A note from Ulysses

My best days are in shadow

the oars are folded and my sea bag

lies with spiders in the hall.

Why did I want to be a hero?

On days bright with promise

the water was so blue

the future was ahead of us

we watched as the sun hit the prow.

My best days are behind me now

the boxes and ropes that coil

are all that is left from my adventure.

Why did I want to be a hero?

Ageing

In those days, climbing into the loft

I rose vengefully to do battle.

I was up that ladder like a monkey.

To the rubbish dragon I was Parsifal.

I smote him but he never went away.

Like coral in a subterranean sea

each day he grew, glowing faintly.

The beast was feeding on my energy!

Eventually, the cunning creature won

a final and overwhelming victory

like the Panzers in the Ardennes.

His cloak of darkness folded over me

and I fell victim to his necromancy

in the final conquest of gravity.

Hayes Street Farm

Is it nostalgia or memory
that guides me to the stables and sheds
rusting machines, the mountains of baled straw?

At the city’s edge is an economy
where chickens can wander freely.
Once, everywhere was like here.

Maybe it’s the stories of my father
that I remember. But I often feel
that I have been here before

fixing up an old tractor
bailing hay with a pitchfork
or picking up windfalls for cider.

I follow a sign to the car boot sale.
These days, one field is a car park
another's harvest are terrible MPs

broken clocks and old crockery.
What pleasures linger in this detritus.
picked over by crows and magpies.

Perhaps I can find the perfect way
to learn Spanish, a flower pot
or a useful tool for pennies.

Fringed by hawthorn and elder 
a rutted track is drawing me
to the farm pond; its hidden treasure

strangers brought from some wilderness
bright fish, like fragments of sky
lending the dusk their icy brilliance.

Clown and doll

Once there lived an orange clown
in a white house on a hill.
The puppet man who ruled the world
spied his foe, the china doll.

‘They’re going after Jefferson

one day they will get me too.’

He shouted at at the hapless toy

‘And so you Goddam freak: fuck you!’

The doll’s skin was like porcelain

his pursed lips like a cupid’s bow.

He liked to taunt the harlequin

on who would rule the puppet show

‘Your words don’t mean shit to me

or your fucking rodeo.

Fuck your white supremacy

I’m gonna fucking kill you bro.’

The angry clown snarled back in pain.

‘Now I’m getting mad,’ said he.

‘Your word are very threatening.

It’s me who who runs this nursery!

‘I’m gonna make it bad for you

hotter than Kardashian

meaner than a rattlesnake

with fire like you’ve never seen!’

The harlequin laughed maniacally.

‘Whose the fucking loser now?

Come on boys, let’s lock and load.

Seriously, we’re good to go.’

The china doll was calm and still

despite the wailing sirens' sound

heaping morsels on his plate

hidden safely underground.

He did not fear the puppet man

or his weird orange glow.

He listened as a city burned

in a bunker far below.

Gravity

Please do not blame me for being old.
My life just happened, like gravity.

The apple that falls from the tree

slowly loses its brilliance.

Each moment should be savoured and yet

it is good for us to remember

that the past is actually still there.
and that the mind chooses what to forget.

How we feel now is how we felt –

wet fur, the scent of lavender

the leather and dust of an old car

are offered on time’s conveyor belt.

unburdening us from mere chronology.

The present lives in our memory.

Please do not blame me for being old

Please do not blame me for being old.
The apple falls from the tree.
It just happened. It was like gravity.

Once, spinning in euphoria
I rode on everything.
The horizon did not interest me.

My years are like your seconds.
Decades passed. It was not meant.

You rise, slowly, to the top
of the Big Dipper. And then ... the descent.

While I was not looking
my life seemed to fall away.

The sounds and colours that are strange to you
once were a novelty

Please do not blame me for being old.
It just happened. It was like gravity.

The cheaper sort

At the moment things are hot

They’ve made me lose my job: what rot

Oh the rank indignity

Sajid Javid who is he?

How dare he dish the dirt on me

I said to him just wait and see

The plebs’ attention span is short

All they want is fags and sport

Give it a week, or maybe two

And they’ll have over things to do

But no, he wouldn’t wait a bit

He’s stitched me up that little git

I said to him, what’s all this for?

We’ve heard this bolshie talk before

All that ghastly tenant power

We tarted up their sodding tower

Sprinklers and a fire test!

They’ll be wanting gold bars next!

Designer labels, super cars

Fine cuisine and cocktail bars

They are plebs, why should they be

Living in royal K and C?

Lazy beggars on the lam

Send them up to Birmingham!

I was at the Treasury

And Cambridge University

You don’t get to the PM’s door

By wasting money on the poor

So why all the sodding fuss?

More for them means less for us

I need my rural liberty

And life in Surrey don’t come free

Ski-ing is my favourite sport

The shares this year are falling short

That’s why I did it with no thought

The cladding? Use the cheaper sort

Accountants

They must have an interior life. 
It is one of the mysteries of the office.

Church on Sunday, a new car, a pet dog?

They reveal less than a goldfish.

They are strangers to emotions.
These people don't do words.

They prefer columns of numbers.
Their seeing eye merely records.

They are like Easter Island statues.
Don’t ask them about East Enders

Who put them here, and for what purpose?

We know why. It's to torment us.

Primly superior to those who
blurt out words, or who cry after a skinfiul
they are frozen in some Biblical hell –
a year zero, where feelings are sinful.

A clay pipe

For Chris

As news of the invading Dutch fleet 

travelled slowly across the city 

the pipe was snapped by one who is long dead 

and forgotten. A remnant of history.

Sluiced from a storm drain into the river 

bowl and stem were touched by eels

layered in an invisible jeopardy

a shifting pavement of slime and ships' nails. 

Years passed. New outrages were observed.

The man who blew out lungfuls of air 

died and was buried somewhere.

At night, the sky thundered with war.

His tiny act went unrecorded.

Each tide brought new whispers and rumours

until one bright London morning 

I found his clay pipe stem, on the foreshore.

Nationwide BS

I'm gonna miss it

repossessed. Me and our kid 
in his vest

The barbeque from

B&Q, the garden –

weeds are growing through.

You were the pimp and

I the whore. The thing is

who is paying for

the hundred plays I

never wrote. The music?

Not a fucking note!

You took my dream of

liberty. You bought

my creativity.

You should be punished

for your crimes. Instead you

offer comfy rhymes

soft focus dreams of

what we had. But where

were you when times were bad?

The factories, the shops

closed down. The life sucked

from this hollow town.

The house weren’t mortgaged.
It was me. I swapped my
soul for slavery.

You wanted us to

be like you. To join

your pin-striped wrecking crew.

Your easy finance

was not free. It bought us

mediocrity.

A million loans a

millions cards and 

a million prison yards.

Barking at nothing

Hungry and deprived of better meat
The bulldog snaps at gristle in the street
Snarling at the world, this slavering beast
Begs for favours at his master’s feast

Let this dumb animal express the creed
Of a deluded nation gone to seed
A canine lacky to the ruling class
A creature with a poker up its arse

If we depart from Europe, watch the news
For blander food and longer airport queues
Holidays in Skegness and in Dover
Days on golden beaches will be over 

The isolationists will seize their chance
For intolerance and ignorance
Enough of Rousseau, Sartre and Foucault
Philosophy is alien, you know

Ending larger dreams, for who were we
To hitch our flag to foreign liberty?
If they prevail, our future will be shot
To bark at nothing is the bulldog’s lot

Please donate generously

Somewhere in our country tonight
a blank face from a mirror stares back

a lonely tormentor turns off the light
at night, there is no-one to attack

daytime is their prime territory.
It’s true that they could victimise the cat

but since animals do not cry
where is the satisfaction in that?

When they are tucked up in bed
they have little opportunity

to oppress those who are merely talented
with their terrifying banality.

To obfuscate, browbeat and distress
to knot the stomachs of their prey

and render them horribly depressed.
They need you. So give to a bully today!

Ballad of Yellow Hair

 

You know this is a quiet place
And simple folk we are
That’s why we choose who’ll run this town
With whisky in the bar

It takes a very special guy

The sheriff’s star to win

It seemed to be a lucky day

When Yellow Hair came in

His golden locks looked good to us
His promises seemed sweet
He said, I’m gonna kick their ass –
The bad guys on the street

I’ll fix this town, I’ll drain the swamp

I’ll make those hombres pay

My silver Colt will do the job

At noon, on Saturday

Eleven came and then came noon
At one, a shout went round
It’s Yellow Hair in the saloon
At last he has been found!

We saw that he was breaking bread

With those he claimed to hate

The twisted and the sick at heart

The meanest in the state

He used the toughest ruffians
To guard the bar room door
And now he spoke profanities
Not like the guy before

What about your promises?

At last a brave man cried

Who are you? Said Yellow Hair

You cannot come inside!

He’s started being loud and rude
And boasting of his gold
He’s always been the baddest dude
And craven lies he’s told

You could say that he toyed with us

But then he gave us hope

His currency was powerful

The six gun and the rope

You know this is a quiet place
And simple folk we are
That’s why we choose who’ll run this town
With whisky in the bar

Somewhere in the deepest hell

Where men parade their sin

It’s unclear where their badness ends

And Yellow Hair’s begins

Ulysses of the library

You could say that it was a dull story.

Yes, I gave you when, where, what

and at least I had a crack at why.

But not much actually happened. 

I was not like the action guy

whose brave deeds get the girl in the last shot.

The hero does not reflect much.

He does not need to. It's all instinct.

He goes in feet first, fists blazing.

 

His actions are driven by his gut.

His why, in the final analysis

does not stand up to much scrutiny.

At least you know something of my biography:

the beds I sweated in; the upside-down days

when rain pattered onto the rooftops

the frowsy sheets printed on my memory

the hopes and moods that impelled me.

I was the Ulysses of the library.