These fought in any case,
and some believing
pro domo, in any case...

Died some, pro patria,
walked eye-deep in hell
believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving
came home, home to a lie,
home to many deceits,
home to old lies and new infamy;
usury age-old and age-thick
and liars in public places.

Daring as never before, wastage as never before.
Young blood and high blood,
fair cheeks, and fine bodies;

fortitude as never before

frankness as never before,
disillusions as never told in the old days,
hysterias, trench confessions,
laughter out of dead bellies.

— Ezra Pound

Labels: poetry, politics

Some may have blamed us that we cease to speak

Of things we spoke of in our verses early,

Saying: a lovely voice is such as such;

Saying: that lady's eyes were sad last week,

Wherein the world's whole joy is born and dies;

Saying: she hath this way or that, this much

Of grace, this way or that, this much

Of grace, this little misericorde;

Ask us no further word;

If we were proud, then proud to be so wise

Ask us no more of all the things ye heard;

We may not speak of them, they touch us nearly.

— Ezra Pound

Labels: poetry

If you had known how little

you would have had to give

to drum into this brittle

hope the desire to live

would you have changed the venue,

your greeting or your tone

or planned things better when you

knew we'd have hours alone

and if you heard a hollow

voice spit these ill-advised

questions, would nothing follow?

I wouldn't be surprised.

— Sophie Hannah

Labels: poetry

I sat all morning in the college sick bay

Counting bells knelling classes to a close.

At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying —

He had always taken funerals in his stride —

And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram

When I came in, and I was embarrassed

By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"

Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,

Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.

At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived

With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops

And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him

For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,

He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.

No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

— Seamus Heaney

Labels: poetry

He stands twixt verge and brink,

Stood rigid, head inclined;

A homely place, a native breeze

is this: a warm, nostalgic fear.

Labels: poetry

New territory: unmarked by foot or gaze;

a virgin place whose undiscovered gaps and lines

conspire to engulf and redefine

this sore and sullied crust that I call skin.

And should I trace this trail that is not there?

Will crevices and cliffs be my companions?

Or will they lose me, in a storm

that marks me: naked; washed; unborn.

Labels: poetry

Skin

Obedient daily dress,

You cannot always keep

That unfakable young surface.

You must learn your lines —

Anger, amusement, sleep;

Those few forbidding signs

Of the continuous coarse

Sand-laden wind, time;

You must thicken, work loose

Into an old bag

Carrying a soiled name.

Parch then; be roughened; sag;

And pardon me, that I

Could find, when you were new,

No brash festivity

To wear you at, such as

Clothes are entitled to

Till the fashion changes.

—Philip Larkin

Tags: skin, larkin, philip.

Labels: poetry

The thousands unlock their doors

and in flies reality

uninvited.

Perhaps we just wanted to sit

for a lifetime or two

and not see it.

Perhaps we just wanted to sit

and have our own plates

to eat our cheese.

Labels: poetry

Perspective nightmare:

A confined space.

Forever onwards, forwards:

Closer. Further away.

2002

Tags: poetry, poem, perspective

Labels: poetry

Goodbye, another forgotten day

where the grass grew longer

and the notion stronger

that this would be a forgotten day.

All is old and dead and past;

its grey remnant on the floor.

Every day we ask for more,

but nothing here can last.

2001

Tags: poetry, poem

Labels: poetry

Why yield to pressures external/undue

That don't matter or make any difference to you?

People telling and asking and pulling both arms

And time's stings attacking your skull in its swarms?

If there's something you'd rather be doing right now,

Go and do it — say no thank-yous, goodbyes — save a row.

If this is a maxim, then follow it true:

It's something you can't just intend to do.

2001

Tags: poetry, poem, wilshere.

Labels: poetry

Labels: poetry

A sort of conversion, they say.

Not from the old to the new,

So much as from sheen to lacquer,

From smooth to flat,

From perhaps to tomorrow.

In these subtle shifts, we find

The unexpected whiff of famil-

iarity:

A replacement radio, without the interference,

With still the same voices

and still the same programmes.

The sun sets behind that pinker sky

Which was grey from behind a dirty pane of glass

Which was contingent, not

necessary

and blossom falls

and a leaf

and a gate swings just like it used to:

a sort of conversion, they say.

Labels: poetry

Happy birthday Mr Auden. Today you turn 100, and every word you wrote is truer now than then.

There will be no peace (1956)

Though mild clear weather

Smile again on the shore of your esteem

And its colours come back, the storm has changed you:

You will not forget, ever,

The darkness blotting out hope, the gale

Prophesying your downfall.

You must live with your knowledge.

Way back, beyond, outside of you are others,

In moonless absences you never heard of,

Who have certainly heard of you,

Beings of unknown number and gender:

And they do not like you.

What have you done to them?

Nothing? Nothing is not an answer:

You will come to believe — how can you help it? —

That you did, you did do something;

You will find yourself wishing you could make them laugh,

You will long for their friendship.

There will be no peace.

Fight back, then, with such courage as you have

And every unchivalrous dodge you know of,

Clear in your conscience on this:

Their cause, if they had one, is no thing to them now;

They hate for hate's sake.

Economics (1964)

In the Hungry Thirties

boys used to sell their bodies

for a square meal.

In the Affluent Sixties

they still did:

to meet Hire-Purchase Payments.

Tags: auden, whauden, therewillbenopeace, centenary, birthday, poetry, poet

Labels: auden, poetry, politics

Imagination is the key:

I'll be you, if you'll be me.

Labels: poetry

Day of mist: day of tarnish

with hands

unserviceable, I wait

for the milk van

the one-eared cat

laps its gray paw

and the coal fire burns

outside, the little hedge leaves are

become quite yellow

a milk-film blurs

the empty bottles on the windowsill

no glory descends

two water drops poise

on the arched green

stem of my neighbor's rose bush

o bent bow of thorns

the cat unsheathes its claws

the world turns

today

today I will not

disenchant my twelve black-gowned examiners

or bunch my fist

in the wind's sneer.

—Sylvia Plath, 'Resolve'

Labels: christmas, poetry

When I leave your postcode and your commuting station,

When I leave undone the things that we planned to do,

You may feel you have been left by association,

But there is leaving and there is leaving you.

When I leave your town and the club that you belong to,

When I leave without much warning or much regret,

Remember, there's doing wrong and there's doing wrong to

You, which I'll never do and I haven't yet,

And when I have gone, remember that in weighing

Everything up, from love to a cheaper rent,

You were all the reasons I thought of staying

And you were none of the reasons why I went

And although I leave your sight and I leave your setting

And our separation is soon to be a fact,

Though you stand beside what I'm leaving and forgetting,

I'm not leaving you, not if motive makes the act.

—Sophie Hannah, Leaving and Leaving You

I first found this poem while lying in my friend's bed looking through books about five years ago, and I suppose this is the first time it's actually been relevant. Thus I start the hunt for a new place to live, in every sense, and it's exciting and frightening. But it's the way it must be.

Tagged: sophiehannah, leavingandleavingyou, separation.

Labels: poetry, relationships

Eschatology is archaeology of

Ages still to come.

We are digging down by building upward,

Asking where our lives are leading,

Filling in our fuzzy logic

With visions of the apocalyptic.

Hindu ragas, Christian hymns,

Evolution, quantum physics,

Tell us all The Way Of Things.

Don't be fooled, my boy — you know

That poets, not Smarties, have the answer.

Labels: poetry

A street in a memory circa 1993,

only no sunshine and no orange coat,

just an emptiness filled with silence,

a gap on the grey brick wall where you sat

for a pause on the walk that you walked with me.

Across those years I still feel

you whiskers pressed against my face;

the well-trodden pile on the carpet

where I collected all your coins one morning;

your sodden hands that washed up after our meal.

But all that detail's as dead as you,

and I cannot recall a single word,

nor even the voice that must have said them,

but which is now, a memory, silenced

like it never spoke, nor was ever spoken to.

Note

(after Windsor Road Chapel)

Tagged: poem, poetry, wilshere.

Labels: poetry

Since someone mentioned it the other day, and no-one really knows what follows the first two lines, I thought I'd reproduce W.H. Davies' 'Leisure' here, both to fill that gap and to draw attention to how weak the remaining twelve lines are!

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

— W.H. Davies

Tagged: whdavies, davies, poem, leisure, whatisthislife, standandstare.

Labels: poetry

Under the sizzle of pylons

On the West Pennine Moors,

I search myself for a trace of you

And imagine us two

In that house on the hill.

Our days are not contiguous

So I'm as dead as you.

Tagged: poetry, poem, wilshere.

Labels: poetry

A rolly-polly heffalump

Was going for a walk.

She couldn't keep her hat on

And she couldn't even talk.

She bounced on all the flowerbeds

And knocked down all the trees,

She squashed a dozen wardens

And frightened all the bees.

With every bounce she bounced and bounced

Each time a little higher.

Soon she broke through all the clouds

And set herself on fire.

She orbited the earth for days

And deadified the moon.

Then she disappeared from sight

And so I played Pontoon.

Tagged: poetry, original, elephant, wilshere, andrewwilshere.

Labels: poetry

To be with you, I'd sacrifice

Three hundred bears

And forty mice

To be with you, I'd take the train

Around the world

And back again

But you're with him. I understand:

I'm in the bush,

He's in the hand.

To be with you, I'd run around

With both my feet

Tied to the ground

To be with you, I'd get Bill Gates

To dress up like

He's Norman Bates

But you're with him. I comprehend:

He's the lover,

I'm the friend.

To be with you, I'd write a book

About a picture

And a hook

To be with you, I'd advertise

Defibrillators

For the eyes

But you're with him: I quite agree

That's he's for you;

You're not for me.

To be with you, I'd sing a song

Which lasted far

Far far too long

To be with you I'd read this poem

If I weren't scared about you knowing

But you're with him: I must declare

This love's not going

Anywhere.

Tagged: poetry, original, wilshere, andrewwilshere, jealousy, covetousness, love, envy, poem.

Labels: poetry

Swirling like a pint of Guinness,

Life's a drink that won't last long.

We're born, we breathe, and then we're gone.

Yet in the days we have, we gasp;

Clutch the straws we hold so dear,

Aware the day we part is near.

That day arrives and we exhale,

Release our grip, and down our drink.

The straws remain; stronger than we think.

Tagged: guinness, poem, poetry, original, wilshere, death, dead.

Labels: poetry

Listening to Radio 4 in the car on the way back from Manchester today, I chanced upon a programme about Charles Causley, a poet whose work I have always been fond of but never really known anything about. I assumed to him to be dead, correctly, but didn't realise that he died as recently as 2003, a date well after I had become acquainted with his work; somehow the event passed me by. Either that or I've forgotten because my brain is frazzled from the life of sex, drugs, and rock and roll which maps neatly onto my identity as a sometime church organist.

As it turns out, according to the programme (to which you can listen again), when questioned about his life by friend Arthur Wills (not the sometime cathedral organist, but another person altogether), Causley would remark, 'It's all in the poems.' The general consensus on Causley is that he was the opposite of everything we assume twentieth-century art and literature to stand for: he was accessible rather than avant-garde, moral and Christian rather than philosophical and agnostic. Yet he maintained a distinctive voice which he used to achieve all kinds of real-world things which more celebrated poets did not. You can read some of his poems on Poethunter, but I reproduce my favourite (and perhaps his most famous) here:

I saw a jolly hunter

With a jolly gun

Walking in the country

In the jolly sun.

In the jolly meadow

Sat a jolly hare.

Saw the jolly hunter.

Took jolly care.

Hunter jolly eager-

Sight of jolly prey.

Forgot gun pointing

Wrong jolly way.

Jolly hunter jolly head

Over heels gone.

Jolly old safety catch

Not jolly on.

Bang went the jolly gun.

Hunter jolly dead.

Jolly hare got clean away.

Jolly good, I said.

Tagged: causley, charlescausley, charles, radio4, bbc, poetry, poet, poem, isawajollyhunter, radio, literature.

Labels: poetry

Wasteland of flat and grey and green

circles around me, assessing the scene;

occasional stone and occasional stump,

momentary colour and impromptu clump.

Ghost town of robots with angular moves,

withered zombies with plastacine faces of grooves;

twilight of lives, haunted memories walking

resigned to the time of No More Talking.

Horizon unchanging but we're always ageing,

with each passing day our attributes waging

a war with the past that is bitter and cold;

the clouds come, the people get more and more old.

Tagged: poetry, original, wilshere, death, age, ageing, wasteland, poem, time.

Labels: poetry

Hickory dickory dock

The mouse ran up the cock

The cock flew down

The mouse did drown

And neither put Humpty together again.

Tagged: poetry, wilshere, original, nonsense.

Labels: poetry

Death is nothing at all

I have only slipped away into the next room

I am I and you are you

Whatever we were to each other

That we are still

Call me by my old familiar name

Speak to me in the easy way you always used

Put no difference into your tone

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow

Laugh as we always laughed

At the little jokes we always enjoyed together

Play, smile, think of me, pray for me

Let my name be ever the household word that it always was

Let it be spoken without effort

Without the ghost of a shadow in it

Life means all that it ever meant

It is the same as it ever was

There is absolute unbroken continuity

What is death but a negligible accident?

Why should I be out of mind

Because I am out of sight?

I am waiting for you for an interval

Somewhere very near

Just around the corner

All is well.

Nothing is past; nothing is lost

One brief moment and all will be as it was before

How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

—Canon Henry Scott Holland

At the end of what seems to have been a summer lived in the shadow of death, today was the funeral of a friend and choir member whose demise was, sadly, pretty rapid. But church was full of people to see him off, most people went to the commital at the crematorium, and then a good number of us went to the pub (which — if you want to picture it — is not dissimilar to The Jockey in Shameless) and drank beer in the same seats in which he drank pints of Mild and, latterly, gin and slimline tonic. His widow, in inimitable Mancunian fashion, was first to the bar, and bought herself an orange Bacardi Breezer.

How does someone left behind, whose life was for decades structured around that single person, reinvent their self? What are the new parameters for life, where do they come from, and why are they there? I imagine the truth is that, after that single, unrepeatable loss, life is never the same again, and never as full and truly lived again; the future becomes something to cope with rather than enjoy. But there are exceptions, and I hope my friend will be one. North Manchester folk certainly wrap themselves round you in a crisis, and, in spite of material poverty, I can't imagine a richer place to be at a time like this.

Tagged: death, friend, friendship, choir, choral, funeral, scottholland, henryscottholland, poetry, poem, dying, living, church, manchester, northmanchester, family, shameless.

Labels: poetry

Fourteen other dying men

Are your final companions.

Tubes here and there,

Flesh wasting away

To its inevitable conclusion.

Our hands on yours

Wake you from a dream

To a reality more alien;

A life unstructured

By imminent death.

And so we talk

Of normal things.

The neighbours getting milk,

The party last night

Where we drank for you.

What can you say?

This gap between us

Is no-one's doing.

It's the sliver keeping

You from living.

Here's a toast to absent friends

Whose voices are

As real as ever,

But in a few hours will be gone,

And our encounter will be severed.

Tagged: poetry, wilshere, poem, original, hospital, death.

Labels: poetry

the swans are swimming uniformly,

in sepia colours, past a boat.

a tree beyond them wobbles slowly,

and with the current, on they float.

their cygnets enter right of picture,

ripples start and multiply;

light refracted and reflected,

and I watch those ripples die.

curtain twitches on the boat,

an eye or two is looking through;

ripples hit a yacht beside it

and paint it an ephemeral blue.

t.v. aerial point beyond

and seems to offer new direction;

curtain is released, and silence

hides its falling, and its friction.

swans and cygnets leave the frame,

water flattens out a bit.

lamp's switched off beyond the curtain;

the tree remains, and there I sit.

Tagged: poetry, original, wilshere, andrewwilshere, swans, cygnets, water, nature, boat,and.

Labels: poetry

Pregnant blue-grey clouds

Threaten rain a second time.

The bitter winter yields to fairer weather,

Two hundred tearful, frigid nights

Undone by you in one embrace:

Your skin, your hair, your eyes conspire

And I am lost again,

Seduced, and wantonly, by perfume

And the touch of leather.

Labels: poetry

I prefer to write in fountain pen,

Because, as all good writers know,

Not one good word was writ in Biro.

Tagged: poetry, original, biro, wilshere.

Labels: poetry

A Sunday morning, mid-July;

No sleep, although I really tried;

The coffee pot is full to brimming;

Three scoops of illy, and I'm winning.

That wisdom tooth is back again,

Impacted, and a cause of pain,

Infected, by my lousy brushing,

Extracted, by some drowsy Russian.

I'm sitting on the garden bench.

It's fucking cold at 5am.

But bees are already up and doing.

That bloody Russian. Could I sue him?

This pint of coffee's mighty strong.

I think I brewed it far too long.

There's bits of cous-cous on this table.

And bits of pancake on the gable!

Good God, I'm tired, but wide awake.

I can't sleep now, for Jesus sake:

I'm off to church in three small hours,

And it's my turn to trim the flowers.

Now there's cocking ants here too!

The table does need waxing, true,

But this year's ants are pestilent;

They're holding rugby tournaments.

I fear this coffee's contaminated

By fair Fairy's washing-up liquid.

Remember, readers! One always must

Clean coffee pots with moth and rust.

'El Mundo En Tus Manos'

Reads my coffee cup of chaos.

(My mug, just tween you and me,

Has an ethical foreign policy.)

I stretch and yawn! It's still so cold.

A prize awaits though. Yes! Behold!

If you can solve this metric riddle,

You'll earn a toy with which to fiddle.

Tagged: poetry, wilshere, original, newfred, coffee, insomnia, sleepless.

Labels: poetry

You stand at a grave.

A Tuesday afternoon,

Haze descended on lofty earth,

Where this cemetery seems

To intercede with heaven.

You touch withered flowers,

Once placed, alive, in honour

Of the rotting dead,

For the left-behind;

Who mourns the flowers?

Too many a thought,

Too many the days,

Too long since your last visit;

No faith, no revelation comes,

Do not return, you say, Get over it.

Hard shoe on soft earth identifies

Fresh death of old flesh;

Matter whose own finitude

Becomes new life and air and food;

This is no time for mourning.

You turn and watch the power station,

View your Kingdom, imagine Jesus

Being tempted in the wilderness.

You cast your eyes away from death

And the headstone you drove here to venerate.

No prayer said?

Is he not dead? Just silence,

And more silence;

The line dead too, like him and me.

You're next, you think,

And all the earth, piled violently

Atop crude plastic sheets,

Which crushes grass and flower,

Will soon crush you,

And you will rot.

Who will visit then?

Labels: poetry

Loving my neighbour like myself

With my great churches

And my wealth

With his hunger

Hating the sin and loving the sinner

With my cruel words

And my punches

With his innocence

Being the Good Samaritan

With my suburban home

And my salary

With his poverty

Goodbye love

Goodbye sin

Goodbye Samaritan

With his death

Tagged: poetry, original, christianity, church, samaritan, love, sin, wilshere.

Labels: poetry

Self

Squirreling away the hoards of teabags

Down Tomorrow Street:

Dropping them down sewers

Every other week.

Tagged: poetry, original, wilshere.

Labels: poetry

Rasman Jasma Spasla Pasla

Irreduced to everything:

The time for merrywishing from

The time of everwanting.

Under he arches of the breeze

A merry underwritten sneeze

Who you ask who is this man

But Rasman is a cooker point

Who made me cook your uncle's tart

And roll away the knockers.

In the many challenges

He became a dangheress.

And under all the lights and sounds

The doctor came to help him;

Jeffrey was a happy bunny

Happy quoted Jolly funny.

Who Oh Who Oh Who are you

That reads with such intensity

That OH your eyes are sore they are

And my tooth it is hurty

Mengle mingle undergrad

Have you been to Petrograd?

Who Oh Who did Johnny see

When he went up London Tree?

Goodnight then readers

Don't forget

They haven't sectioned me

Just yet

Labels: poetry

If only I could speak the words

I need to say to you:

My mouth is shut,

My heart locked up,

How can I breathe

Or think or live

Unless you love me too?

Such love is a forbidden fruit,

Forbidden unto me:

Your mouth so near

Your heart so far

away. How can

That touching hand

So ripe, yet so raw, be?

This interdiction's interposed

By showers of delight:

Our intertwined,

Inwardly blind

Individuals

Intermingle.

Still art thou overdight.

And covered though I rest this eve,

My eyes fall shut and dream:

A country far

Beyond the stars

Where there's no You,

Nor any Me,

Just, and forever, We.

Tagged: poetry, wilshere, original.

Labels: poetry

Reading this post over at Homo Ludens made me think of a poem I wrote a while back. See Michael Rosen's comment on the post.

If I claim I'm over you

And put it into speech,

I merely reinforce the fact

That you are out of reach.

I waited by a cash machine,

I waited in a bar,

I waited in my bedroom,

I waited in the car.

I want to feel your arms around me

and feel skin on skin.

I want to let you be the vessel

to store my New Wine in.

You left me waiting, waiting, waiting,

Waiting longer than I can,

Waiting for tomorrow's Coming,

Weary, wasted, wizened, wan.

But I can say: "I'm over you!"

Despite the fact I'm breaking down.

So, like my wisdom teeth, I crumble

And there is nowhere else to

Tagged: poetry, original, wilshere, andrewwilshere, michaelrosen, homoludens, newwine.

Labels: poetry

Spandex Jerrytastic leaves

Tiny orange dungarees;

Many men were on their knees:

"Jolly Bolly Knockers!"

Holy Holly Helly Hoo.

Many Mandy's Mary Moo.

Writing, writing, but who to?

"Kaery Nary Squeezer!"

Bless'd be you and bless'd be me

Cocking up the cocking tree,

Mouse ran down, cat did pee

"On the trolley pisser."

Whiner Diner Polly Pocket

Stuck it like a fucking rocket.

Wally Dolly she did sock it,

"Rarely in the shitter!"

Labels: poetry

Menghy Dagrow

Menghy Dagrow in the hearse.

Another world. Another verse.

The people all said, "Undertaker,

Where are Samueletta's shoes?

Her foots are morely in the nudes."

Under Samueletta's toes,

Alas, dear Menghy picks his knows.

"Gnostic anacrostic toxic!"

Samueletta's mother cried,

Because her toes had nearly died.

Menghy Dagrow nose no bounds;

Now he's dead, he can't be found

Save in moustaches, under glasses,

Cooking cordon bleu cuisine

In St. Theo's trampoline.

Generally, generations

Generate genitalations

In the bedroom, cold and raw,

On the kitchen table, floor,

In the pantry, by the door,

With the ventilation shaft,

In the garden, up the path,

Tickle Posh and Becks, although

Neither of them demonstrate

Menghy Dagrow's perfect weight.

"Gentlefolk, please calm yourselves,"

Menghy Dagrow wisely tells

A rabid crowd of rabit wolves

Under Mary's bathroom scales

(Sourced from Sweden, via Wales).

Witness to a brief encounter

Mary had with Jerry Mounther

Which he did most skilfully,

With little mess or complication

Since there was zero penetration,

Much to Mary's disappointment,

But Menghy Dagrow gave some ointment;

From then on, the men stayed hard,

Mary rode them through the night

And gave the scales quite a fright.

Lies! Deception! Subterfuge!

Menghy's telephone was huge,

Early days of telecom, then

Many years of internauting

Samueletta's astronauting.

Menghy got his breath again,

But died just after half past ten.

Tagged: poetry, original, nonsense, poem.

Labels: poetry

Everyone is rushing there but me.
Stooped down like bears, most of them.
The rest are waiting, worried:
Worried, because they're not rushing:
There must be something wrong if they're not rushing.

Labels: poetry

Dripping dreams of life away.
Dreaming drips night and day.
Can you hear the waters lap?
How many dreams left in the tap?

—Spike Milligan

That two-tone sky
Of suburbia.
It has clearness,
Sharp colours. I cry

On a calm day
In Spring. It all feels
Perfect, like it
Hides nothing away.

I know better.
The sky will crack as
Truth tumbles down.
The world gets wetter.

Tagged: Spike Milligan, SpikeMilligan, Poetry.

Labels: poetry

February

Earth is bathed anew
in mid-February blue.
The snow is gone,
and the clouds now chase
for the summer's return
to humanity's face.

A familiar buzz
replaces what was
a drizzly din.
Lawn mowers are out,
as people emerge
from their wintry bouts

of wintry depression,
and find new expressions,
like smiles, and hugs!
"If all year were summer,
I'd never be sad!"
I tell you, remember

they'll soon be complaining,
"I wish it was raining!
It's far too hot."
Those dreams of winter
will come once again.
The cyclical thinkers

rejoice in the rain
as it flows down the drain.
Another year passes,
the flowers neglected,
the lawn mower shelved,
the cycle completed

by January talk
of long summer walks.
"I wish it was summer,"
the speech will begin.
Human nature as constant
as the weather has been.

Tagged: Weather, Winter, Poetry.

Labels: poetry

Interruption

An hour's slot on television
Recalling endless mutilation.
The day will come when we forget
The cruelty laid by man on man:
Sins done that only humans can.

Flesh-burnt pillars and chalked-up walls;
We tattooed numbers which now appall.
The day will come when we forget
These marks by which the bodies fell:
These glimpses of their living hell.

The name which Europe must remember,
A vision of our burning embers.
The day will come when we forget
That we could all be interrupted:
Murdered at another Auschwitz.

Tagged: Auschwitz, Memorial, Holocaust, Original, Poetry.

Labels: poetry

Oh, how I wish I was a bird!
My fluttering and flight, unheard,
Would carry me so far away
From all my guilt, indecency
And fear.

Oh, how I wish I was a bird!
I'd soar and swoop, without a word
To say or shout or think or sing;
No speech to reify my sin
Or fear.

Oh, how I wish I was a bird!
My body would not be interred,
No-one to grieve this wasted life;
My love, my work, my soul arrives
At fear.

Tagged: Poetry, Original, Wilshere, Birds, Fear.

Labels: poetry

Leicester Square

So there he stood as he masturbated,
Neo-naked* in Leicester Square,
The whole damn city evacuated;
"Be vigilant!" they said, "Beware!"

So there he stood as the People watched
This eight-year-old, strapped to a bomb;
Polizei stood round about him, for
They were right and he was wrong.

So there he stood like the man on telly,
The metal cut into his flesh,
Snipers focused on his eyeballs
To kill the boy from Kabul creche.

So there he fell, there he exploded
Outside Starbucks' in Leicester Square
The whole damn city celebrated,
Although there was nobody there.

So there his body parts were scattered,
Arms and nose and brains and cock;
The kiddy came as he detonated
An orgasm nobody could stop.

They washed away the blood, the brains,
In little bits the boy grew up;
Four million came at just the moment
That wanking Afghan boy blew up.

Notes

This poem probably deserves some explanation.

Apart from the obvious political stuff, I am aiming at capturing the sense you get, when watching twenty-four hour news, of disparate stories rolling into one; it is unlikely that an eight-year old would be a suicide-bomber (though it's possible; did we hear the news correctly?); it is unlikely that an eight-year old would be masturbating in public (though it's possible; did we hear the news correctly? Is it too late already? Are there more riots in Portsmouth?); the final verse is an allusion to the way twenty-four hour news (and particularly internet broadcasting) commodifies events like the one being described (is it a real event?) and that, quite probably, there are millions of people around the world getting off on a masturbating eight-year-old blowing himself up.

* This is a reference to Jon Snow's delightful invented word used during a Channel 4 News report:

Because I mean the world and his wife have been telephoning from blocks surrounding the drama reporting on what they can see from the Peabody Estate balconies. They've been recording the police commands on their mobile phones - "Come out in your underpants" and sure enough that's exactly what happened.

These men whose photos have blitzed their way across the world suddenly appear neo-naked in the balcony on the ramparts of an improving social housing estate beyond Shepherd's Bush.

Relevant links

• Complaints against press coverage of woman's suicide.
• Remember the News of the World and the Paulsgrove estate riots?
• BBC Comedy: Broken News

Technorati tags: Poetry, Original, State, Terrorism, Police.

Labels: poetry

Untitled

Under the vastness of stars and sky,
You and I must still be one.
But from here to you's an eternity.
A distance that I dwell on.

And here I lie in a different life,
With drawers half-open and clothes thrown down.
I dream of taking a train through time
Of feeling your warmth again.

Labels: poetry

Rehabilitation

There you are, asleep, I guess;
Tucked up like a pink Princess.
Here I am, awake, I know;
Sick, because I love you so.

Where I hugged you, where we kissed,
Where I held you by the wrist,
Are they to be fictions, then?
Erased, with an Eraser Pen?

Yes, I love you, yes, I cried
Tears which only flow inside.
Must our love a fiction be?
Kommt her, sweetheart, come to me...

Technorati tags: Poetry, Wilshere, Love.

Labels: poetry

Short Nonsense

Rasputin and Tsarina in a jar
With solemn spoons of ice
As bang bong bang bing pling plang cling
Go my pyjamas twice.

Technorati tags: Poetry, Wilshere.
Read the small print. ©2005.

Labels: poetry

Random horizon line
Broken by trees

And foreground of
Bent grass in breeze

House to the right
And post to the left

Montage dynamic raindrops
Rattling death

And air

More air

Technorati tags: Poetry, Art, Wilshere.
Read the small print. ©2005.

Labels: poetry

Death?

So ten years on, that living corpse,
Found sprawled upon the bathroom floor,
Is agony made real once more.
The body's dead, but wounds the living;
A mortal act, that needs forgiving.

We have the upper hand on death;
We have the words and breath to speak,
But deathless Love is mute, and meek;
It seeks to turn its death to rage
And voices Anger in a cage.

We look beyond, each one of us,
And dream of our own dying day;
We wish our waking life away,
So desperate, as we are, to see
That Nothing of Eternity.

Are you out there, Father, dead?
Your End's a tale we all narrate,
A fiction issuing rage, not hate.
This grief a universal one:
Son to Father; Father to Son.

[31.v.05] Read the small print. ©2005.

Labels: poetry

Lamentations

The city sits solitary,
And is full of people.
Our ultimate society,
This limitless community,
Is trampled in the street,
Like a beer can under feet.

How is she become a widow,
How is her empire dead?
It's illegal immigration
That has been her denigration,
And the rivers of White Stripe,
And the shadows in the night!

The city is a wilderness
And one day will be rubble.
Even Rome and Athens,
In their day, became but ruins.
Our city, too, will perish.
Our dreams will all be finished.

Labels: poetry

On Squeak

Fold away the Volvo
And pack up the house!
I'm telling a story
About Squeak the mouse.

Squeak is a mouse
Who lives in the floor
And used to eat cardboard,
But not any more.

Now he eats oranges
And chocolate on toast
'cause those are the things
That his tummy likes most!

But these little factlets
Mean nothing at all.
See, the problem with Squeak is,
He's getting too tall!

It started one Sunday
Last summer in Cork.
It was nine in the morning,
And he went for a walk.

By eleven he'd made
His way into town.
But, alas! Squeak discovered
His trousers fell down!

He pulled them up tight,
But they came to his knees.
"Oh no!" Squeak exclaimed,
"My legs are diseased!"

Some mighty strange looks
From the crowd he attracted,
So he went to the tailor,
Who thought that he'd cracked it.

See, the tailor (whose name
Was Mister Baked Beans)
Said he'd make Squeak a new pair
Of Extra Long Jeans.

So — skip a bit brother —
And back to today.
He's had nine pairs of trousers
Since he went away!

He's been to the doctor
And written a song,
But no-one quite knows
Why his legs are so long!

Although Squeak is now
Over six feet tall,
He's found a solution
That's suited to all.

Instead of his trousers,
He now wears a kilt,
So he walks down the main street
Without any guilt!

And when he grows taller,
He adds a bit on:
The length of his kilt
Is second to none!

At ten foot six inches,
Squeak is content,
Though he lives on two floors now,
And pays twice the rent!

But that is a story
For some other fellow.
Now go to sleep soon
Or your legs might turn yellow!

Read the small print.

Labels: poetry

Untitled

Sigh and wait
For twist of fate
To make things better.
Deus ex machina.

Does it come?
Have you won?
All is still for me.
As stagnant as can be.

Read the small print.

Labels: poetry

Untitled

A galaxy of eternity
Unfairly balanced.
Clementines spinning,
Flames burning out,
Time sapping away,
Coils unwinding,
Knots untying:

Tape over the cracks
And rescue the image.

Written 16.12.04. Read the small print.

Labels: poetry

Postcolonialism

I write a dream that must remain
just that. A kind of postcolonialism
that's nearer to anachronism.
Oh, must I fantasise still now
about your youthful eyes, and how
I'd be the first to part those gates
of lust, the first to penetrate
the virgin heart with which I lay?

The history, like you, I leave behind,
though I cannot forget your boyish arms,
the tanning of your skin, your tender palms
which still lie on my chest and cru-
cify my heart each dream anew.
I tell you now this untold love,
a crime I'm ten times guilty of.
This dream's bequeathed to you, unsigned.

Written 18.02.05. Read the small print.

Labels: poetry

Can I sweep away the cobwebs,
Can I blow the dust away?
Open up the ancient pages,
Cross out words from yesterday?

Boy must lose to man, in yearning
For the freedom waiting brings;
Still, man is eager, in his freedom,
To rediscover childish things.

Where is man to turn in clearing
Out the closet? Can it be
That all he seeks is confirmation,
That vision of eternity?

I can sweep away the cobwebs,
I can blow the dust away.
Every year I'll read the words with
Which the boy the man betrayed.

Written 16.01.05. Read the small print.

Labels: poetry

Untitled

Seven potted blackbirds
Ate a jar of jam:
Only they can know
How blueberry I am.

Read the small print.

Labels: poetry

Orgasm

A curious assembly
of body parts, pornography,
friction, fear and fantasy
seems through my mind,
then blood, to flow.

I masturbate, but soon I find
I'm dreaming not of intercourse
but symphonies, sonatas, laws
of harmony, Full Swell,
box shut, I crescendo

and reach a perfect close:
the nearest a musician knows
to taming the insatiety
from which his lust and semen flows.

Written 25.08.05. Read the small print.

Labels: poetry

Crucifixion

In time, we come to miss the things
We used to curse.
To make things worse
We turn towards a history
Whose contours, falsely carved, decree
The slavery of our memory.

Desire I must that past I lack,
And dream the child
Was undefiled;
I read this fiction day by day
And tell the tale that tries to slay
The rootlessness I still betray.

Oh, kyrie eleison!
You saw me cry
And saw me die
In this symbolic suicide,
The end from while all life's derived.
The reason you were crucified.

Written 01.06.05. Read the small print.

Labels: poetry

The Poverty

See that strange man who is walking towards us!
His glasses all wet from the wind and the rain,
His walk is a shuffle, his manner appals us,
Cross over the road, and cross over, again!

See that strange man who is muttering darkly!
His words are but nonsense, his clothes are a sight,
Where do you think he is going so slowly?
Come, children, quickly! It soon will be night.

See that strange man who is turning the corner!
He's crying now, children, he's crying instead,
He's crying out loudly, forlorner, for Lorna!
He's telling the world that his mother is dead!

See that strange man who is sat on our doorstep!
Wet and dishevelled and grief-stricken too,
Hurry inside now, step over the reject,
There's nothing that anyone here can do!

See that strange man who is dying beside us!
His body's decayed and his words have all gone,
Remember now, children, though he may deride us,
There's nothing, no nothing, that we could have done!

See that strange man, now they bury his body!
They bury it deep with no tears or regret,
Come children, see how they bury his body,
They stamp down the earth, so that we may forget!

See that strange man in the crops and the flowers!
See him return in the ear and the grain,
See, children, see how we're doomed to consume him,
Consuming his ashes, again, and again!

Written 11.02.05. Read the small print.

Related links

• [BBC] Aid groups keep pressure on Blair.
• [Oxfam] on Make Poverty History.
• Live8.
• Trade Justice Movement.
• [Christian Aid] Trade Justice Campaign.
• [Co-operative Bank] Trade Justice Campaign.
• [People and Planet] Trade Justice Campaign.
• Make Poverty History.

Labels: poetry

On Aesthetics

Poetry, like water, doth distil
through dirty rocks and rusty taps.
We search for it with mine, and drill.
But after all our efforts, still
it's offered up unto the gods;
a process of evaporation
guarantees its circulation.

Literature, in waves, assaults the shore.
Such plenteousness can nothing mean
till drought doth come. It rains no more
and, "Oh!", how we the gods implore,
"Deliver us from our misery!"
This dread of our predestination
the only fruit of desperation.

Little could we know, amidst the pain,
that drilling down and offering up
around us did go on, the same.
Each act that seeks to catch the rain
doth nought but hasten on the hour
when heaven will take her reparation,
and poetry its recreation.

Written 01.02.05. Read the small print.

Labels: poetry

Two Red Bulls

Two pounds for two Red Bulls!

I blame the Welcome Break

For the fact I'm wide awake

After drinking two Red Bulls.

I drove along the A road!

They gave me stimulation

For the length of my vocation

In going up the A road.

It's ten past one a. m.!

The caffeine worked too well,

And the taurine's living hell,

At ten past one a. m.

I'll never sleep again!

Just Red Bull flavour poetry

From now until eternity.

I'll never sleep again!

[11.8.04]

Labels: poetry

The Daily Relax...

The daily relax
When time slows,
And sounds grow silent;
Rooms fill with faint shadows;

All becomes still
And individual

Everything rests
While pressures seep away
Into the folds of covers,
Hidden till the next day.

Listen, just the distant drone
Of people on their way back home.

Cold comes;
All feels sharp
Yet refreshing. Cold tells us
To sleep embark.

Labels: poetry

Brown silhouette...

Brown silhouette traces my love for you.

The horizon is magic, the window clear.

Fire licks warmth. I feel it in the setting sun.

I have seen it every day of our last year.

I've remembered it in all I've said and done.

I lie awake in the cold of the night

And the warmth I feel is you.

I return to my chaos, my place.

Walls reverberate truth from my pen.

But it gets me nowhere, it will echo

For a moment. But dissipate and madden.

It hides here, This book its cage. These words do not know

Life or love or beauty. I build with them

But I build a place which caves in.

Tomorrow I will lose myself in the crowd.

Again, it will help. It must, for why else do it.

Lunch will stop me thinking. But I will start

Over. Back here I will come. I will pursue it.

I wonder what to say, where to go. My heart

Is full with a year of pain. I throbs eighty a minute.

Each pulse asks. Each pulse echoes a little more loud.

[1.1.2001]

Labels: poetry

We have so little time...

We have so little time,

It's going down the drain,

You must admit

We've crossed the line,

And lost the plot, a bit.

The second coming's nigh,

This war was seen by John,

And history is

just One Big Lie,

But Jesus is the biz.

Have you heard the radio?

These 'songs' are all just noise.

Back in my day

The concerto

Was wonderful and gay.

The end is near to me.

What, fifty, sixty, years?

My own end-time

Will always be

Apocalypse by wine.

We have so little time,

It's going down the drain,

You must admit

We've crossed the line,

And lost the plot, a bit.

Labels: poetry

The posting of the poems from Bangor the other day have made me want to put more up...

On Spike Milligan's Passing

While I was walking home

I found a seat sat all alone.

And on the seat there was a shoe

That didn't know quite what to do.

They told me they were leaders

In Spike Milligan's Quartet

And thus they ate banana skins

And took them to the vet.

And then the shoe fell over

And rolled off down the hill.

I took the shoe to Dover

On a window-sill.

Untitled

Seven potted blackbirds

Ate a jar of jam;

Only they can know

How blueberry I am.

Tags: poetry, wilshere, original, nonsense, milligan, spikemilligan

Labels: poetry

Here are some poems that I wrote on the train on the way to Bangor:

The Unfortunate Tale of Mr Kazoo and Mr Bear

'Oh no!' said Mr Kazoo,

'What on earth have I done to you?'

'Do you care?' said the Bear,

With tremendous hair,

'That you flushed my lunettes down the loo?'

'I certainly do!' said Mr Kazoo,

With a voice the size of K2,

'And I hope, Mr Bear,

Your tremendous hair

Will reproach me just what I am due!'

And so Mr Kazoo was flushed down the loo

And was never again heard to moo,

Though naughty old Bear,

He sat in his lair

Making squashed fish and horse glue.

An Unlucky Eliffant (Elephant)

A rolly-polly heffalump

Was going for a walk.

She couldn't keep her hat on

And she couldn't even talk.

She bounced on all the flowerbeds

And knocked down all the trees,

She squashed a dozen wardens

And frightened all the bees.

With every bounce she bounced and bounced

Each time a little higher.

Soon she broke through all the clouds

And set herself on fire.

She orbited the earth for days

And deadified the moon.

Then she disappeared from sight

And so I played Pontoon.

Tags: poetry, wilshere, original, nonsense, elephant, kazoo

Labels: poetry