and screw the poor

While all the blame went to their door

They rioted, the markets spoke

We'll take that Papandreou bloke

The problem wasn't over yet

Because of high Italian debt

Another victim had to do

Exit ‘bunga’‘bunga’ Silvio

The markets growled, the euro sighed

The markets roared, the euro cried

Speaking in the bankers' hall

Eton Dave welcomes the fall

Complacent and myopian

Despising the ‘utopian’

It's part of the Conservative scheme

To wreck the European dream

Viewing from the UK prison

Its social egalitarianism

Dave speaks the Anglo Saxon creed

The ancient law of class and greed

Bullying markets rule the day

Dictating government policy

Equality and rights are sins

Only fit for Jacobins

Lower taxes make us free

And for the poor austerity

Lament for a death in Forest Hill

U will neva b forgoten becos
All that u did was good
We grew up in the same hood
U was a brotha to me, my cuz


I know I wasn't always there
But u were always in my heart
Even when we were far apart
I hope that you know that, yeh


U r in a beta place now
Than this one, I swear
1 day I hope to c u there
Cos u r my brethren, my blood



Gangland killers at funeral 'may have gunned down wrong man'

A man killed in a gangland shooting at a funeral may have been shot by mistake, police believe.
Azezur Khan, 21, was blasted at close range by a pair of gunmen in front of hundreds of mourners.
Two 17-year-old girls and two men of 20 have been arrested and released on bail over the killing outside a cemetery in East Dulwich, South-East London.

Old records

Neatly from the alphabet they stare

Equal in rank, crooner and head
With their stacked heels and bouffant hair
Des O'Connor and the Grateful Dead
Their sleeeves fading to obscurity
The too-sincere, dangerous and mad
With cracked old videos for 50p
I watched them with mum and dad
Stoned and square, hippy and straight
They are moving to oblivion
Time does not discriminate
Shuffling to the bargain bin
Perhaps it is better to end up here
Than in a summer season on some pier

Gypsy king

His face is white, he's too fat now
He sees the spaces in the crowd

He's the gypsy king of Forest Hill

Once when he was dark and thin

When he played his violin

Girls gathered round at every show

The Devil sat behind his bow

In his dead face, his eyes are bright

They see the corners of the night

He's the gypsy king of Forest Hill

The good times he remembers still

He filled the room with every trill

Now he sleeps through every day

And hopes his magic touch will stay

There was lustre in his gold

Before the nights grew sad and cold

He's the gypsy king of Forest Hill

You would say his songs are hot

Even if his band are not

Though he's old he still has skill

He’d murder you if looks could kill

His face is white, he’s too fat now

He sees the spaces in the crowd

He's the gypsy king of Forest Hill

One night, in the year 1713 I dreamed I had made a pact with the devil for my soul. Everything went as I wished: my new servant anticipated my every desire. Among other things, I gave him my violin to see if he could play. How great was my astonishment on hearing a sonata so wonderful and so beautiful, played with such great art and intelligence, as I had never even conceived in my boldest flights of fantasy. I felt enraptured, transported, enchanted: my breath failed me, and - I awoke. I immediately grasped my violin in order to retain, in part at least, the impression of my dream. In vain! The music which I at this time composed is indeed the best that I ever wrote, and I still call it the "Devil's Trill", but the difference between it and that which so moved me is so great that I would have destroyed my instrument and have said farewell to music forever if it had been possible for me to live without the enjoyment it affords me.


Giuseppe Tartini quoted in Lalande's Voyage d'un François en Italie (1765 - 66)

The fiddler

The old roué eyes the thinning crowd

The pub is empty, the band too loud

He is portly now, pale his skin

He views the vacant seats, recalling when

He wowed the festivals with his bow

His thin moustache curled, and how

With his bolero jacket, pencil thin

He could astonish with his violin

Then there was lustre in his gypsy gold

Before the gigs dried up, the nights grew cold

The girls would whoop with surprise

He played them with his fiddle and his eyes

On this weekday night, in this sad place

His dark eyes flash in his pale face

They say that even here, he is hot

A gypsy balladeer. The band are not

They do it for pin money and beer

The men who played in … insert name here

 

Miliband minor

With the kind of wave that says, ‘hi’

young Edward turns down the flame to blue

You know, he says, I’m your kind of guy

that’s what I think and so do you.

The too well-pressed suit and strange hair.

The dark staring eyes and awkward pose

form a question – Redwood or Blair?

In the faint blue glow from a silver rose

the faithful punctuate his artful speech

applaud politely each careful glissando.

A curious camera plays on each

as they rise to his awkward crescendo.

A debating club nerd, one would have said –

no blood in his veins. At this rate, Ed is dead.

The Unwelcoming Arms (Unfriendly Street)

Maybe I should give it one more chance
The stupidly-named beers, badly kept
And the meagre, over-priced snacks
Provide an authentic ambience

The crimson drinkers whose stare is blank
Sun-ripened by some Spanish pool
Radiate their hostility
Like lobsters plucked from a tank

I used to pretend it was not rough
The bitter not sour, the lager sweet
Until one of them turned on me
It seems I was not local enough

A wolf's tale

In my dream was a long corridor
Wood panelled, an important meeting
A crimson coat hung outside the door
Could it be yours? My heart was beating
A hunter's role is assigned to me
I waited outside, as I always had
It is unfair, my villanous history
For I am mad, I am not merely bad
This time, you did not turn or take flight
We talked, calmly. We had left the wood
I miss it so much, stalking you, at night
Your eyes widening – Little Red Riding Hood
Our lives are not long. I miss them, creeping through
Your heart moving beneath mine, hunting you

The gaudy pageant of the past

I remember the 1970s

The three-day week, Joe Gormley

The first miners’ strike

Eddie Waring’s ‘oop an’ under’

There was wrestling on TV

Oh yeh, I was there …

Then there were the 1980s –

Dallas and Dynasty

Cocktails and shoulder pads

Terry Wogan’s studied unease

The Style Council were good

Duran Duran were…. please

The ’90s were a bit vague

In some ways, they were a blur

Buttered parsnips … oh yes

New Labour, Brit Pop

It was all so embarrassing

Do I remember them? Er …

The Noughties had no sooner started

Than they were gone. Millenniuuuum

No style, no music, no drugs

(Apart from the usual ones)

There were iPods and MP3s

If you count them. But I’d rather not

The past crowds into our troubled teens

Thatcher is still around – that cow

The present is where we live

With a bunch of memories

Stacked up, like old CDs

To be honest, the best time is now

News from now here

At London’s gate it rose, in SE1
Democratic and utilitarian

Here, the post-war settlement began
The hub of Abercrombie’s London plan

The giant blocks and decks of the Heygate
Expressed the power and hope of the state

In the sky-leaning architecture we see
Faith in the future and modernity



Over the estate, sheathed in black and grey
The vast Strata tower looms today

The pages of slick brochures show us how
These flats cost millions; bankers live here now

Reward for self-interest – the new way
Society crumbles – a slow-motion decay

The rich get richer, the poor riot a bit
The state did not fail; we failed it

In a legend to make Abercrombie cry
Now here say giant  letters in the sky

Each era, a new skin is painted on
The future lost; conservatism won


Pics taken by me from my beloved 63 bus as we arrived at the Elephant and Castle area of south London, which I have been travelling to, and through, for various reasons for the past 25 years. Nowhere of course means utopia.

The departed

To my mother

They watch us, coolly, from their beds of slate.
They regard us, with their sepia eyes –
The obscure and those who are merely great.
Their pale image offers no surprise.
They have left us, into eternal night,

Slipped into the darkness, like rusty ships.

They do not smile. They are in black and white.

Our warm faces will never touch their lips.

All has been evened out, even their sin.
They have dissolved, into the great shade.
Only the newly-gone can prick our skin
Although a colour photograph can fade.
She drew me to her breast on happy days.
Now she has gone away, her picture stays.


Note: the photograph was taken in a studio in Cairo – my mum was in the the women's army, the  ATS – in 1942 or ’43. She would have been about 17, having run away from home in Coventry at 15 and lied about her age to join the service.

The eternal present

Beneath the oak trees, now dark, now bright
Their shapes shifting continually
A startling galaxy, the points of light
Are ruffled soul mates of eternity.
As the gentle river mirrors the sky
Water is moved by particles of air
Its form is in flux, how can I
Describe what is no longer there
In a perpetual dance of matter?
As it shears through time smoothly, my prow
Splits future and past, air and water
Shows where I have been, where yet to go
The lapping water is a benediction
A hopeful promise, a valediction


Note: never look back in a canoe, or you risk falling in

The Riots

Home Secretary Theresa May today rejected a warning from senior police officers that the Government's spending cuts will leave forces unable to cope with rising social and industrial tensions

The Independent, 15 September, 2010

My dogs are better behaved and subscribe to a higher code of values than the young rioters of Tottenham, Hackney, Clapham and Birmingham

Max Hastings, Daily Mail, August 2011

They made the Royal Family frown

In Manchester and Canning Town

In shopping malls and retail huts

Reacting to the budget cuts

Kids reached through shattered glass and ran

In Tottenham and Lewisham

Like crazed bankers at bonus time

But City greed is not a crime

It’s natural justice, common sense

That the poor show deference

Why should money be their glitch?

It only motivates the rich!

Tabloid and broadsheet lust for blood

Against the wearers of the hood

Liberal policemen, they avow

Have slaughtered England’s sacred cow

It is a holy trinity

Business, greed and property

Buttressed by hypocrisy

A pretend aristocracy

They see the world through thatch and fields

As riot police with Perspex shields –

A Praetorian guard who shove and bray –

Keep the urban poor at bay

Hastings with his marbled nose

Rolls out a length of purple prose

My dogs have more respect, he writes

Than these unfathered urbanites

Making an unholy row

Even the girls are it now!

How dare they clamour to be free

For self-expression, liberty

Only war will make them manly

A healthy slaughter, like Port Stanley

The town hall flag has turned bright red

The age of deference is dead

Politicians cuss and rave

The camera follows Eton Dave

How have the latest cuts gone down

At the poorer end of town?

Tanned from a Tuscan holiday

He speaks of criminality

Through smouldering ruins now he sees

A broken Big Society

Spoiled by benefits and health

The weak have tried to share his wealth

Only the rich can shout and smash

Abuse the meek and splash their cash

Coast

The sky is a scribbled-on slate
A careful study in grey
Like a dull ache, day follows day
At night the town glows softly
Like an elaborate goodbye

The wind crosses the tidal flats

It teases samphire and rocket
And pushes a stiff-winged tern
Slowly, over the shell bank
This is where I began.

Note: Bradwell-on-Sea which gave rise to this is small village at mouth of the Blackwater Estuary in Essex. It has one of Britain's most ancient churches , built by Saxons from the ruins of a Roman fort; also an airfield used in World War two and a pub, The Cricketers, which used to have the signatures of doomed airmen inscribed on its ceiling. Oh and an nuclear power station. It's a haunting place, a couple of hours drive from London.

I show a prospective tenant around my house. It goes terribly wrong

Walking through the estate, you were whistled at
Then he sucked his teeth at you, some bloke
Because you're blonde. I said, ‘you should wear a hat’
I live next to the estate. It's not bad. It was a joke

A joke! Women are abused daily. Don't you see!
I do see. I was born in ’58, before the schism
It put us on barricades, men like me
We conceded the ground – we were wrong – to feminism

The hat thing – it was just irony, but you
Saw the dust on the stairs, page three in the Sun
You re-built the barricade. You withdrew
Suddenly, I was Jeremy Clarkson

My humour was misplaced. It's fair enough
But now it's all lads' mags and fake tan
I just don't get it, the new stuff
Compared to that I'm a new man

Rapture

A whiff of weed, a spidery tattoo.
You veered all over, with your band.
A startled goddess of incense and kohl.
No, you were never safe, or bland.
Most of us stay in the middle – not you.

Some who with the devil sup
retain no sense of ill, or wrong.
We observed your imperiled innocence
through each false step and slurred song.
Fascinated and appalled we pulled you up.

Immortal beauty does not age or cough.
Fire is dangerous – you touched a lot.
It burned you through. We did not see
that your nerves were gone, your lungs were shot.
You teetered to the edge and fell off.

Penge High Street

Believed to be in talks with himself
mad Tom is shouting at the trees.
He hurls abuse at the passing cars.
He was washed up here years ago
no-one acknowledges the bearded Defoe
and his crazed pavement philosophies.

The bunting thrown across the road
the dappled leaves that softly dance
the neat almshouses' quiet calm
and the traffic island, almost a square
why, but for the food – crisps and peanuts
one could almost be in France.

Day after day simply passes by
in a routine of meat and bread.
One road runs through, by the spire of St John's
the recreation ground and the War Memorial.
Here, the men of Penge are detained
eternally. The dead are still dead.

From the Crooked Billet I observe
the shadowed play of cloud and sun
in the guitar shop window. I absorb
the amber units of passing time
and the insane rantings of mad Tom.
Slowly, nothing is going on.

Those who have been there – a select few – will know the magic of the place. Twangs is my favourite guitar shop and I am very partial to the Crooked Billet with its wonderful selection of crisps and nuts.

Out first ball

Hair cut close, like a squaddie's bristle
they're well turned-out today, these guys
With their smart blazers and striped ties
they'll go over the top on the whistle.
Torpor, snobbery – an English afternoon.
The cloying smell of newly-mown grass
hangs thick over the field, like trench gas.
Fear clenched in the knotted gut. Go on son!
For the school! It's your chance to stand tall.
Mortified. The rancid sweat and hollow laughter
of the changing room, a prelude to slaughter.
A black grenade drops from the sun. Out first ball.
It's only your legs gone. You girl! Hide your pain.
I hated cricket. I never played again.

Note. Others like cricket. It never worked for me, probably because I was no good at it. At any rate, this poem is true. The one time I had a go at batting, I was out within seconds. Humiliating

Rebekah Brooks – a Greek tragedy

Sharks feed on blood; fear is your food
Pale your skin, deadly your Siren's song
Fearsome spawn of a monstrous brood
Epitome of all that is wrong
Mistress of a chrome and glass lair
You are Cassandra, flame-haired one
Snakes writhe in your copper hair
You're a slave of the balance sheet
Your heart? There is ice there
You kissed Rupert's clay feet
For the pleasure of Moloch, his god
To keep the wrinkled old bastard sweet
You threw slimy Coulson to the plod
With false words and fake tears
You shafted your staff and kept your job
A faded ghost, you cannot hide your fear
You are not Medussa, you are Medea

NB: Terza Rima

Diary of unrepentant sinner

Serialise book
Blair was not crook
David Kelly lied
It was suicide!
Need bling
Guest speaker
Free dinner
Kerching
Swear bully. Bully swear
Fake smile
Pretend to care


New Labour. Red rose
Big ego. Brown nose
Trash Gordon
Rubbish Peter
Publish excreta
On my blog
Wash hands of blood
Go for jog
Don't do shame
Walk dog
Don't do God

Single combat 3 July 2011

It’s almost medieval, this thrust and thwack

It’s a denatured form of war

This trial of strength – defence, attack

No one dies. Instead, there’s a score

For honour, they disguise their pain

Their favours and colours on show

The bloodless knights of Serbia and Spain

Novak and Rafael – in stereo

The Serb’s the hero of the tournament

Behind his smile, is what all knight’s must know

That, soon, the prize money will be spent

The cup will fade, his lady’s look will go

Human memory is all too short

Wars are soon forgotten, so is sport

A gust of wind

A gust of wind came in from the sky
and threw your face from the windowsill
the face that bore me through life, until
this moment. Must I now say goodbye?
One day, when I was looking elsewhere
a gust of wind blew away your picture.
You left me again, or did I leave you?
The pills help to take away my fear
they have deadened the pain of your leaving.
My eyes are open – a new clarity
comes from my unaccustomed sobriety.
Tonight, I have left behind my grieving
for the face that it still smiling at me
from a broken frame. Must you go, really?

The streets of London

For Patrick

Tollgate, workhouse and coaching inn
Open their doors to let you in
Beneath the cobbles and the mud
Are Mithras, Edgar and King Lud
The cabbies' horses, milk and hay
In London's fields not far away
Before modernity began
Legionnaire and highwayman
Streets are undressed – the world you see
A city clothed in history

Note: picture shows Ludgate Circus, where King Lud is buried  (allegedly)

Mood swings

Dispensing light and dark
Drunkenly, they sway and lurch
Like lunatics, across the park
Like the gates of a great church


Burgeoning with dark and light
They swing open to let us in
One moment it's day, then night
They announce salvation and sin


They weep, silently, on the grass
In an emotional drama
Is it tragedy or farce?
Above us – a panorama


The clouds switch and flash in the sky
Like Wagner or an English air
But in what kind of mood am I?

Complete joy or utter despair?

Footsteps and shadows – the story of a house

It was built where the Great North Wood
Lapped against London – rus in urbe
Dairies, market gardens and clay pits
Farms and then houses, a suburb

The railway arrived – brick villas
Clustered thickly around the station
Goodbye to the telegraph and horse
Victoria dies – a coronation

They started our house and finished it
War came. Light fell across the wall
Millions were born. Another war
Footsteps and shadows. Voices in the hall

Radar, the bomb, nuclear technology
We breached sound but not light
Daily, the sun flickered across the wall
Marking the passage of day and night

All those years, no-one noticed
Stars or geology; soft words were spoken
Voices in the hallway rose and fell
They will do until our light is broken

Zimmerman

World's coolest man
Synagogue gunslinger
High priest of the profane
Or merely a singer?


You took our worn-out words
Jangling beatnik long-hair
Gave the old songs a new run
Filled them with air


Playful, grandiloquent
Parading goodness and sin
Strutting, indifferent
Folk Judas – you plugged in


Holy cowpoke jester
Yeh, it was good what you done
But you ain't no Messiah
They're just songs. You just strum

Making a canoe

You were the master of wood and glue
I would watch you, as a kid
And try to follow; I could not
I think of you, now, building my canoe

Now I know that your delight in wood
Was in the trueness of a straight line
In perfect joints, smooth as glass
In your plane – making things good

I would watch you, dad, as you
Poured your quiet strength into a task –
Strong shelves, fit for an elephant
I can’t do what you could do

I’m seeding the boat's imperfection
With each ill-judged line and cut
I am hoping it will float, but still
It would fail your inspection

Show me dad, please, let me see
At least you tried. Making was your thing
Not people – their imperfection
I was subdued by your mastery

Your square-tipped fingers made to till
Were the templates for mine. I look down
And see my clumsy fingers on the wood
I have your hands. I do not have your skill