Words-n-stuff• Show poetry

I live in Hornchurch Essex England and I've been scribbling the odd verse or two down since about the age of 16 although the material on this site is a collection of stuff I've penned in more recent years.
It is a steadily growing collection of what is essentially story-telling with a dash of general nonsense. Most of it is relatively light and tongue-in-cheek and some of it isn't.
The overall style and format (ABCB-ish) of work I’ve pieced together on this site is mainly presented in a kind of extended hybrid limerick form ( a sort of Spike Milligan meets Marriot Edgar !) and some free-verse.
My writing influences are not so much from the world of poetry but probably a result of listening to a copious amount of music lyric (folk/blues) TV, surreal comedy, radio, a fairly broad spectrum of reading matter and general observation. I try to keep the writing within a definite metre/rhythm and rhyme.
I have a certain bent for folk tale with a dash of dark humour.


Possible influences ....

Friends and family, Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Marriot Edgar, John Betjamin, Ted Hughes, Samuel Coleridge, Charles Dickens, George Orwell, ... Bob Dylan, Jake Thackray, Ivor Cutler, Noel Coward, Tom Waits, Richard Thompson, Ray Davies, Elvis Costello, Leonard Cohen, Ian Dury, Randy Newman, John Prine, Don Van Vliet , Joni Mitchell, Syd Barret, Lennon & McCartney, Chuck Berry, Frank Zappa ... Spike Milligan, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, The Two Ronnies, Tony Hancock, Eric Morcambe, Monty Python, The League Of Gentlemen, Reeves & Mortimer, Harry Hill, Steve Coogan, Bill Baily, Ricky Gervais, The Simpsons, Family Guy ....

Disclaimer : Some errors in punctuation, spelling, miss-use of the English language and general literal incompetence, should be (or maybe) referred back to a Secondary Modern School somewhere in Rainham, Essex England (circa 1966-1971) ...



Words 'n stuff

I must confess I don’t profess to be a poet grande'
But if in some small way I find
I’ve entertained a kindred mind
I'll be smiling all the way to Cuckoo-land !

My chosen use of word abuse,is scrawling thoughts in rhyme
Constructing certain stanza-schemes
Some narratives of strange dark themes
Though tempered with a grin from time to time

I’m no Carroll, Lear, or Edgar’s peer, a Wordsworth, Hughes or Shaw
So these words at times may seem absurd
And strange when uttered or referred
But it's just some words and stuff, and nothing more ...



Poems and lyrics I quite like ...


A letter to my Aunt (Dylan Thomas)


To you, my aunt, who would explore
The literary Chankley Bore,
The paths are hard, for you are not
A literary Hottentot
But just a kind and cultured dame
Who knows not Eliot (to her shame).
Fie on you, aunt, that you should see
No genius in David G.,
No elemental form and sound
In T.S.E. and Ezra Pound.
Fie on you, aunt! I'll show you how
To elevate your middle brow,
And how to scale and see the sights
From modernist Parnassian heights.

First buy a hat, no Paris model
But one the Swiss wear when they yodel,
A bowler thing with one or two
Feathers to conceal the view;
And then in sandals walk the street
(All modern painters use their feet
For painting, on their canvas strips,
Their wives or mothers, minus hips).

Perhaps it would be best if you
Created something very new,
A dirty novel done in Erse
Or written backwards in Welsh verse,
Or paintings on the backs of vests,
Or Sanskrit psalms on lepers' chests.
But if this proved imposs-i-ble
Perhaps it would be just as well,
For you could then write what you please,
And modern verse is done with ease.

Do not forget that 'limpet' rhymes
With 'strumpet' in these troubled times,
And commas are the worst of crimes;
Few understand the works of Cummings,
And few James Joyce's mental slummings,
And few young Auden's coded chatter;
But then it is the few that matter.
Never be lucid, never state,
If you would be regarded great,
The simplest thought or sentiment,
(For thought, we know, is decadent);
Never omit such vital words
As belly, genitals and -----,
For these are things that play a part
(And what a part) in all good art.
Remember this: each rose is wormy,
And every lovely woman's germy;
Remember this: that love depends
On how the Gallic letter bends;
Remember, too, that life is hell
And even heaven has a smell
Of putrefying angels who
Make deadly whoopee in the blue.
These things remembered, what can stop
A poet going to the top?

A final word: before you start
The convulsions of your art,
Remove your brains, take out your heart;
Minus these curses, you can be
A genius like David G.

Take courage, aunt, and send your stuff
To Geoffrey Grigson with my luff,
And may I yet live to admire
How well your poems light the fire.


*******


If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

Rudyard Kipling (1909)


Sister Josephine
(Jake Thackray)

Oh Sister Josephine
What do all these Policemen mean
By coming to the convent in a grim limousine
After Sister Josephine

While you Sister Josephine
You sit with your boots up on the alter screen
You smoke one last cigar
What a funny nun you are

The Policemen say thet Josephine's a burglar in diguise
Big Bad Norman fifteen years on the run
The sisters disbelieve it "No that can't be Josephine"
Just think about her tenderness towards the younger nuns

Oh Sister Josephine
They're searching the chapel where you've been seen
The nooks and the crannies of the nun's canteen
After Sister Josephine

While you sister Josephine
You sip one farewell benedictine
Before your Au Revoir
A right funny nun you are

Admittedley her hands are big and hairy
And embelished with a curious tatoo
Admittedly her voice is on the deep side
And she seems to shave more often than the other sisters do

Oh Sister Josephine
Founder of the convent pontoon team
They're looking through your bundles of rare magazines
After Sister Josephine

While you sister Josephine
You give a goodbye sniff of benzedrine
To the convent budgerigar
A bloody funny nun you are

No longer will her snores ring through the chapel during prayers
Nor her lustful moanings fill the stilly night
No more empty bottles of alter wine come clunking from her cell
No longer will the cloister toilet seat stand upright

Oh Sister Josephine
Slipping through their fingers like vaseline
Leaving them to clutch your empty crinoline
After Sister Josephine

While you sister Josephine
Sprinting through the suburbs when last seen
Dressed only in your wimple and your rosary
A right funny nun you seem to be.

Words & Music Jake Thackeray
(1938-2002)

*


'Swordfishtrombones'

Well he came home from the war
with a party in his head
and modified Brougham DeVille
and a pair of legs that opened up
like butterfly wings
and a mad dog that wouldn't
sit still
he went and took up with a Salvation Army
Band girl
who played dirty water
on a swordfishtrombone
he went to sleep at the bottom of
Tenkiller lake
and he said "gee, but it's
great to be home."

Well he came home from the war
with a party in his head
and an idea for a fireworks display
and he knew that he'd be ready with
a stainless steel machete
and a half a pint of Ballentine's
each day
and he holed up in room above a hardware store
cryin' nothing there but Hollywood tears
and he put a spell on some
poor little Crutchfield girl
and stayed like that for 27 years

Well he packed up all his
expectations he lit out for California
with a flyswatter banjo on his knee
with a lucky tiger in his angel hair
and benzedrine for getting there
they found him in a eucalyptus tree
lieutenant got him a canary bird
and shaked her head with every word
and Chesterfielded moonbeams in a song
and he got 20 years for lovin' her
from some Oklahoma governor
said everything this Doughboy
does is wrong

Now some say he's doing
the obituary mambo
and some say he's hanging on the wall
perhaps this yarn's the only thing
that holds this man together
some say he was never here at all

Some say they saw him down in
Birmingham, sleeping in a
boxcar going by
and if you think that you can tell a bigger tale
I swear to God you'd have to tell a lie...

Tom Waits ( 1982 )

*

'Poor ditching boy'


Was there ever a winter so cold and so sad
The river too weary to flood
The storming wind cut through to my skin
But she cut through to my blood

I was looking for trouble to tangle my line
But trouble came looking for me
I knew I was standing on treacherous ground
I was sinking too fast to run free

With her scheming, idle ways
She left me poor enough
The storming wind cut through to my skin
But she cut through to my blood

I would not be asking, I would not be seen
A-beggin’ on mountain or hill
But I’m ready and blind with my hands tied behind
I’ve neither a mind nor a will

With her scheming, idle ways
She left me poor enough
The storming wind cut through to my skin
But she cut through to my blood

It’s bitter the need of the poor ditching boy
He’ll always believe what they say
They tell him it’s hard to be honest and true
Does he mind if he doesn’t get paid?

With her scheming, idle ways
She left me poor enough
The storming wind cut through to my skin
But she cut through to my blood

Richard Thompson (1972)

*

'A woman unconscious'


Russia and America circle each other;
Threats nudge an act that were without doubt
A melting of the mould in the mother,
Stones melting about the root.

The quick of the earth burned out:
The toil of all our ages a loss
With leaf and insect. Yet flitting thought
(Not to be thought ridiculous)

Shies from the world-cancelling black
Of its playing shadow: it has learned
That there's no trusting (trusting to luck)
Dates when the world's due to be burned;

That the future's no calamitous change
But a malingering of now,
Histories, towns, faces that no
Malice or accident much derange.

And though bomb be matched against bomb,
Though all mankind wince out and nothing endure --
Earth gone in an instant flare --
Did a lesser death come

Onto the white hospital bed
Where one, numb beyond her last of sense,
Closed her eyes on the world's evidence
And into pillows sunk her head.

Ted Hughes

*

Tangled up in blue (Bob Dylan 1974)


Early one mornin' the sun was shinin',
I was layin' in bed
Wond'rin' if she'd changed at all
If her hair was still red.
Her folks they said our lives together
Sure was gonna be rough
They never did like Mama's homemade dress
Papa's bankbook wasn't big enough.
And I was standin' on the side of the road
Rain fallin' on my shoes
Heading out for the East Coast
Lord knows I've paid some dues gettin' through,
Tangled up in blue.

She was married when we first met
Soon to be divorced
I helped her out of a jam, I guess,
But I used a little too much force.
We drove that car as far as we could
Abandoned it out West
Split up on a dark sad night
Both agreeing it was best.
She turned around to look at me
As I was walkin' away
I heard her say over my shoulder,
"We'll meet again someday on the avenue,"
Tangled up in blue.

I had a job in the great north woods
Working as a cook for a spell
But I never did like it all that much
And one day the ax just fell.
So I drifted down to New Orleans
Where I happened to be employed
Workin' for a while on a fishin' boat
Right outside of Delacroix.
But all the while I was alone
The past was close behind,
I seen a lot of women
But she never escaped my mind, and I just grew
Tangled up in blue.

She was workin' in a topless place
And I stopped in for a beer,
I just kept lookin' at the side of her face
In the spotlight so clear.
And later on as the crowd thinned out
I's just about to do the same,
She was standing there in back of my chair
Said to me, "Don't I know your name?"
I muttered somethin' underneath my breath,
She studied the lines on my face.
I must admit I felt a little uneasy
When she bent down to tie the laces of my shoe,
Tangled up in blue.

She lit a burner on the stove and offered me a pipe
"I thought you'd never say hello," she said
"You look like the silent type."
Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century.
And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burnin' coal
Pourin' off of every page
Like it was written in my soul from me to you,
Tangled up in blue.

I lived with them on Montague Street
In a basement down the stairs,
There was music in the cafes at night
And revolution in the air.
Then he started into dealing with slaves
And something inside of him died.
She had to sell everything she owned
And froze up inside.
And when finally the bottom fell out
I became withdrawn,
The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin' on like a bird that flew,
Tangled up in blue.

So now I'm goin' back again,
I got to get to her somehow.
All the people we used to know
They're an illusion to me now.
Some are mathematicians
Some are carpenter's wives.
Don't know how it all got started,
I don't know what they're doin' with their lives.
But me, I'm still on the road
Headin' for another joint
We always did feel the same,
We just saw it from a different point of view,
Tangled up in blue.



Copyright © 1974 Ram's Horn Music