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Monday, December 22
More verse poetry - this time the longer stuff
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 22 Dec 2008 07:40 PM GMT
And 'yes' I'm still recycling – if there was a green award for poetry, I'd win it! There's also a lot of musing on mortality etc in this selection – don't worry, it was just a phase I was going thru and I seen got over it.
ANOTHER SLOW NOVEMBER NIGHT
Six o'clock - and the start of another slow November night.
I wind down my cobalt-blue blinds to blank out the gloom
and watch, as switching on another light, fresh shadows fall
across the warm titanium skin of my Apple Mac computer.
Its voice - female, American, synthesised
and talking with a slight lisp – announces the time.
Time to send out the last emails of the day
to friends electric in the virtual world
while a voice on TV talks through the news from faraway places
of faraway people still dying beneath faraway skies.
Just another slow November night.
Published in Obsessed With Pipework (33) - Winter 2005/6
Highly commended in Freda Downie Poetry Competition 2005
Published in Close to the Edge (North Norfolk Poets) 2005
DO THEY STILL DAYDREAM ON THE PARKINSON STEPS?
Past the late night Warsaw Stores at the end of the road
across the street from the Sikh temple by the traffic lights
did the sign in that cafe really say Only one fork per plate ?
Later, sitting round the kitchen fireplace
at the house we shared on the Chapeltown Road
we’d make French toast, drink cheap black coffee
and watch unwanted lecture notes burn in the open grate
as we’d talk long into the night
about back-to-backs, Hunslett legs and the Quarry Hill flats.
You were reading medicine, I was studying politics
but that was the day before yesterday – half a lifetime ago
when we were still so young and cool and wild and free.
We’ve long since fallen from each other’s radar screens
you never found that cure for cancer, I never changed the world.
It’s been over thirty years since I last made French toast
– and I don’t take my coffee black anymore.
First prize Ver Poets Freda Downie Poetry Competition 2005
Published in Perhaps anthology (Cinnamon Press) 2005
Published in Poetry Now - July 2005
Published in Poems from Eastern Counties (Poetry Now) 2005
Published in Blithe Spirit - June 2006
Published in Obsessed with Pipework (38) - Spring 2007
MY MOTHER’S OLD FUR COAT
Her once pride and joy
the Tomb of the Unknown Mink
who laid down their lives
in one of fashion’s lost wars
Too hot for summer
and too precious to entrust
to cloakroom staff in winter
it never went to parties
Now in old age
politically incorrect
banished to a wardrobe
a retirement home for moths
Highly commended in Freda Downie Poetry Competition 2005
DRESSED CRAB AND CINDER TOFFEE
On a trip to Whitby
among the narrow lanes and jet stalls
we lose count of the shops
with their hand painted signs
selling traditional home-made
cinder toffee
peanut brittle
and coconut ice
Then
at a small cafe
while the waitress sings the praises
of the dressed crab salad
our elderly parents
panicked by an unfamiliar menu
order toasted teacakes
Again
REMEMBERING ROBERT PALMER (1949-2003)
Small seaside town, Scarborough in the 1960s
At school you were so cool even the teachers could feel the breeze
On to college or a steady job was the order of the day back then
But you escaped, for the life of a rock and roll gypsy
You didn’t mean to turn us on
But most people found you simply irresistible
Gone far too soon at 54
As long as MTV continues to screen Addicted to Love
You’ll live on, a legend like Jimmy Dean or Steve McQueen
Not for you the fate of growing old, living off faded glories
Nor sneaking around the nostalgia music scene
You might as well admit it, some guys have all the luck
Published in Pulsar (46) - September 2006
Published online in Slow Train (6/2) - October 2006
JUST ANOTHER ONE NIGHT STAND – 2968 AD
galaxy tripping space tourist
adrift in a gravity free pleasure zone
you laughed out loud at my corny chat-up lines
but I saw in your eyes you’d been lonely too long
spending your time on a cruise to the stars
when all you wanted was someone to hold
tugging at zips
with eagerly exploring hands
shedding clothing
and inhibitions, on the way
yearning bodies
entwined in weightless ecstasy
afterwards... we floated like spoons
til the hum of star drives said you must go
languidly you dressed
I took you back to your ship
one final kiss, a smile
then we waved goodbye
was I the love of your life
could you have been mine?
too late now
six hundred light years lie between us
if you ever return
you’ll find only dust in a time-worn tomb
Published online in The Beat - October 2006
LEONARD COHEN PLAYS LEEDS 1972
You claimed you had a boyfriend
– a hotshot with a Mercedes –
that none of us ever saw
Your attempts to catch up with me again
all those years later
only now I think I understand the reason why
If only: you hadn’t always tried to impress
If only – just once, you’d dropped your facade
If only: I’d been bolder, braver, more in your facer
and challenged your silly games
But you played hard to get
so I got another
On such whims and foibles
are our destinies changed
future histories recast
and dynasties ended before they’ve begun
I still recall the way Cohen sang that night
The upbeat arrangement he used for So long, Marianne
How the backing singers sang the line
“to laugh and cry, and cry and laugh”
And how you looked, when you smiled
WAKES WEEK 1970
Day-tripping Wakes Week lass
adrift in a Northern seaside town
laughing out loud at my corny chat-up lines
as we toast our lust
in Merrydown, lager and lime
Tugging at zips
with eager exploring hands
rolling on the beach
clothing and inhibitions
all cast away in the sand
Afterwards you reapply your makeup
languidly dress, then slowly
I walk you back to your bus
One final caress, a fleeting smile
and we wave goodbye
Could you have been the love of my life?
Would I have been the man to change your world?
Too late now, in a swirl of diesel fumes you are gone
Back to the 9-til-5
to the assembly line
the supermarket check-out
the telesales terminal
the typing pool
Published online in Poetry Monthly (130) - January 2007
BOURBON EYES
6:30 in the evening
You finish your third Jack Daniels
roll yourself another cigarette
then turn to me and say:
Sure
I’m really happy with the way my life’s turned out
You smile tightly
and quickly turn away
in case I notice your eyes are lying
Your eyes are lying
They are lying to me
and they’re lying to you
You’re heading for the rocks
and a bottle’s the only wreckage
you’ve got to cling on to
6:35 in the evening
You order your fourth Jack Daniels
and roll another cigarette
Published in Global Tapestry Journal
RANDOM COINCIDENCES NOTED WHILE SURFING WIKIPEDIA
Jack’s dead
he’s been off the road 40 years
he died the same month I began university
mid-way between the hippy apotheosis of Woodstock
and the gotterdammerungan of Altamont
Dean Moriarty’s dead
Carlo Marx is dead
Sal’s in paradise
or maybe somewhere else
Timothy Leary, Jerry Garcia, Ken Kesey
all flunked the final Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
the Beats are dead
the Hippies are dead
the best minds of two generations destroyed
me ?
I must have been brain dead
it was 40 years before I read Trip Trap and The Dharma Bums
Japhy Ryder’s still alive
and I’m not letting another
precious moment
slip quietly
a
w
a
y
Published in Global Tapestry Journal
HARRY’S DEAD
Harry’s dead
he’s fading fast
exposed to the sun for too long
even the colours in his old photographs are leaching away
Harry’s dead
his hand-made suits attract only moths in charity shop windows
his once cherished books
feed the worms in council landfill sites
Harry’s dead
no longer remembered at parties
for the sharpness of his wit
or the way he could charm the women with his honeyed voice
Harry’s dead
his little deceits
betrayals and infidelities
almost all forgotten
Harry’s dead
now he’s gone
just a dim recalled shade
peering out from within a tarnished silver frame
Harry’s dead
he used to be someone
Harry’s dead
he used to be my father
MONKEY BUSINESS
Life starts to make much more sense
once you understand the basics
of animal psychology
Take chimpanzees
Watch them
but not dressed up in human clothes
at some silly chimps’ tea party
And you will see that all their affections
their fears, their reactions
their communications, their loyalties
their petty squabbles and jealousies
oh, their jealousies
and their cruel, savage tribalism
exactly mirror those of our own world
Now you know why a group of feckless youths
will suddenly attack a stranger
just because he wears a different shirt
Or why one great nation takes up arms against another
It’s not human nature
It’s monkey business
Scratch us
and beneath the skin
we all bleed 98.5 percent the same DNA
We’re all monkeys
some just better looking than others
PAINTER PAINT NO MORE (FOR SP)
Too late to wash those brushes.
Leave those riggers, flats and filberts alone.
No time to screw back the caps on those tubes
nor put away the Payne’s grey and ultramarine
you won’t be needing that palette today.
Forget those runs, ignore that smear
don’t even think how that last wash will dry.
None of this matters anymore.
Your last hare has leapt from its frame
your horses have escaped their paddocks
and all your birds flown their nests.
Your final commission: a study in carmine
coagulating, congealing, rising
from deep within your veins.
Published in Not Expecting Fish (Gatehouse Press) 2007
BUILD NO TACKY SHRINES FOR ME
When they pull me from the wreckage
and haul my twisted corpse away
When my gore is hosed from off these streets
and the police incident tape removed
When they straighten out the lamp-post
that cast its shadow on my passing
Don’t mark the site of my last breath
with a cairn of pastel-hued teddy bears
Or a pyramid of petrol station forecourt flowers
still shrouded in cellophane and wilted misery
You can weep
You can cheer
You can laugh
You can cry
But please
build no tacky shrines for me
Time for some verse poetry - the short stuff
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 22 Dec 2008 07:24 PM GMT
Here's my next archive – my shorter verse poetry...
24/HEAVEN
the perfect way
to spend the perfect day
nothing to do
and all of the day
to spend it with you
CHILLED
Sometimes...
I like to sit and talk
And sometimes...
I like to sit and think
But sometimes...
I just sit
Sometimes
GONE SOUTH
Suddenly autumn
and the swallows have all flown
No farewells, no goodbyes
no thank-you notes for all the flies
November
THE BONFIRE
old leaves, old briar
old clippings and branches
no smoke, no fire
rain dripping – damp matches
CHESIL BEACH
upon a beach, upon a strand
I wondered what the tide could teach
within my reach, beneath my hand
the answer lay within a grain of sand
BEACH BUMS
Hot sun upon our backs
warm sand between our toes
After lying on the beach
moist sand between our cheeks
SISTER, SISTER
You will never return
but she bears a small tattoo
in the small of her back
to remind herself of you.
It is a Chinese symbol
a sign of her loyalty
sympathy, sorority
a memento mori of you.
Published in Obsessed With Pipework (33) - Winter 2005/6
COCKTAIL PARTY EYES
Cocktail party eyes
looking over my shoulder
scanning the room for someone
– more important to talk to.
They call it networking.
Published in Pulsar (42) - June 2005
AT WALBERSWICK
An old grey rock, worn by the sea
washed up on a Suffolk shore
still clutching small fragments
of creatures long ago dead
Pitted with age, pierced by decay
shall I string you on a pendant
wear you as a lucky hag stone
or throw you back to the sea ?
THE LETTER ‘G’ IS DISPENSIBLE IN MARDLE
Just missed you – I slept in late.
Your breakfast cup of tea, half drunk
still warm upon the kitchen table.
Beside it, on a post-it note
the hastily scribbled message...
CUL8R Darlin’ – back soon!
DOWN BY THE SCARBORO SPA
The Palm Court is deserted now
but once, upon the beach below
our own private rock pool island
losing the battle with the tides
twice daily, to the sound strings:
Max Jaffa and his violins.
All gone, even the rocks entombed
in concrete, a barrier to defend
an indefensible coastline
against a relentless sea.
Published in National Poetry Anthology (United Press) 2006
Prose poetry - the archive
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 22 Dec 2008 07:13 PM GMT
Here – for your enjoyment (or not as the case may be) is a collection of the prose poetry I have been writing over the past couple of years. And 'yes' when you look at some of my other material, you will see that I do occasionally recycle ideas and phrases. I'm shameless...
SEVEN MILES HIGH
Flying back from Vegas, crossing the Rockies at dusk, the crests of the mesas bathed all peachy pink. Christine McVie singing Songbird in my headphones. The girl in the next seat laughing out loud at an old episode of Only Fools and Horses.
It’s minus 54 degrees Fahrenheit outside.
Eight timezones to cross on a fourteen hour flight, clock faces a blur as their hands race to keep pace. I’m taking a trip halfway into tomorrow, before yesterday’s had chance to say goodnight.
Five hours, 54 minutes – and 2502 miles from home.
Seven miles below, the North Atlantic ocean, laid out like a crumpled, stone-washed, denim-blue dust sheet, waiting to catch all those lost hours and minutes as they tumble, irredeemably, from our lives.
THE UNINVITED
That was the time we heard them chattering late into the night. The carefree chatter that goes with being a freeloader. Squatting in someone else’s house. Eating their food and enjoying their heating, without ever having to put your hand in your pocket to pay your fair share.
That was the time we decided... they had to die.
Clutching my Chinese-made pistol (actually a Chinese-made air-pistol) I slide back the hatch leading up into their lair. Armed with the gun, a stash of poison and a piece of lead piping – in case it should ever come to face-to-face combat a-mano-a-mano – I am transformed.
I am Clint Eastwood – preparing to take on the Mexican bandits in A Fist Full of Dollars. I am Arnold Schwarzenegger – stalking The Predator in the steaming jungles of Central America. I am...
I am Inspector Clouseau on the trail of The Pink Panther, come to deal with a couple of scrawny rats that have moved into our attic space to shelter from the winter cold.
Although now, half way into my mission, with my knees already creaking from slowly crawling along the narrow joists, I’m beginning to wonder whether the dust, thrown up by the loft insulation, just might claim me as the first casualty in this confrontation.
THE ONE-EYED KITCHEN GOD
It’s been sitting on the kitchen worktop for as long as we’ve lived in this house. Its chromium skin, now encrusted with limescale stains and steam heated smears. Its element, as furred-up as my own arteries, taking longer and longer to boil the water.
I’d like to get rid of it. Perhaps replace it with enamelled one, in a colour that tones in nicely with the toaster.
But then the toaster dies, so I’m glad I didn’t.
“Never mind,” says my wife, “if I fill it with a half-and-half mixture of vinegar and water, then leave it to soak overnight, that will descale the element and have the kettle working as good as new by morning.”
Although,” she adds, looking me up and down, “I don’t think the same could be said about you.”
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS
When we are out on the lanes walking the dogs, I’ll frequently pick a blackberry off a bramble bush and pop it in my mouth. I don’t wash it. I don’t cook it. I don’t waste any time getting to know it. I just eat it. It’s like being on a long and winding pick-your-own fruit farm.
However, on this particular occasion, something – let’s call it intuition, sixth sense or even a survival instinct left over from our primaeval past – prompts me to pause and look at the berry I’ve just picked.
There, clasping the far side of the fruit, is a big, fat, green, speckled, iridescent bug – looking for all the world like an alien creature, riding a burned out asteroid through the icy wastes of the Solar System.
Of course it isn’t an extraterrestrial but, as I flick the blackberry and its passenger back into the hedgerow, the insect does, for one brief moment, experience the frisson of tumbling in free fall across the uncharted tracts of space.
AT CHEZ GERARD
In the restaurant, the waitress – with the piercing blue eyes – smiles at me when she brings me my espresso. Distracted by something inconsequential I do not see this gesture, only the looks – on the faces of my companions – reveal what I have missed.
I USED TO HAVE A BEATLE CAP – JUST LIKE THE ONE JOHN LENNON WORE
They say the brain uses the time we are asleep to catch up on its filing. Storing away the day’s experiences for cataloging and cross referencing against other memories.
That’s fine by me – I’m more than happy for all the little neuron clerks that dwell within my cerebral cortex to get on with this job. Providing they do it quietly.
Now normally my conscious brain shuts down around eleven PM and barely entertains another lucid thought until at least two cups of tea into the breakfast news. But, on this particular night, my little grey cells decided to take me on a multimedia jaunt down memory lane.
It must have been about 2 in the morning when my mind began to hear music playing. It was an old Beatles number – In My Life off their Rubber Soul album – only this time, it was being sung by Jim Reeves.
Jim Reeves... a man who managed to issue more records after he died, than when he was alive. When I was young, I used to lay in the bath on Sunday evenings listening to the chart show on Radio Luxembourg hoping one of the bands I liked – The Hollies or The Animals or The Who or the Manfreds – would be Number One. But no, it would be another rave from the grave by Jim Reeves. In 1966 one of Reeves’ singles – Distant Drums – sat in the charts for 45 weeks. It even kept The Beatles double-sider Eleanor Rigby and Yellow Submarine off the Number One slot.
I hated him for that, with a visceral loathing. Forty years later, I find myself lying in bed once more brooding over the injustice of it all. I rearrange my pillow, turn over and try to drift back off to sleep – only to be disturbed by another sound.
“Do you remember,” says a voice, coming from deep within my subconscious, “those Cuban-heeled Chelsea boots you used to wear? The way that soft, black leather fitted so snugly around your ankles, when you zipped them up? The shape of the sole,” it adds, “would probably help your fallen arches now.”
“You used to have a really cool chocolate brown and mustard-coloured check shirt, with a button-down collar,” it continues. “You don’t see many of those these days. In fact, the last you saw of that shirt was on the back of Carol McKittrick. She never returned it when the two of you split up. Not that it would fit you now anyway.”
Carol McKittrick? A girlfriend I haven’t seen or had any contact with since... since 1968? Girlfriend? She’d be a mature woman now – with a bus pass and a state pension.
From somewhere else within my mind I heard the click, clack, clacking of an old manual typewriter. That’s all I need. I’ve had the fashion department on to me and now my brain’s creative team is converting this dream into a manuscript.
Go away. I–just–want–to–get–some–sleep. If we have to rake over all this ancient history and pick the scabs off old memories, can’t we save it for a Sunday afternoon, when I’ve nothing better to do than nod off while watching The Antiques Roadshow?”
I make a concerted effort to relax. To clear my mind. To think of something bland and soporific. Think of the incoming tide, gently washing across a shingle shore. Woosh, woosh.
And it works. I feel my brain begin to wind down. One by one, my little grey cells stop whatever it is they are doing and head back to their dormitories. The typewriter stops. The music stops. Elsewhere, I hear the low rumble of filing cabinet drawers being gently slid shut, to avoid that annoying clump when the drawer finally slams home.
“Goodnight,” it’s another voice – an irritatingly chirpy voice, with an equally irritating accent.
“Did you know, that you were the first person in Scarborough to own a copy of John Lennon’s book In His Own Write? You’ve still got it on your shelves – although the last time you opened it was in 1964.
“Oh, and you also had a Beatle cap, just like the one Lennon wears on the front cover. You wouldn’t happen to know where it is now?”
“Get out of here, this is not the time to be asking me this!”
Click. Click. Click.
The lights are going out all across my nocturnal brain.
Click. Click.
And then the alarm clock starts to ring.
NO HATS, NO BAGGIES
At the hotel on the Las Vegas ‘Strip’ there are many places to eat. At the French restaurant, the dress code is NO casual attire. At the Italian restaurant, the dress code is casual. At the Japanese restaurant: casual elegant. At the gala dinner – business casual.
At the nightclub: casual chic – open brackets, no hats, no oversized jeans, no baggies, no athletic wear, close brackets.
At the all-you-can-eat buffet there is no dress code although perhaps there should be some warnings...
Against Hawaiian shirts in patterns so florid they can induce instant migraine attacks.
Against little old ladies, old enough to be my grandmother, who dress like cheap hookers – this is offensive to other diners, as well as to the sensitivities of cheap hookers.
And against fluorescent body hugging lycra being worn by anyone larger than a size 8XL. Not least because anyone larger than a size 8XL really – no, really – should not be dining in an all-you-can-eat buffet.
FETCHING IN THE LINES
After discussing the metaphorical symbolism of Adam and Eve’s nakedness, or some other tale from my Children's Illustrated Bible, we’d have a supper of soup, accompanied by large hunks of bread. It always annoyed my mother that Margaret would hack the loaf into wedges, rendering the leftovers impossible to toast the following morning.
My Aunt Margaret was a fisherman’s wife who spent most of her life working in the warehouses on the Scarborough Fish Pier. When I was young, she was my baby-sitter and evenings would be spent listening to her holding forth on her two favourite topics: The Old Testament, with a strictly fundamentalist, Elim pentecostal interpretation – and the Soviet penal system. She admired the fact Joseph Stalin, like the Lord Jehovah, was quick to smite down anyone who opposed him.
I now realise the long years spent in the raw cold, mucking the salt-slaked long lines clean of debris, then skaning the mussels from their shells, had turned the knuckles of Margaret’s hands into arthritic claws, incapable of wielding a more subtle knife cut.
ANGEL OF THE MORNING
Later that morning she brought me satsumas and a mug of sweet green tea that smelled of toasted rice. The slogan on her mug reads I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered while the one on mine says I am not a number, I am a free man. She asks me when we’d meet again and I reply “soon”. At the time I say it, I mean it. But we never did make that second date. I am a free man and I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered.
THE PERFECT MATCHING PAIR
I’ve seen and handled a few in my time. All shapes and all sizes – and I can tell you this: No matter how good the underwiring, large naturals have a tendency to droop. They also have lives of their own, bouncing up, bouncing down, swinging right, swinging left, independently of each other. And, they are rarely a matching pair.
These were different, in that they were not different. They were the same. They were identical. They were the perfect matching pair. Round. Rigid. Pert. Jutting out at a steady 90 degrees to the body – like two heat seeking missiles selecting their next target.
From time-to-time, their proud owner would glance down at them, like a mother might gaze upon the heads of her new born twins. Admiring the handiwork of their creator – not god but a surgeon. And all the while smiling a smile that said: “That was money well spent. These will keep me in the style to which I wish to become accustomed. These will help me stay warm in my old age.”
ICED TEA WITH ELVIS
Last night I dreamed I met with Elvis. We were sitting in one of the departure lounges at Memphis International Airport. Drinking iced tea. Killing time. Waiting for a delayed flight.
Here’s the thing: I’ve sat in one of the departure lounges at Memphis International Airport. Drinking iced tea. Killing time. Waiting for a delayed flight. But Elvis had left the building. All that remained of the King were the souvenirs on display in the terminal’s shopping arcade.
On a wall, above the gents urinals in an adjoining restroom, there was a sign. It said the terminal was also an officially designated tornado shelter.
As my delayed flight finally bucketed away into the night sky and a stewardess warned us to remain seated, because of the risk of turbulence caused by – and these were her very words – tornadic activity, the thought crossed my mind that I could be drinking iced tea with Elvis sooner than I had anticipated.
THE MORNING AFTER
Still wearing yesterday’s clothes, walking in to work from an unfamiliar direction. The subtle ache of unexpected physical exertion. The taste on your skin of a stranger’s sweat. The irrepressible smile that lights up your face, each time you rewind and replay the events of the previous 12 hours.
Who got lucky last night?
Are you going to see them again?
Will they call you today?
A HIGHER STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Far up on a building site a brickie takes a break. Shirt off, bare chested, he sits cross-legged on a window-ledge, basking in the mid-morning heat, clutching a mug of tea and smoking a roll-up. Like Buddha on a high rise.
THE DOG DOESN’T DO SARCASM
The dog is doing his little dance. The little dance he always does whenever he wants more biscuits. He has a limited repertoire. He’s never been to dog training and we were too poor to send him to stage school.
As if, I say, I’m giving you any more biscuits when you’ve just turned up your nose at your dinner. A dinner of well-balanced tasty morsels that a team of canine nutritionists spent the best years of their lives perfecting. You, the same picky pooch who, given half a chance will happily snarf down six-month old roadkill.
Then I realise I’m being sarcastic – to a dog. My dog doesn’t understand English. Even if he could, he’s old and deaf now.
I begin to feel guilty, like maybe I’ve hurt his feelings. So I give him some more biscuits and explain that... I wasn’t laughing at him but with him.
My dog doesn’t do sarcasm but he appreciates irony.
Published in Not Expecting Fish (Gatehouse Press) 2007
AT LULWORTH COVE
As they pose for their photograph to be taken, the two women self-consciously rearrange their ample bosoms with all the determination of hotel chambermaids fluffing up eiderdown pillows – but with all the pointlessness of a cook ladling a blancmange back into its mold. Their companion, with the camera, braces himself to take the shot, resting his naked paunch on a conveniently located tourist information board. The board explains how the cove has evolved over millions and millions of years. Nice to see all that geological research was not in vain.
POST-OP
One, the shape and consistency of an egg – lightly boiled. The other, the size of a Big Mac – strictly no fries. Two hours of my life lost in an anaesthetic haze. The next 48, a mental maze, as a cocktail of drugs drains from my brain. But at last I can reopen my diary and start to fill out all those empty days. I’ve also noticed my body has acquired some interesting new scars – which is cool. Or at least would be, if I were 40 years younger.
THE WRONG SORT OF PEOPLE
It’s morning and I’m heading into London on an early train. Somewhere around Chelmsford – just as dawn is breaking – I look out of the carriage window and see a close of dinky executive homes, on a dinky executive housing estate. They all have the same small, neat, eminently sensible gardens – are surrounded by a network of good roads – and are just minutes away from plenty of shops, places to eat and entertainments. For a moment I am tempted. I ask myself: why do I live in a remote house in the middle nowhere?
Miles from shops or any of the other facilities that help make life comfortable. Where the simplest of tasks – like visiting the local post office – can involve taking a 4-wheel-drive down long, flooded, mudded tracks. Where I can’t get a decent broadband connection. Even if I could, every time the wind blows the wrong way, the power fails and the lights go out. Where I don’t have mains drainage. Where the house is cold and drafty – so cold that keeping it warm in winter consumes almost as much electricity as a small Third World country uses in a year. And where gardening is a constant struggle against briar, bramble and bindweed, as nature reverts to the wildwood on the margins of my plot.
Then I snap out of it and remember: That those shiny new houses are built of nothing more substantial than sticky-back plastic. That the neighbours would start a petition every time I hit a power chord on my Telecaster. That I’d receive threatening letters from the council whenever I had the temerity to light a bonfire. And I‘d live in fear that if the ‘wrong sort of people’ moved in next door, it would reduce the value of my house.
And then I realise: I am one of those wrong sort of people.
Not for me the crumpled, Hugo Boss suit wearing, Ford Mondeo-driving but BMW aspiring, deferential golf playing, bad PowerPoint presenting, clingfilm shrouded sandwiches in the centre of the table slowly curling in the heat of a windowless meeting room in a budget hotel on the edge of a trading estate, executive lifestyle.
I don’t want to be a respectable, responsible member of society polishing the hood of my car every Sunday morning, while discussing the merits of Waitrose Pinot Grigio versus Tesco Chardonnay with my neighbours until the day I’m screwed into a polished pine box and carted off to become mulch beneath a green-fly infested rosebush in a municipal crematorium’s garden of remembrance. I want to be me.
On second thoughts perhaps I’m better off living in the middle of nowhere – much less unpleasantless all round.
IN THE LECTURE THEATRE
Halfway through the seminar, the girl with the henna-red hair and big copper earrings stretches, her upraised hands gripping the seatback as she arches her body to find a more comfortable position. This movement plumps up her already ample bosom to create a decolletage of such spectacular proportions that her breasts seem on the verge of making an escape bid. Simultaneously, the hem of her short black dress rides up, like a theatre curtain on opening night, across smooth lycra-clad legs to expose the rolling contours of her upper thighs. Time stands still. Then she relaxes and – as her clothing regains its decorum – returns to her notes. The image is gone, nothing remains – except a memory, seared into the retina of my mind’s eye.
BY TRAIN FROM ELY
Crossing the Fens from March, black smoke belching from the old brink kiln chimneys, fighting for airspace amid the slowly turning blades of the wind turbines. Now passing the McCains frozen chips factory. And in the distance... the squat grey bulk of Peterborough Cathedral contrasts with the viridescent capped domes of the mosque and its muezzin tower. Everything under one big sky, all uniformly slick in the same driving rain.
MISSILES AND McCARTNEY
The guy on the Minneapolis flight tells me he still misses the girl he met and loved in Suffolk, England, 15 years ago, when he was stationed at Bentwaters, near Woodbridge. We talk of Paul McCartney and Eric Clapton. I’d seen them both live, when they were still young – and cool – he only has their early albums.
He says he has Chippewa, Bretton, Scottish and Irish blood in his veins. And that one of his ancestors first came over the empty tundra with the Hudson Bay Company’s trappers. Now he spends his days alone in the radio shack of an isolated airforce base on that same empty tundra, listening for missiles that will never arrive. He says one day he’s going to write his family history – and that he’d like to see that girl again.
GONE TO TEXAS
Late night in the sports bar, reclining on a stool like some latter-day caesar – but in a colour-coordinated Haiwaiian shirt and shorts rather than a toga – the man from Corporate America holds court, surrounded by friends and cronies. Against a background of clinking ice cubes against Jack Daniels, chalk dusted cues against 8-balls and the murmur of venomous gossip, a pianist fights a wave of indifference from drinkers, too distracted by the sight of the waitresses’ honey-coloured, bustier boosted breasts, to heed any of the tunes he plays. It is 2:15 in the morning and outside the temperature is still 76 degrees Fahrenheit.
COMING TO AMERICA
On the back of my visa waiver card it states that the public reporting burden for completing this form is two minutes to learn about the form. Plus four minutes to fill out the form. Making a total of six minutes in all. Someone, somewhere took the trouble to measure, record and report this information. Perhaps all that time, effort – and tax-payers’ money – might have been better spent reviewing and updating the questions?
For example, the form still asks if I ever worked for the German Nazi party between the years of 1933 to 1945. In 1945, I would not be born for another five years. And to have been active in the Nazi party in 1933, I would now be pushing the far side of 90. Of all the bad guys who harbour ill-will towards America, perhaps stormtroopers, too geriatric and arthritic to goosestep one jackbooted pace further, are the least of the US Government’s worries.
The form also asks me if I’ve ever been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude. For one foolish moment I’m tempted to answer “No – but I do like the sound of that turpitude – where can I get me some?” But then I remember... the officers manning the immigration controls are all at least 8 feet tall, 10 feet wide, pack pistols that could halt a runaway bus and probably know 14 different ways to break my neck armed with nothing more menacing than an HB pencil.
So I fill out the form unambiguously, hand it to the nice man with the big gun – and gain my entry into the land of the free.
CARGO PANTS ARE OUT
I’m on the 5:30 from Liverpool Street. Oblivious to any sense of irony or self-awareness, the overweight guy – sitting opposite me in the carriage – orders a Mars Bar and a large bag of cheese ‘n’ onion potato crisps to go with his Diet Coke. As we pull out of Manningtree, he phones ahead to an Indian restaurant in Ipswich to order a takeaway.
If we are what we eat, then he’s about to become a Prawn Dansak, with side orders of Bombay Potato, Saag Aloo, Bhindi Bhajee, Pilau rice, two Peshwari naan – and a couple of vegetable Samosas thrown in for good measure.
I am reminded of all this the next day... when I pull on a pair of freshly laundered jeans and find they are a little bit tighter than they were the last time I wore them. I’d like to think they’d shrunk in the wash. I’d like to think a lot of things. I’d like to think I still had the body of a 19-year-old. But I know that, short of kidnapping a 19-year-old, the days of slim-cut designer jeans are over and that a future of beige chinos – with elasticated waistbands – stretches out ahead of me.
It's on days like this you wake up and know you’ll never again wear Madrass-check cargo pants, skater boi shorts, snakeskin cowboy boots, biker-style leather jackets, Liberty-print fitted floral shirts, horizontal stripes nor Chuck Taylor Converse All Star sneakers – although in the case of sneakers, this is because they can’t give you the support your fallen arches now need.
It’s a coming of age acceptance that you can no longer pretend your straining button-holes are a deliberate fashion statement. Or that you are never going to lose those extra two inches that will make all your clothes fit more comfortably.
It’s a coming of age recognition that some colours now make you look more washed out and washed up than you already feel.
It’s a coming to the age when you have to admit some of those clothes never fitted even when they were brand new and that their purchase was always going to be an act of blind faith.
It’s a coming of age thing, I say, as I finally pass over a bundle of little-worn clothes to the lady in the charity shop.
NAMING THE NAMES
So when I suggest ‘Oi you, Come here’ would make a good name for our new dog – on the totally rational basis that if it ever ran off, “Oi you, Come here” would be the first thing we’d say – my wife asks me if I’ve always been this autistic when it comes to naming things.
It does cross my mind to dispute this remark – but then I remember my teddy bears.
When I was a child, I had a large teddy that I christened ‘Big Teddy’. I had a small teddy I called ‘Little Teddy’. And I had a teddy with pink fur – I think my mother had secretly wanted a girl – that with equally excrutiating logic I called ‘Pink Teddy’.
And then there was the last of my bears.
It was given to me rather late in my primary school career, by which time I was already heavily into playing with toy guns, toy swords, toy soldiers and toy weapons of mass destruction. Had I been familiar with the stories of Evelyn Waugh – as distinct from plain war stories – I might have seen the whole Sebastian Flyte, Brideshead Revisited possibilities of having a teddy bear. But I wasn’t. So I didn’t.
Instead – the bear having arrived just in time for tea – I looked at the contents of my plate for inspiration, and named the bear ‘Egg and Chips’.
And ‘Egg and Chips’ it remained – until fake-fur fabric fatigue took hold and the little fellow succumbed to a terminal loss of kapok stuffing.
With hindsight, I think the bear was lucky.
I could have been eating a Spotted Dick pudding. Or Cock-a-Leekie soup. Or Toad-in-the-Hole. Or Fairy Cake. Or even Stuffed Faggots. And I still think ‘Oi you, Come here’ is a good name for a dog !
AFTER THE GOLDRUSH
When I was a teenager, there was a hippy – we called him Wavey Davey – who lived in our town. We knew he was a hippy because – along with littering his conversation with plenty of “Hey mans”, “Peace” and “Out-a-sights” – he also wore a full length Moroccan-style kaftan. Nothing unusual about that you might think, except this was not the Summer of Love on a warm San Franciscan night – but an out-of-season seaside town on the cold, grey, fog-shrouded North Sea coast of England.
Wavey Davey had two distinguishing features. The first was his artificial leg. He liked to suggest – although always stopping short of giving away any details – that he’d lost his leg in mysterious and dramatic circumstances. We all suspected the explanation was far more mundane – such as an accident at work – and that was why he always kept it hidden beneath the flowing folds of his kaftan.
In fact it turned out the reason why he tried to conceal the leg – although the limp was a bit of a giveaway – was that he earned his living as a drug dealer and kept a stash of heroin in a cavity within the artificial limb.
His second distinguishing feature was the tattoo he had around his throat. It took the form of a series of dots, beneath which were the words “Cut along the dotted line”.
How he and his friends must have laughed when he first had that tattoo done. Unfortunately for Wavey Davey, one of his underworld acquaintances did subsequently follow those instructions – to the letter. The police found him with his leg missing – and his head six feet away from the rest of his body.
After that, I don’t think I gave Wavey Davey another thought for perhaps 40 years.
Then one day I came back from the dentists. I’d had a crown replaced and – because of its size and position – the dentist had recommended gold. When I got home, I pointed out the crown to my wife – and laughed about how much it had cost.
She was preparing a meal as we spoke and had a carving knife in her hand. “Interesting,” she said, absent-mindedly tapping the blade on the kitchen worktop. “If these banks keep failing,” she added, “at least I’ll know where to go if I ever need to raise some cash in a hurry.”
It was then I remembered Wavey Davey.
Light verse + political & kids' stuff
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 22 Dec 2008 02:40 PM GMT
This is an unashamed trawl of rag-pieces from my archives – some of it is very old – some of it is not very good – some of it is painfully derivative – and some of it deserves to be forgotten – although with the political stuff, I remain firmly convinced that politics is one of those areas of life where a few good but subtle lines by a poet can do more to drive home a message than any series of TV documentaries or newspaper editorials. In fact looking through some of this material, I'm appalled to see some of the things I was writing about in 1991 (the folly of City financial institutions) is still a major problem 17 years later...
AN ODE TO REFORM
“Here is my long awaited Bill,”
Said the Lord Chancellor, dour Lord Mackay.
“It will promote the legal skills,
And for the Bar be a poke in the eye.
“As legislation goes,
It’s a very weighty matter.
But I do not suppose,
That will make my critics scatter.
“Reform of the legal profession,
Has already been hotly debated.
And to avoid further dissension,
All decisions are to me delegated.
“So shed no further tears,
For the loss of all your old liberty.
And let there be no jeers,
For rule by advisory committee.”
Published in Solicitors Journal – 15 December 1989
ODE TO A RAM CACHE
When choosing a new computer,
At the start of a fresh decade,
Buying Micro Channel from Big Blue,
Could be the best thing you ever do.
Unless you happen to think
That a system called Eisa,
Offers an architecture,
That’s considerably nicer.
And if OS 2,
Could be good for you.
Just think how Unix,
Could help in a fix ?
Published in Practical Computing – January 1990
CITY LIMERICK
There was a young lady from Sark,
Who thought buying shares was a lark.
Then down went the Index,
And out came the Kleenex,
The poor girl had misjudged the Mark.
Published in Accountancy Age – 22 November 1990
Shortlisted for The Teacher’s City Scribblers Awards 1990
MORE DISINFORMATION
You are surely taking the piss,
When you claim not to know of Diss.
Perhaps you were thinking of Liss –
Or is your geography amiss ?
Published in Journalists Week – 15 March 1991
HESELTINE’S TASK
Imposing their charge on the nation,
The Tories had hoped for elation.
But the protests, they grew,
And soon everyone knew,
That Poll Tax was just a damnation.
Published in Local Government News – March 1991
THERE WAS NOTHING LIKE A DAME
And it’s farewell to Lady Shirley Porter,
Who started life the man from Tesco’s daughter.
Once you had Westminster beneath your thumb,
Though critics said your policies were dumb,
Like selling cemeteries for just fifteen pence,
You must have known it would cause great offence.
So while you kept the poll tax down of late,
You’ve clearly passed your Party’s sell by date.
Published in Local Government News – April 1991
THE CROOKED COUNTIES
So say goodbye to dull Cleveland,
Welcome back pocket Rutland,
Cheer the return of the Ridings –
Hope these reforms bring good tidings.
Heseltine’s changing the countryside,
Next to go – Avon and Humberside,
As counties devised by Redcliffe Maud,
All go back on the drawing the board.
Published in Local Government News – May 1991
WHAT SILLY BANKERS
The councils thought it would help raise some cash,
But the House of Lords their hopes did soon dash,
Now they’re impaled on the Town Hall railings,
All caught out by their own rate swaps failings.
And the banks thought they had a wizard scheme,
But the profits proved to be just a dream,
This brush with County Hall left them reeling,
When they saw their loss on rate swap dealing.
Published in Local Government News – July 1991
THE VIEW FROM THE LIVER BUILDING
Liverpool, city in the northern sun,
Your political life seems so much fun.
Liberal, Militant and Labour come and go,
Yet the council still keeps running out of dough.
The Mersey Beat and the Liverpool Tate,
Even Michael Heseltine’s garden fete.
All were very warmly praised in the press,
But none of them helped solve your financial mess.
Liverpool, old heart of the Merseyside,
Your chances have all gone out with the tide.
Now it looks as if the folk you call scouse,
Must permanently dwell in the doghouse.
Published in Local Government News – August 1991
HALF A CHEER FOR THE CITIZEN’S CHARTER
Nearly eight hundred years after,
King John signed the Magna Carta,
John Major, to muffled laughter,
Unveiled his Citizen’s Charter.
But what’s the point of a league table,
Or tenants charters for town halls,
When councils are not even able,
To budget for Poll Tax shortfalls ?
Published in Local Government News – September 1991
GIMME SHELTER
Where have all the council houses gone ?
They have all been flogged off everyone.
How much did privatisation make,
Was the policy all a big mistake ?
The private rental market lies stone dead,
So we pay for bed and breakfasts instead.
Now Shelter warns there is a housing gap,
Says we must put cheap homes back on the map.
Published in Local Government News – October 1991
LIVESTOCK IN MY LETTUCE
Mushrooms are cheap
we pick them in the woods for free.
Hello? Is that a toadstool
on the plate in front of me ?
Those free-range eggs
our neighbour gave us yesterday
her gesture was sweet –
but should they really smell this way ?
Plump red tomatoes
hand-picked fresh from the vine.
Yuk! That’s not very nice –
there’s a slug crawling over mine!
Today, while we were having lunch
a caterpillar crawled across my plate.
He was looking for his brother
who I think I just ate.
That’s it! This rural lifestyle
may have much in its favour
but tonight we’re off to the takeaway –
fast food’s got more flavour!
BLACK TIES AT SUNSET
Invited to a gala dinner
in aid of Third World famine relief
we won’t be getting any thinner
pigging out on fresh salmon and beef
Now for the pudding course and coffee
as some dreary raffle prizes are drawn
Too much to drink – then home by taxi
Black-ties at sunset, red-eyes at dawn
ROOTS
Apple pie without cheese
is like a kiss without a squeeze
After 30 years of living in the South
my Northern roots I still betray
by the food I place within my mouth
Published in Body & Soul anthology (United Press) 2005
Published in Poetic Reflections anthology (Anchor Books) 2005
DRIVETIME
Is there a God up there in Heaven ?
who cares for us drivers
on our endless journeys
all along the A47
Some kindly Deity among the stars
who created Milton Keynes
to justify us buying
satellite navigation for our cars ?
THE KAFFOON THAT KADDANCES IN THE DARK
You’ve heard tales of the Aye-Aye, the Kinkajou
the cute Koala and the fearsome Krocodidledoo
But have you heard of the mysterious Kaffoon?
The Kaffoon that kaddances in the dark
With his pinky baldy belly and his feet ever so smelly
The Kaffoon is the laziest beastie there ever did was
Oh the Kaffoon, the Kaffoon that kaddances in the dark
He sleeps all day and he sleeps all night
Just getting him out of bed takes us all our might
That’s the Kaffoon, the Kaffoon that kaddances in the dark
With his big wet nose and his long pointy toes
In between sleeps he likes nothing better than to doze
Wake up Kaffoon, the Kaffoon that snoozes in the dark
When his tea’s on the table, he stretches and yawns
In case he just might be able, to work up an appetite
Get up now fatty, you Kaffoon that kaddances in the dark
His idea of exercise, is a five minute stroll in the park
Then he’ll kaddash around in circles, chasing his ktail for a lark
That’s you dafty boy, the Kaffoon that khowls at the Moon
Kaffoon, Kaffool, Kaffooey or Kaffoodle
We don’t know your breeding but you sure ain’t no poodle
You’re our Kaffoon, the one and only Kaffoon that kaddances in the dark
Published in Funny, Furry & Frightening (Anchor Books) 2005
Published in Animal Antics anthology (Anchor Books) 2006
DOWNTIME
My email service will not download
the internet link is fried
there’s no signal on my PDA
and my wireless modem’s died
My cell phone battery has run flat
the voicemail system won’t play back
so I’m logging off from work today
and I won’t be coming back
ENDED BEFORE IT BEGAN
Lacking inspiration and destination
We had set out with no clear journey plan
Not the best way to start any vacation.
By train to Paris then on to Milan
But a strike at the cross-channel ferry
Sent that itinerary straight down the pan.
We adjourned to a bar where she drank sherry
“I may as well go back to work” she said with her smirk.
It was not just this trip we were going to bury.
“This fiasco” she added “is all your handiwork
I’m not sure you will ever be forgiven.”
So I waved goodbye and walked away into the murk.
Later, driving my car alone along the A11,
I realised there really was a God up there in Heaven.
Published in Materials of the Mind anthology (Anchor Books) 2005
THE MOUSEY WITH THE LONGIEST TAIL IN THE WORLD
“First it was a little, then it was a lottle
It used to be scruffy, before turning fluffy
I used to love cheese but now I prefer nuts
that sway in the trees with the breeze,” said The Mouse
The Mousey with the longiest tail in the world
“He used to be small but now he’s growed tall
Perhaps he’s a rat – or even a cat !”
said all the other mice that night in the house
the house that called itself the home of The Mouse
The Mousey with the longiest tail in the world
“You dafties, you dunces, you are such silly mouseys”
Said Henry the Hedgehog in his green plaid trousers
“That mouse you think special is really a squirrel !”
And that is the end of my tale of The Mouse
The Mousey with the longiest tail in the world
Published in Whispered Voices anthology (Anchor Books) 2005
COULD YOU DISPLAY MY POSTER AS WELL ?
Don’t you know who I am ? I’m that dreadful woman
Whose braying voice disturbs you in public places
And in supermarkets jumps the queue, right in front of you
Then, during rush hour, turns up at railway stations
To ask endless questions about obscure destinations.
I’m so full of my own airs and graces
As for other people’s feelings, I don’t give them a thought
In fact I’ve just left my car in your parking space
But I do hope I can still rely on your support
In the forthcoming electoral race?
Published in The Many Hues of Life anthology 2005
FRIENDS REUNITED
Old flames reignited
Dangerous liaisons invited
Current partners slighted
Divorce lawyers sighted
EAR TODAY AND GONE TOMORROW
As my Mum cuts my hair
she says I’ll be glad to hear
she’s taking lots of care
not to cut off my ear
If she cuts off my ear
I’ll be glad if I can still hear !
GENERAL ELECTION 2005
So Maggie Thatcher had to take a foreign holiday
Rather than watch the Tories in election disarray.
If only she’d left the country in the 1980s
British industry wouldn’t now be in the state it is.
BENEATH THE TREE
We squeeze the gifts beneath the tree
To see if we can guess what lies within.
Hard and heavy – this feels like a book to me
That's a pity, I was hoping for a DVD.
This one rattles when its shaken
Must be chocolates unless I’m mistaken.
Then a bottle – could be sherry
That’ll keep the old aunties merry.
Here’s a brolly, how very jolly
Tightly wrapped in paper decorated with holly.
And who sent me a pair of slippers?
They’re about as welcome as week-old kippers.
Never mind here comes the Christmas dinner
Roast turkey and pudding is always a winner.
Then we’ll all sit back with bulging belly
And fall asleep in front of the telly.
Published in Goodwill to all Men anthology (Anchor Books) 2006
AT THE DINNER PARTY
We’re like moths
flittering around your Chardonay fueled flame
Listening to well-honed anecdotes
we’ve all heard before
– and will certainly hear again
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