RETURN

Tags

Britain, British, Consciousness, death, Eat Coker, Ending, Heaven, Humanity, identity, Life, Liverpool, meaning, Metaphor, metapoetic, philosophical, poem, poetry, Reader, river, River Mersey, River Tame, spiritual, THE BEATLES, time, TS Eliot, Universe, Water, William Wordsworth, wordplay, writing

RETURN

a command came
from the brown god

which left me
under no illusions

and there I was writing
deep into the night
through sleep
through dream
following that river
my river

as we made
our course
to the sea.

****
Oh, the disregarded
divinity
of this labour
words are
cheap
are below
us
I hear you say

in the voice
your words commandeer for you

****

river of life
what songs
do you
have for me?

what songs from
my childhood
for I was born
beside a tiny river
a trickle of
a tributary
that
on its way
to the ocean went
Strawberry Field, became
full Sergeant Pepper

not that
those that bore me
much cared, knew at all

and last night I dreamt myself
crossing this river in your victorious city
finding my
way

finding my way
and now everything
that I write
you must view
through this prism

must write what I wrote
through this prism

river of life

celestial city
surreal little lanes and streets
of which your
four troubadours sing

****
deep
into the night

how deep
your inquire
and
what the depth
of this river?

really, such questions, interrogations
that I should be forced to
made to answer

for I know not of depth
beyond absolute abyss, the rest
relatively speaking
I only know flow
this
a poem of rivers

river of
my birth
river of my dream, my death,
rivers to which
I will always return

as the poet in the ninth prelude
speaking of
waters doubling back
finding ways
back to memory

I will just shrug and
smile

be your village idiot
not spiritual professor

(for what did we learn
not under
revision
in eternal state of advisement?)

as the night
gathers shape

and the fire of the spirit boils
the water of the soul

and the air
lifts up rain
caressing that surface

and the earth will wait
as the earth is wont

the earth has me booked
and placed
will find space
for my body

and the poem
being done

what left for its fate
but to fold into
ship shape

return
to the brown god (damyatta da)
give
back to
that source
set adrift on those flowing
never ending waters

IN THE TIME OF DANNY BLANCHFLOWER

Tags

Britain, History, John Lennon, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire, THE BEATLES

IN THE TIME OF
DANNY BLANCHFLOWER

I watched the ’62, ’63
same score cup finals
just to take a walk
down memory lane

(you know that hallmark track
sweetly framed and
with flowered border
slips into
Flanders mud if
you go
too far back)

Oh, what happened to
that gentility, you ask? Well,
it’s sweet, but reeks
a bit too much of
docility, civility,
would you
not agree?

And we have
in the studio
this chirpy Scouse chap
by name John Winston
(no not that Winston
imprisoned in South Africa
or in Room 101
where the truth
to be extracted
is thing you do not know)
so this
Johnny-boy, come lately, spent
Johnny-fellow
rambles on and on and on
in whiny, nasal voice

nothing here
quintessential, nothing
you could sell

no English musical hall viewed
through the lens
of lysergic acid

no yellow submarine
sailing
around Nelson’s Column

no heroic colonialism
to be resuscitated here
(free health!
that’s socialism, need
to torpedo that dream)

Victoria University, there I was
studying
the great Tory satirists
first
writers of the
novel
seemingly
Enlightened time to be

Belinda’s dressing table blessed
with the sexual spices of
Arabia and India
enhancing the demi-monde
making the ritual of
courtship
thing of high finance
of class propriety

meanwhile John Winston
imagining himself
a hero of
the revolutionary class
(bitter sarcasm here)
death by
idolized bullet
in
former colony awaiting
place that
gave you those slave rhythms
taught you
a British narrow French
windows out onto
creative possibility

I watched the old cup finals
Blanchflower and Greaves, Quixhall and Charlton
time is statue
stuck like a statue

until it isn’t
you see.

OTHER EASTER POEM

Tags

Ending, Liverpool, loss, Music, poem, poetry, THE BEATLES

OTHER EASTER POEM

“Easter Sunday, we were walking.
Easter Sunday, we were talking.”
Patti Smith “Easter”

The Beatles are old now
(those that
are
still rocking
and kicking, when
I last
read
still alive)

which just about
brings us to the end of
that particular phase
in the Albion mythology

Strawberry fields
turned golf course plus
condominiums

Eleanor Rigby
her ghost
back
with her body
so it might
turn
in its grave

Penny Lane
long gone
swallowed by
an extension to
the beast that is
legendary football stadium

the Walrus
having to
mind his speech
be
less
Tristan Tzara
sing
less surreal

because we have decoded each
and every meaning
from here
to eternity

ironed it all out, not
a crease to be found

so go
parade down the street
in your Sergeant Pepper’s
uniform

subverting
our
great Imperial history

sprouting eternal hallelujahs
for the
whole of mankind

boys
back from the trenches
will
surely shoot you down

SPANNER

Tags

BREXIT, Britain, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire, wordplay, writing

SPANNER
“I call him after grandad
Who had a feathered brain.”

John Lennon, A Spaniard
in the Works

Dan is on his way
with spanner and hammer
hurtling as fast
as fat legs can carry him

down with it to
sort out all who
fail to
comprehend, don’t
understand

and you
can be sure
(that fish and
chip English
being pure)

that nothing
will be lost
in translation
(even a fool
with a
Ph D
can
easily follow

no problem
to understand)

DRIVE THROUGH

Tags

Capitalism, commercialism, consumer society, Counter culture, dream time, fast food, poem, poetry, satire, THE BEATLES

DRIVE THROUGH
“he hadn’t noticed
that the lights had changed”

life is
fast food

life is
a drive
through

life is
man
dressed like
a machine
flipping
a burger

was
meditating on this

when
clock stopped
and I just could
not get it
started again

upon which note
a philosopher of note
stepped
up to
the plate

pitched up to
give me time’s
brief history and
footnote to Plato

having reassured him
that from this inconsequential event
I did not, could not,
infer
time
was
dead
(albeit in a poem)

at which he gave me
that graven-faced look
(like Medusa
had set
eyes on him)
freezing all his ideas
into books of stone

ah, but
we will always
have the
dream time

to escape
contingencies of concrete:
not the
kiddy meal
dream time of
Wonka sweet rainbow
sprinkle and
sugar sparkle

everything in
primaries or pastels
creamy
or soft-centered

no, here I’m contemplating
the real Lennon-McCartney McCoy
of yellow Lucy submarine
in the sky
with diamonds and
a strawberry walrus

day in
the life

revolution number
nine
kind
of thing

MR LENNON

Tags

Hamburg, Inagine, John Lennon, Lenin, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, poem, poetry, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, THE BEATLES, wordplay

MR LENNON

I thought you
were a
lowly insect

but now you tell me
you are the
Working Class Hero
interred in
Red Square

my brain
reeling from this, and
from smudge of
Hanoverian in
your saucy scouse accent
gone turned
pink and white
and bubble-gum blue marshmallow
(top ingredient in the pies
rocking-horse
people like)

yes, I read of your death
browsing the backseat
in a newspaper taxi

“imagine that!” the taxi-driver cried,
they were all
in dress uniform
waiting for outbreak
of war
or some vaudeville event

and Alice, through the mirror, out
in one of your deftly landscaped gardens
wondering, as we
we will
all be
wondering forever and ever

as aliens
in distant galaxies will be wondering
what
it all
meant

what “Day in
the Life” might have
done to our heads.