Holy War

 

For Jesus and the holy banks

We crossed the desert in our tanks

We demonised the brown-skinned man

In Gaza and Afghanistan

We fought for Rumsfeld and for Bush

No guilt or moral qualms for us

We fought for Campbell and for Blair

Don’t look for any sorrow there

We fought for oil and for God

On foreign soil, because we could

We decide who should be free

But don’t call it hypocrisy

Wave a flag for tyranny

It ensures our victory

God has sanctioned what we do

It’s right for us but not for you

We welcome the a-symmetry

Of the new insurgency

As long as we’re on top of course –

We crush with overwhelming force

Our enemies have sticks and stones

We have uranium and drones

In Egypt, Libya and Iran

We seek to kill the brown-skinned man

The bulls at Knossos

You think that you are so good

No-one asked you to pass by

With your vampires and fake blood

You make wolves howl and babies cry

Like some moth-eaten Svengali

Carefully, you coached each Muse

You’re an embarrassment, a cliché

At Knossus, you ran the sacred bulls

You float, like an anaemic flower

In your fortress of selenium

You are passive, you have no real power

Your religion is delirium

Though you merely reflect the sun’s light

Some are led by you to dream or fight

The stranger

You’re the shyest guest at the party

Your changing face has many moods

You charmed the guests on the balcony

You lit up the old house in the woods

You whipped the sea into a frenzy

You taught Orpheus to play the lyre

Without you there would no poetry

I bathed my face in your cold fire

You’re the witch doctor at the carnival

You gave us fever, you gave us rhyme

You linger around the hospital

Without you, there would be no time

Always invited you don’t always come

You’re mysterious, the zero in the sum

The word mines

Each day I carry it: a sack of ideas

My back is bent. Been doing it for years

Past the theatre that won’t let me in

Past pubs, those gilded palaces of sin

Each day, I place imagery in my bag

No-one acknowledges my grind

To recover poetry from mere slag

For my hardship is of the wrong kind

No-one notices me. I don’t care

As I struggle to unearth simile

It’s dark and dangerous down there

Sifting through mere spoil for poetry

No-one sees me and no light shines

It’s dangerous and dark in the word mines

What's wrong with British poetry

And now – insert sincere voice here
Something to keep the hordes from the door
Something gloomy, you’ve heard it before
Something for Sunday night on Radio 4 –
A walk through a Victorian museum.
First, selected by Eileen and Eric
From our echoing mausoleum
Comes this blood-stained relic
How we murdered the Zulu nation
Words are needed to mark the crime.
It’s a hymn of praise to exploitation
Colonial delusion served by rhyme
We had the Gatling gun, they had spears
The same today, it’s been going on for years

Jimi Hendrix revisits the Troubador

People grow old, bits are dropping off

See them clutter hospital and stage

They sniff and splutter, croak and cough

It's annoying. It sends me into a rage

Beauty and youth are glorified

Aren’t they embarrassed at their age?

Surely, silence would be more dignified

But Jimi still looks good in his flares

His gnarled fingers grope for the whammy bar

He twisted his knee on the narrow stairs

Of the club. I helped him out of his car

Couldn’t stop him. He had to go on

His Strat soared, the old magic wasn’t gone


Jimi would have been 70 this year. I went to a club in Earl's Court that he played in, probably in ’66, only four years before he died and I walked down the same staircase. I imagined him then – the amazing presence that he must have had, then I imagined him as he might be now. His favoured weapon from which he wrung magic - left-handed – was the Fender Stratocaster guitar, preferably played through a Marshall amplifier and stack. Pedals were invented to create the sounds that were in his head – phase, flange, wah-wah, it all started with him. He could play with titanic power and delicate beauty. He was 27 when he breathed his last. But he will never die. He is trapped in time. Peter Pan.

Holy spirit

To Cecillia

I'm not scarred by a righteous fight
Don’t have a piercing, or tattoos

I’m not certain that I am right

About my haircut or my shoes
There’s nothing peculiar in my speech

Don’t have artistic hands or feet

Sublimity seems out of reach

I live in a suburban  street

I’ve never wowed a trendy club

My lights are off at half-past nine

I haven’t but I know I could

Perhaps I could, with one more wine

I would capture with my muse

The holy spirit of the blues

I touched a tiger

I remind you of when you were wrong

I’m not sure if I can forgive you

You don’t want to like me – but you do

It’s your indifference that made me strong

I touched a tiger when I was young

That’s what sets me apart

I go round with a damaged heart

Chaos is written on my tongue

The way you treated me was risible

Don’t use this counter, sit at the back

My struggles were all authentic

My scars are almost visible

I have the soulfulness that you lack

How real I am is just sick