On your bike Boris
Rent a bike,
Be like Boris
Wind in your hair
Reciting odes from Horace.
Avoid jealous lovers
And the press
Get fit
Reduce stress
On your bike
To get a job
See London sights
Beat traffic lights
Hail Boris well met
Don’t forget your helmet.
Up North
Jungle
New EU president,
I think I like you,
with your monthly monastic retreats,
your writing of Flemish Haiku,
your poetic name; Herman Van Roempy,
the man who’s made Tony Blair’s supporters grumpy.
They said Blair’s key credential
was that he is properly…Presidential.
But second time round in the jungle,
there can be more to fear,
and Tony might have spent all his summits
thinking; “I’m a Celebrity,
get me out of here”
Up North
As Leonard Cohen nearly said,
stop mithering,
I was born like this,
I had no choice,
I was born with the gift of a Northern voice,
I know hearing it makes some people groan,
and develop Irritable Vowel Syndrome
but I’d consider it deeply cruel,
if I woke up sounding like Brian Sewell
If you want your message to sound down to earth,
a Northern accent’s the one to use
but I hope one day,
to hear the bongs strike ten,
and a Northerner reading the news.
I met a Daily Telegraph journalist
in Hull once,
it was the furthest North he’d ever been,
he was okay once he’d been issued,
with a passport
and a translating machine.
A Northerner is allowed to host
TV’s Culture Show,
but it’s alright cos she used to be in pop
and just by looking at her you wouldn’t know.
If you escaped to Oxbridge in the fifties or sixties
from a Northern bog or a kitchen sink,
you’ll have left your short “a”s
up a ginnel somewhere
in case they impeded your ability to think.
Though in case anyone disputes
your Northern roots,
they’ll return sometimes
when you’re on the phone
to folks back home.
or you’ve had too much to drink.
Wordsworth came South
and his Cumbrian tones
made people think he was a fool,
so he reflected upon his inward eye,
and sent his nephew to public school.
But I can’t complain,
cos even with my voice,
I’m poeting on the BBC
though a version of this poem
will be written down
and translated into R.P.
Grief Talking
Grief Talking
Janes, Jamie,
not Jennifer Jane,
names,
James,
miss, missing
when you lose
you lose your ane
your aims
names
trying to say the right name
that is how
I do feel, I do feel her pain
miss Janes
blames
me.
Dustclouds form as
words
disperse in helicopter flail.
Her son’s blood
inking sand.
Lack, lack, lack,
gunning in her head.
His body incomplete,
a word
with the last letters
crossed out.
Recent workshop News Poems from Durham
I’ve been using the Facebook News Poems site which is wonderfully active.
(Here; http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=95060877210 )
However, I’ll continue to post poems here too. Recent events at Cheltenham Lit Fest and Durham Book Festival have generated some great examples of the genre. On Tuesday afternoon at Durham’s Clayport Library, nine of us sat down to write first short Saturday Live style stabs, then longer pieces based on events we went and scouted for in Durham city centre. The idea of an event as the basis for a news poem was illuminated further by a Tyne Tees journalist filming us- I though the process of gathering images to illustrate a story was what we would do too. With the advantage of being able to actually witness the event and report it as poets- rather than come into the story half way through as most reactive journalists have to.
The Plan
It was a cunning plan, by a cunning man,
to prepare the TA for war:
reduce their pay, cancel their weekends away,
that’s what hardship is for,
to shape up the body and harden the mind,
the better the Taliban to fight;
and the bonus is, the Government looks good
for keeping its budget tight.
Les Holloway
October 2009
Gladys Armstrong
Gladys Armstrong was a very happy woman.
She’d worked as a cleaner for thirty years
in the County Hall. Then she was made redundant;
a victim of contracting out,
her long service of no account.
She soon got another job at Luke’s, the baker’s shop,
serving sausage rolls and hot pasties.
Luke’s had just purchased a top-of-the-range,
all hissing, all steaming Gaggia coffee maker,
and Gladys was trained to operate it.
How proudly she placed the polystyrene cups
under its foaming spout,
pulling its levers and turning its dials.
She wiped it clean throughout the day
and gave it an extra polish at night.
This did mean, the following morning,
the first cups of coffee had a lavender flavour,
but that was part of their appeal.
Then one day a young Italian came into the shop
and bought a double Espresso; he declared it
“the finest I’ve ever drunk outside Rome”.
Smiling sweetly, as Italian men are inclined to do,
he told Gladys she was “a Barista”;
she was of course taken aback by this
until he explained the meaning of the word.
“No-one,” she said, “is allowed near my Gaggia.”
“In that case,” and he smiled again, “you are not just a Barista,
but a Capo Barista.” Gladys knew what that meant,
the Godfather was her favourite film.
That night the Gaggia received an extra polish,
and as she caught her reflection in the shining chrome,
she smiled. “Just think a Capo Barista.”
Gladys Armstrong was a very happy woman.
Les Holloway
October 2009
No Pets
Did the Eco Warriors really think
When trying climate change to sink
What dire theories might form links
To keep the weather in the pink.
The windy cow will have to go
Machine gun all the flatulent sheep
And veggie meals we`ll have to eat
But worse if Greenies have it so
Your pets a carbon climate threat
Cats and dogs! send for the vet
Oh rather let the ice melt yet
But not a world without a pet.
I warn you Greenpeace not to try it
The general public like their diet
Kill Fido, Tiddles that is ghoulish
And makes the Green Campaign look foolish.
Keith Parker
(Find him Twittering at www.Twitter.com/smallbluedragon)
Cultural Offensive
Elite poeticals took over the centre of Durham City today
As part of a bid to storm the ramparts of the City of Culture
Crack forces of the 16th Stanza Poetic Culture Brigade
Seized the Market and Gala Squares in an attempt to provoke
Cultural Events!
Startled tourists found that any pause near the town`s famous statues
Resulted in in-depth interrogations by strange male and female poets
Concerning their quality of materials, location and general aesthetic effects.
Lovers, shoppers, people swearing in doorways or even just serving coffee
Were forced into surveys to assess their cultural significance
In post industrial, post modern, post rhyming Durham
After thirty minutes of intense bombastic intellectual bombardment
Including a near outbreak of artistic street fighting
As conservationists and left wing academics exchanged words with the poets
Concerning the relative merits of the statue of the third Marquis of Londonderry
And whether his pit ponie`s backside should face north or south
The poetic cultural commandoes withdrew to be debriefed
In the newly captured upper floor of the town library.
Children continued to play instinctively amongst the figures of St Cuthbert`s sculpture
And to totter dangerously down the narrow street kerbs
Fat women continued to run for buses releasing whippet children to catch the doors
Lovers continued to look dreamily at the sky
Ex lovers continued to curse and lament in doorways
And this In spite of the intense looks of the workshop versifiers
Trying to turn them into cultural artefacts.
In the library HQ a film record was made of the creation of a dozen poems
The literary propagandists thus set up the most recent instalment of Culture Durham
Loot from the attack to finance the latest phase of culture wars
Keith Parker
Things to forget and not.
http://www.brassfestival.co.uk/dangerous.html
Dangerous
Fading in his ear, the beep of a cardiac monitor,
the last machine that would amplify him.
Racing then slowing,
locked in a rhythm he couldn’t control
while millions of hearts still pumped to the beats he had set.
There’s alot he would want the world to forget
but the music survives,
this soundtrack to our lives.
From Detroit to Durban,
Dhakar to Durham,
from a musician of fusion
and confusion
Disco, rock, soul,pop,
making the tribal division of dances stop
himself the incomplete reflection
of his reach for musical perfection
a blending,
an extending.
Flowing across boundaries,
is dangerous,
freeing,
new ways of hearing,
new ways of seeing.
He’s in the photo albums of our lives too,
this boy who didn’t predict the man.
slowly chiselling himself away,
disappearing in a light display,
revealed in a mask,
and the questions the world had to ask.
We saw him in the black glasses,
the ambulance and the white shroud.
Is the picture as clear
as the music is loud?
Should we separate music from the maker,
make it our own,
translate the universal language
of the tambourine or the trombone
into rhythms that move us
in blood and in bone?
Kate Fox.
(I thought I’d compromised quite alot there when I agreed to rewrite “more about the music”…but having read Maya Angelou’s words I feel much better…)
A Long View
Bad Fairy Blair’s first incantation.
Spinning lies to sway a nation.
Promised the lusty treats of education, education, education
To the children of the X-Generation
Now Class ‘09 has graduated
The prom is over and they’re all wasted
Destined for the bitter fruits their parents tasted
Come back Prozac – Gotta keep ‘em medicated
Keep the little fuckers high so they can’t see
Their future consumed carefully by degrees
They were never really going to study – silly.
Take the only thing they will give you for free
They come guaranteed
To take the edge off your lack of liberties
Heat wave warnings won’t affect the frozen grants
Which means less than no chance
At all for those with brains but no healthy balance
They will be the first to fall but not to chance
So much for all that shit about Education,
Aspiration, and some other sion, you nearly led us all on
Class of 09, what’s left for you when the summer’s gone?
Sing it with me – Sign-on Sign-on Sign-on
Carmen Thompson
From a newspaper journalist at the end of their shift
Neda
Stay Neda
The birds are singing
The forests are green
Flowers are blooming
It is Spring
Do not go Neda
Stay Neda
Sing with your people in the streets
Say Long live life!
Down with death!
Tell the sun to shine
Tell the cold to depart
Do not go Neda
Stay Neda
Look at this city
At the shaken foundation of palaces
How tall are Tehran’s maple trees
The “dust” has made
the air bad for the oppressor
Do not go Neda
Do not be afraid
It is the sound of fireworks not bullets
It is a spark for a fire
We are on fire
We are the fire
Due to batons and gunshots
We are a blazing fire
Do not go Neda
Oh Neda, oh Neda
Breathe
Rise
Knock on the cage
Break through the bars
Do not go Neda
Do not go Neda
Wait
Look beyond the clouds
Lady sun wants you to come
She is just like you, but
Do not go Neda
Pete Williamson
Wimbledon volleys
It turns out the trouble with being able to let the roof
at Wimbledon close is
it gets rid of Cliff,
but not the shadows.
KF
The crowds gather in S W 1
All keen to cheer young Andy on.
Scotland’s current sporting hero
is hoping not to leave with zero.
Fans await the moment of truth.
When will they close that bloody roof.
Crispin Fisher
Antidotal poems
On this day, June 25,
the day Custer was killed,
North Korea invaded its Southern neighbors,
the human genome was released
a man died
from a heart attack
in Southern California
one of 900 to pass
from the disease
nationwide this day
He was the husband
of my wife’s golf partner,
70 on a business trip
to San Diego
one of nearly 165,000
who died worldwide
during the day
and didn’t become the news
The child is often
exotic scar tissue
In art
Its where neurosis makes its start
Formed by unmet needs
And endless pain
Out comes the showman glowman
To make a “gain”
Who would have thought
No eyes of parent empathy alters worlds
Or voids create a future contrary
That children are forced to scar themselves
And play at becoming a distorted fairy ?
Well….
For instance :
I’ll play at dropping baby
And be an outlaw of dancing grace
And mangle my appearances
To show my father’s sad disgrace
In adult worlds I’ll never land
Because care and childhood bridges
Have never spanned
And no-one really gives a hand
To Peter Pan
In Hook’s pen
And elvish sexuality
Of magics beds
And pedophilia media
Will have the power to race past
And just condemn
Go child to the thrones of sin
For redemptive antidotes
To be forgiven
For the showyboat of the world everyone is in …
