No 1.
We attempted to grow a poet
propagate it in vitro
without copulation
or a jerk-off in a turkey baster
-environment sterile.
(we do not want contamination
of the Brundlefly kind
or to inadvertantly
inflict mutant poets on the world
in the event of an escape of vapours
from the chemical processes)
and placed it in the fridge.
As a control experiment
we smeared the germs scraped
from underneath the fingernails
of a random tramp
into a plastic petri dish.
we hoped the poetic bacteria
would thrive in the agar jelly
left in the airing cupboard
for a week
next to the comatose hamster
shrouded in a sports sock
that we hoped was merely hibernating
and not just dead.
No 2 Breeding Goldfish
Poets are hard to sex.
Some experts tell
by the lumps on their heads
but the novice must observe
carefully
until their abdomens swell
and they fripple their fins prettily
or chase another poet around
and bump against the knobbly bulge
until the eggs spurt out
precipitating
the immediate
and reflexive spray of milt.
Poets usually spawn in warm waters in the morning sun
Poetmeister! You must
remove the eggs at once
before the poets cannibalise
their fertilised creations.
Bucket them
in old water
with a rock and weed
maybe some water fleas
and wait.
Meanwhile feed the poets daily.
Drop bags of daphnia
into the bowl
a sparing pinch of flake
to sustain
colour and vitality
and keep them swimming
in convex fish-eye lens
circles
and for a special treat
as many ant-eggs
as it takes
to keep their mouths
going
po-em po-em po-em
bubble poem poem
blip
No 3 Bird Nesting.
The dimmest poet is the best bird nester.
He does not have the wit
to attribute linnets and goldfinches
with the necessary devious cunning
to double bluff
and flummox young poets.
Rather than deliberately hide
them in a briar fortress,
the birds build their nests
(blase as you like)
in locations best convenient
to deliver worms and earwigs
into beaks stretched wide open,
regurgitate half digested cherries
(stolen almost before the blossom blows
and the fruit is set)
to silence the demands
of Munsch-like skin-and-gristle screams
The biggest fool
therefore
has the best collection
of blown eggs of delicate hues,
speckled pebbles that would blend
with beach or ploughed field
and perhaps go unnoticed
but
the bird does not expect a boy's hand
or the hairy paw of the foolish poet
to thrust through thorns,
or into nettlebeds
and grab the eggs
or indeed
the nest wholesale.
In the nine missed nests
of every ten, the fledglings
boil over the edge,
bubble up out,
parachute down on inadequate wings
into long wet grass
flightless, lost,
to die exposed to cold winds,
frost and rain;
or
unable to scamper
from the rats and cats,
rooks and weasels,
the enemies who kill them
for amusement,
leave the tiny carcasses
to rot in situ,
the delicate skeletons
to be gathered up
into the hands of the poets
who come along later
to display them on their nature tables
or under glass domes on the sideboard.
Young poets should not pick up
the stranded chicks
or steal eggs
from nests;
not even
to rear linnets,
songbirds in cages,
to sell to toffs and tramps
on street corners
not even
to give them back
to the fields and streams
the wild woods or feathered sky.
No 4 Kite Flying
Warning:
Never fly a kite in a lightning storm
or near power lines.
To fly a kite requires
a large vocabulary of rude words,
the ability to run wildly , madly
flailing to create your own wind;
remember, too strong a wind will shred your kite,
too light a breeze and it will not stay up.
The most important thing
of all
is the oodles of string;
this is what makes it fly.
It is all to do with Sir Isaac Newton
and the gravitas of apples,
mostly though his three laws of motion: (qv)
equal and opposing forces,
inertia,
pull and tug , lift,
Run, rend and crash
and the rest is down to Bernoulli.
Make your kite from garden canes,
brown paper and glue,
ribbons and streamers to taste,
a bicycle pedal and oodles
and oodles of twine.
Then, young poet, you are ready
to ride your one- pedalled
bike to the park or the sea strand,
any place where the sky is vast
and the clouds scud like the racy
girls on the school bus giggling
at boys gangling into manhood.
Next you need a friend
to launch your kite gently
while you control the twine
with the bicycle pedal;
too much line
you get drag
and sink slumpfully
too little
and you cannot fly very high
at all.
When you have got it all sussed
tie the kite to a post and have a picnic
swig iced ginger beer
or dandelion and burdock
lying with your back
against the baked earth
or feel the scratch of seagrass
and sand in skin creases.
No 5 -Acquire a Chemistry Set
Or A Turbulent, Luminous Sea
Bright Young Poets should study
the composition of substances:
animal, vegetable and mineral
et cetera.
(et cetera being 4th dimensional
yet unidentified mass
from outer space or inner ears)
Record the changes they undergo
when subjected to interference;
take special notes
with regard to properties
structure
and reactions
one with another.
The richest young poet
in the street
may show off the best
chemistry set on the market
with the most test
tubes glinting in his metal rack,
myriad
glass jars with potential
bubblings to stink
or explode
pop and hiss
alarm mothers when alcohol lamps
spit flames and sparks on the hearth rug
impress
small sisters with pretty weaving colours
of noxious gases.
You may however choose instead
to dissect a hairless yellow skinned
laboratory rat or pass an electric current
through the detached leg
of a frog to make it twitch
as a gentler and safer pursuit
than effervescent hubble bubble
periodic table
anarchistic
bomb bomb cookery.
You may marvel with the fashionable
scientific aficionados
and observe Mr Crooke's
serendipitous discovery-
a sophisticated toy
Spinthariscope! *
how alpha rays from radium
when viewed through a lens
produce discreet flashes
of fluorescence upon
a zinc sulfide screen-
Scintillations!
which when the little knurled
thumbwheel is turned
to bring the radium closer
to the screen
follow with such rapidity
that the surface
has the appearance of
a turbulent, luminous sea.
And Bright Young Poets
should voyage upon every
Turbulent, Luminous Sea
they possibly can.
No 6- Fun with a Wormery.
First catch your worms.
Lumbricus terrestris may be charmed
to the surface to be plucked
between thumb and inky forefinger;
you twang the soil with a pitchfork
to emulate the dance of rain
on grass; or
they can be found in flagrante
by the beam of your pencil torch;
locked in hermaphrodite embrace
they exchange sperm in the dark
on damp nights
enticed by vibrations of moon music
and nocturnal patterings.
The Bright Young Poet
should prepare an old goldfish tank
(goldfish presumed killed by kindness
of overfeeding or neglect of underfeeding
by neighbours minding pets
when family was on holiday
in Polperro last Summer.)
with layers alternate
of sand and soil,
top it snugly, deeply,
with dank leaves on the rot.
When all is ordered
drop in the contents of the can
of twanged worms charmed
or garnered
in coitus interruptus
and cover with a perforated
galvanised zinc sheet borrowed
temporarily
from the meat-safe in the pantry.
Observe your wormery
for a period of one week.
Observe
how Lumbricus drags vegetation
through complex infrastructures
of the multi-dimensional highways
they thread around their vermicities.
Observe
the proof and truth
and absolute bloody wonder
of the humble worm
this simple creature
who takes but five short years to form
one inch of rich and fertile loam
as opposed
to inanimate geological process
that takes one thousand years
without it to perform
the same task.
When seven days have elapsed
release Lumbricus back to the garden.
And remember, Poets,
Stand guard , flap your arms
to defy the beady-eyed birds
who spy free lunch
until your wondrous wiggly friends
have burrowed safely down below.
From their subterranean-decay towns
they will chuck up new casts
rich as Rowntrees Walnut Whips*
scattered all over the lawn.
*Footnote: Over 1 million walnuts are used every week in the manufacture of Walnut Whips at Halifax, West Yorkshire.
No 7 : Properties of Matter
Natures Giant Forces
(the Properties of Matter
Volume 1)
may be demonstrated,
O children of Empire,
by methods employed
to set a bear trap.
Should bear not be a threat
in your locality,
the same principles
may be used
for wolf and tiger
& co as necessary.
Examine thus: weight
as defined by gravity,
inertia, elasticity, friction,
porosity and capilliary action;
sally forth to the woods,
Common,
or Municipal Park,
armed
with spade, shovel and rope,
a bright smile
and a stout heart.
(Sickly , or very young
children may use ingenuity
and cotton reels,
paper straws plasticine and rubber bungs;
not forgetting your big ball
of string,
to create corresponding models
at home. )*
Consider substituting a mouse
for the bear, wolf , tiger,
hippopotamus,
beaver or small sister
for these experiments.)
Gravity.
In the great pine forests
of North America,
the grizzly roams at his ease.
Chop and strip
two fine trees of branches.
Arrange that one trunk is propped
over the other,
fix bait in a forked stick -
venison or chunk of putrid salmon;
position where the bear must place
his head between the blocks,
and wham! He jerks the cord
the log drops and breaks his neck or back.
The bear is killed , the trapper
has used principles, weight and cunning.
In Africa the natives trap
the mighty hippopotamus
with beam and spearhead
dipped in poison to make extra sure.
The hippo treads his laboured tread
thinking of mud wallows and basking swims
he carelessly stumps a clumsy foot
upon a trip to release the vine
that holds the beam. Weight used
against weight, you see, Poet.
In Siberia’s frozen wilds,
the cold and hungry peasants dig a pit,
embellish it with pointy spikes,
and cover with twigs and leaves
loosely to disguise the hole.
A piece of rotten goat attracts
The wolf to thud his way to storybook
fame.
Young poets may use this method
for cows and soldiers also
as prescribed in classic literature.
Inertia
Young hunter-poets
in Europe and Asia seeking Brown Bear,
must tie a rope around a massive rock
to make a pendulum.
Hoist this to a tree branch
above a branch with honey trap.
Bruin will climb to sate his honeylust
The rock will swing
Knock Bruin clear to the ground
Break bones.
Elasticity
Young Poets, the afternoon draws
in and shadows fall. For tigers in the hall
the elasticity of trees and fishing rods
is efficacious
as it is for many things respondent to a catapult
bow and arrow, arbalest or ballista
set for the beast to trigger
shoot itself with lethal bolt
When it grabs the kid (previously)
fixed to the string as bait.
Beavers , those with soft and valued fur
may be caught in springs
with nooses.
Poets, with your bright and lively
Minds
can you think of uses
for these ruses
in Tweseldown, or Church Crookham
on a Tuesday in November?
*footnote
Catgut is the name applied to cord of great toughness and tenacity prepared from the intestines of the sheep or goat, or occasionally from those of the hog, horse, mule, pig, and donkey. Those of the cat are not employed
No 8 Saturday Matinee
Bright young poets who are free
from lessons to distinguish
litotes from a clerihew
or learn from first hand experience
Kipling’s great imposters
winning and losing
(colours and teeth)
on the playing fields of minor public schools
and how to treat them both same
(but obviously the one more equally than the other)
of a term-time Saturday morning
may look forward to their
shiny half-a-crown allowance
to be spent on tuck
the weekly comic fix
of Eagle * (Dandy or Victor)
sweet soft pink bubbly Chix
and trading cards
of Buster Crabbe or Tom Mix
and best of all
the sixpenny Saturday Matinee
Flicks.
(Aforementioned Bright Young Poets
stuck at school may do this in the holidays.)
Sing loud with your friends in harmony
accompanied by scrape of village hall chair
on stoic oak planked floor
and Mrs Beetlestone upon the piano-forte!
Anticipate the serial as projector whirs
Crackles buzzes clicks; young poets hold
their breath
Timmy Glover's hands make silhouettes
rude rabbits fornicate
across the magic silver screen
the numbers flash down cracked by massive
flecks of dust and fluff; hearts beat faster:
will our hero left last week
clinging to a cliff top by his fingernails
above a sheer 1000 foot drop to raging
river torrents in the gorge
escape the jaws of death
by a gnats cock hair
once more?
Or will he be dashed to a million fragments
Of bone and flesh on the cruel rocks
And the foam spray red with his blood?
Will Flash Gordon save the planet
(we are sure he must ) from cosmic rape
perpetrated by neutron beams
directed at the Earth
by the Merciless Ming of Mongo
from a base on Mars
helped a little but not much by Dr Zarkov
and Dale Arden even though she is just a girl?
Will the tall Texans in the white hats
silver dollar stars on their breasts
shoot six shot revolvers from the hip
and stop
the rough unshaven train robbers
in their nefarious tracks
and restore the payroll to the soldiers ?
Brave and noble cowboys
will ride the range and nurse
the little orphaned dogies
protect the wagon trains
with mothers in sunbonnets crying
over babies who get sick and die
and are buried under pathetic mounds of prairie
marked only with rough crosses
and brave girls in frilly petticoats
who wave old shotguns
at the naked savage (breechclouted, naturally)
and his arrows
of flame poison and his stolen rifles.
They will save the innocent , the old and the weak
from all bad men
rustlers and rattlesnakes alike
and ride off into the sunset
waving their hats
nonchalantly
to the working trailhands left behind
who drink coffee, eat stew
cooked over the campfire
and sing softly under open starry skies
snuggle up to sleep
soothed by coyote lullabies.
Young poets pray
that the projector will not break down
the film snap and flip flap round and round
pray now!
Saturday afternoon and all the week
to wait
for next installments
bright young poets may act out the scenes
that bound them in thrall
gallop up the street, through the woods
and fields, to the canyon
slapping go-faster thighs
lassooing your sisters
Peeow Peeow
bang bang
zoom and zap
Ambush the postman, the baker the butcher
From behind the gatepost
As they cycle past and wobble on the cobbles
Yeeeehaaah!
Speculate , devise escape scenarios
hope that you do not miss the next episode
through badness or illness or broken projectors
but always know the good guys always win
in the end
and they always wear
white hats.
*Footnote : - Most children in the 1950s and 1960s were familiar with the Eagle comic, and Dan Dare's continuing struggle with the Mekon which was re-enacted daily in school playgrounds.
No. 9 About A Puppet
1965 was the year we were taught to make puppets and to sew tray cloths with embroidered hems in slightly wonky cross stitch. Slightly wonky stretched to become an even herringbone quite by accident. It was pleasing to the eye; one of the first remembered pleasures of art. The material was a stiff sort of aertex with holes to guide the needle through without too much pushing and shoving. Thimbles were for sharing, the school did not run to a thimble for each pupil. Boys shunned thimbles. They may be thought of as cissy. Needles were good for digging out splinters picked up when dashing for the orly -orly -in post at playtime, sliding the open palm around the old grey wood, small fingers grasping to check the speed of the chase. The linen tray cloth with the aertex holes was Wedgwood blue. Mother was pleased about that. At least it was reasonably tasteful to bring out for afternoon tea, and I think she liked the serendipitous Deco angles of the threadwork.
The first glove puppet was for a dramatic reconstruction of the story of Joseph and his Dreams. I was to be Reuben. Reuben was a pretty down to earth sort of chap, not given to those fanciful flights his younger brother was forever getting everyone into trouble about. Reuben just kept his head down and his hands working. His head a ball of plasticine. It was to be a bold head, and the careless mixed colours ran through to give him broken veins or a vivid marbled flesh such as the guy who got beaten up on the other side of the street might have had if his battered corpse was left in the hot Palestinian sun for an afternoon before being carried off by the people who cleared the streets of rubbish at night. It was a disappointment that the plasticine was not to be the actual head, as the pronounced and strong brows, the hooked Arab nose and strigilled hair went well; the striations of blue and green and yellow and red were particularly effective I thought. Some was lost in the papier mache , especially as the other kids seemed to get the best bits of newspaper and the paste while it was still fluid and not the glutinous globs left in the bottom of the jar that congealed into impossible lumps on my brush.
Reuben's head was propped on the fireguard to dry. The teacher used a sharp knife to cut round his chin and through his ears. I scowled about the ears. she could have done it under the hair line and chin rather than cut his ears in half. She cared about Louis's puppet head. He got Pharaoh of course and it was all delicate and pretty; noble in a bland sort of way. Mr Pezzi came in and looked at Reuben and laughed and said he was certainly a character with the huge beaky nose and the forehead jutting proudly and the open mouth, tongue poking out to the side showing thoughtfulness and industry, rather than ferocity, (as I tried to explain). I imagined he could double up as the brother who wasn't the prodigal son. Surely we would do that puppet-theatre drama some time.
In the Illustrated Book of Children's Bible Stories all the Egyptians were a bit darker skinned. That was just as well, as although the red, and blue powder paints were alright, but the yellow was a bit contaminated and the resultant brown a tad darker than I intended. Mr Pezzi said he looked like a Moor whatever that was. White was a luxury. You had to be 10 years old at least to get proper fresh white powder paint from the big jar in the art cupboard. Nevertheless, Reuben did get some white for around his startled irises because I slipped the plimsoll blanco from home into my bag. Reuben's coat was a stained burlap, suitable for the ordinary working chap, not the attention seeker of a brother with his multi- coloured rainbow affair. It was oversewn and turned inside out so the seam caught against my thumbnail as I made him gesticulate , telling Joseph to stop dreaming and do some proper work.. I did give him a bit of style though, with a flourishing R on each hand, like a defiant tattoo, and his hair was cut from my own head and stuck on with love and my brother's airfix model glue that had the smell that made you feel just little bit euphoric.
Reuben and I didn't win the best puppet prize though. Joseph got that of course. He was the star of the show. All Reuben did was try to be sensible.
No.10 More Poupée Tales.
Miss Bunce bade us bring a wire coathanger and some carpet underlay to school. We did not have wire coathangers at home, just wooden ones. They were better because wire hangers came back with stuff taken to the High Street dry cleaning chains and Mummy sent our cleaning to a different laundry where it was returned in brown paper parcels on wooden hangers.
We did not have stray bundles of carpet felt either, so I peeled back the corner of the dining room carpet and , well, Miss Bunce never said how much carpet felt so I cut a piece as big as the amount of carpet I could tug from the tacks between the standard lamp, the wall and the french windows. I used curved nail scissors and a carving knife from the kitchen drawer. It was hard to cut though the green backed rubber foam and the new royal blue carpet. The carpet looked a bit odd when I put it back, so I arranged the pink velvet curtains to hide the gap.
Dad asked what I had in my satchel, it stank like an army issue prophylactic. I asked what that was and he laughed so I said it was my plimsolls and he said that was close enough.
On the floor, behind Miss Bunce's chair, a white paper bag waited. She instructed class 5 to lay our coathangers and carpet-felt on our tables and she picked up the bag, dangling it almost slyly. My wooden coathanger and green backed rubber intransigent underlay attracted sniggers as it stood out against the brown flecked packed fibres and malleable metal offerings of the other children. I blushed. Felt sick with dread. What were they for? Did everyone know but me? Wracked my mind for any hint that had been given. Why was my coathanger made of wood? Why was my carpet felt green and foamy rubber and smelled of plimsolls and army prophylactics? It just wasn't fair. I raised my hand and asked to go to the toilet.
When I came back, Miss Bunce had revealed the contents of the paper bag. She beckoned me to her desk and thrust two celluloid moulded faces into my damp hands. Their unblinking eyes with painted lashes leered up at me, female and feline, eyes slightly a-squint.
Arts and Crafts had never been so mystifying.
'You fight to make a crinoline lady doll from these things aren't you Master Debauchy?' Mr Pezzi smelled of sherrywine and chalk and linseed oil, his teeth yellow as glockenspiel blocks carved from the Black Forest.
The other children were busy bending their wire hangers into body shapes, rolling the carpet felt flesh onto coathanger bones, securing with Miss Bunce's special rubber solution glue. Erica's doll was already plumply pleasing with the face stuck on with caramel coloured gum that smelled of stale fish and went tacky with fine strings like when you stretch a toffee penny from between your teeth to look at it. The bald hair line made it look like the Virgin Queen and she made a ruff from paper folded into a fan and Miss Bunce gave her some gold damask curtain from the dressing up box to make a dress and a lace doilly for its stomacher.
I rolled body arms and legs from the horrid horrid foam that would not stick so I tied it with thick hairy string and unscrewed the coathanger hook for neck and head. I cursed my parents. Why did they have to be older than everyone else's and talk about the war and everything and not have wire coathangers and still use shoe trees? We always had different brands from anyone else; Fairy instead of Squeezy, Persil instead of Daz, Kleenex instead of Scotties. That was bad enough, but now everyone knew we had green cloth backed rubber foam instead of brown fibre flecked carpet felt. I just wanted to die, which I thought was going to be a wish come true when my father discovered the missing square of dining room carpet.
The squinty-eyed thing mocked me. I made it into a boy doll with dogtooth check pantaloons and a red felt waistcoat decorated with ricrac, stuck purple boucle wool on its head in clumpy lip-biting fistfuls, fixed a striped egg cosy to the top. I put frown lines between its Siamese cat eyes and made its mouth droop with brown wax crayon pressed so hard it broke.
Miss Bunce gave me a gold star and put it on the craft table on parent's evening. I saw her massive bosom shudder with laughter at something my father said to her.
No.11 The Nativity Play
Come All Ye Faifful!
Young poets
play nativity animals
with grace!
Do not envy Mary, Joseph
(wheedle
'but my wife is 'eavy wiv child ain't cha wotsname.')
and the Angel Gabriel
('Oi! I got tidals of great joy for you
an' all mankine')
their lines,
The Innkeeper and his monosyllabic
fame delivered in a staccato self-important
bark ('go-way-dere-ain't-no-room-at-da-inn-innit'),
or the fair haired Angles/Angels
who must balance tinsel -wound
bent coathanger halos and be sweet.
Young poets!
though you may scuffle
through Farmer Gilpin's broken straw bales
strewn around the village hall stage;
sneeze and choke in the golden musky dust,
scratch when bitten by a stray flea,
you will glow with satisfaction
that donkeys, sheep, goats
mice, cattle and the odd gerboa
rabbit, bear, pantomime horse
and hybrid beasts
(God's creatures none the less)
born of imagination
and necessity of dressing-up box remnants
after the Stars have had their pick,
are as important as the shepherds
wearing teatowel shemaghs
Dad's striped pyjamas
(dressing gown cords abounding),
and great as Kings with foil crowns
and gaudy robes
trailing
gold franking sense and merde.
