The Going

The first part is written in syllabics, the syllable count is obvious. After writing the previous post, "On the Shelf," I reread Daniel Farson's enjoyable but salutary "Soho in the Fifties" - so much booze, so much human wreckage! Muriel Belcher's Colony Room plays a large part and Francis Bacon and the photographer John Deakin were practically fixtures. Both died lamentable deaths - Bacon with his millions, Deakin penniless. There is a sly nod to the fearsome Muriel in the third stanza of the first part.

   Long ago in the 1970s I was a frequent visitor to the low drinking pub the Fifth Hants Volunteer Arms (now a more up market affair, looking at the web) in Portsmouth. Folk would gather to watch "Kojak" on the television shelved above the bar. The poem is a portrait of one particular drinker who probably drank himself to death many years ago. I wrote it sometime in 1973-6 and posted it here on 6 December 2013.

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i.
Hid behind booze-stink, screaming
Chatter, smoke as dense
As a Thames night-mist;
Sunk in the outraged back stabs,
Tears that the betrayed
Had betrayed even
Whilst being betrayed; blanked by
Stuporous drunks, glazed
On the bar stools, lies
The goal which lights the going.

Bacon, soused and gay-boy thumped,
Extruding human
Faces, sought the facts
Of sorrow, flesh’s trapment
In world’s vehemence:
But contortion’s not
Meaning, not art; proportion’s
Truth and an awed gaze
At what is, must find
The goal which lights the going.

Such shrivelled ends: Deakin’s death
On a hired bed, art
Pimped for drinks and smokes –
The world belched and forgot him.
What’s prior remains:
The glass before drink,
The cigarette pack unfilled –
The glass fresh, card clean:
Somehow implete, is
The goal which lights the going.

ii.
The goal which lights the going
Throws a shadow on the ground,
And who would go straightforwardly
Instead goes round and round.

The finding’s in the losing,
Sing the harlots and the clowns,
You pays your whack for something back,
There’s ups and then there’s downs.

But how then to see clearly,
Seeking peace, if peace there be,
Humming – does it? – among the leaves,
Or drifting on the sea?

The sage who rises early,
Crooning mantras to the sun,
Convinced he pleases all the gods,
Might find he’s pleasing none.

Those whores and jobbing jokesters,
Cluttered in their two-time lives,
Know best to question then to hush,
Paying the All its tithes.

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© June 2023

On the Shelf

Having met Maria who could forget her? It still seems extraordinary to me that she left this mortal coil so soon and so long ago. Mind you, it also seems astonishing that the Gay Hussar restaurant and the Colony Room drinking den (often known as Muriel's - she owned it) are no more. What is there left of Soho? I worked with Maria at the Poetry Society's old headquarters in Earls Court Square in the 1980s. We stayed friends when she moved to "Time Out" magazine; she put much reviewing work my way: most welcome! She was a Welsh beauty from Cardiff (I think) and a lapsed (very) Catholic; this occasioned  the reference to Our Lady of Lourdes in the fifth stanza.

   I wrote separately the little lyric, "Fine is the bloom..." and thought it might work interleaved between the stanzas of "On the Shelf."  The two tankas are self-explanatory.

   A much earlier poem about a more commonplace parting of ways, written circa 1973-6, is "Parting Ways," posted on 23 July 2013 and linked here.

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In Remembrance Maria Lexton, d. 2004

   “I’m on the shelf,” she said:
How so? A “nature’s beauty,” bold and sleek,
With looks and shape to turn men’s gaze unforced:
Welsh-lilted, forty, with a canny head,
   Her world the London arts bazaar
Of high-strung narcissists, half-noused, half-freak –
Writers and ad-men, journos, paunched and sauced
By well-wined lunches at the Gay Hussar –
   Surely she was at her peak?

   Fine is the bloom and sweet the scent,
   But still the flower falls,

   Able to hold her drink,
Her cigarettes to hand, that fatal flaw,
But shunned by wives distrustful of their men,
(For one had delved, his name masked by a blink,
   Who now paid lushly for his child’s
Ménage); ill-lucked, drawn fatefully to raw
Abusive couplings, louche, her woman’s yen
To settle was upturned by door-slammed wilds,
   Love left trashed like trampled straw.

   For hidden in its flare and curl
   There’s a worm which crawls:

   And so I played my part.
A paddler in that 1980s pool
Of “Time Out” parties, Chelsea Arts Club ball
And Muriel’s (that hell!); tricked-up, chic-smart,
   I’d sire her through an evening’s routs
Then later in her flat we’d play by rule
Of drinks and talk before a taxi call
To take me to my digs: I had no doubts
   Wish and blood should keep their cool.

   Who would not ache to brush that bloom
   Against his longing cheek?

   For both knew that she lived
In torsions like to wreck the Prufrock-type:
Cheek kisses, hugs, were limits; twilight lands
Lay hid beyond where chancers, brags, were sieved
   And wounds and heart-grief shrank the soul.
At last, revulsed by London’s bonhomme hype,
I upsticked west to Cornwall’s winds and sands:
Years passed, then news came like an evil dole,
   Death had seized her with a finalled swipe.

   Though soon, so soon, its petalled flesh
   Is mottled with a streak:

   It seemed absurdity
Her warm if hazard beauty should be gone:
But twenty years have hightailed: we now left
Quail in the chill of death’s immensity:
   In evening thoughts I sometimes grasp
Some glimpse of purpose in the path we’re on;
Will it one day, like a Madonna in a cleft,
Reveal that smile, that lilt, her friendly clasp,
   Crowned with hay-scent hair which shone?

   Now mulched in earth that flower lies,
   The wind blowing round,

   And what was tough though fragrant-soft
   Sleeps without sound.

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Tanka for Maria

Known for her shoe hoard
She’d helplessly groan, “I need
New shoes.” “No mother,”
Came her daughter’s tart rebuke,
“You don’t need, you want new shoes!”

Double Tanka for Maria

Came a night she wore
A tight open-sided dress
Which glimpsed her breast curves,
Her flanks honey-coloured, firm.
Entering the Groucho’s bar,

Men’s eyes homed like bees
To nectar (and women’s too
More circumspectly).
I was by her side all night:
My, my, those envious looks!

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Everything © June 2023

Belated Lines to Ann Furedi Occasioned by Her Retirement as Chief Executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS)

This is my only ad hominem poem as far as I recall. I find Ann Furedi's justification of mass killing so obnoxious that, following the example of Shelley dashing off in haste "The Mask of Anarchy," I similarly rushed through this poem. It relies on immediacy for its effect.

   It was written after listening to Anne Furedi defend and extol abortion as a great achievement of women’s autonomy and career ambitions. She made no mention of the rights of the child or, indeed, of fathers. Particularly eye-widening were her admission that the unborn human has special status – but not special enough to save it from convenience killing, and her claim that there should be no laws whatever governing abortion (abortion up to birth being just one of those things). She is also on record as defending the killing of young girls in the womb in favour of boys, if the mother so desires. Such is today's murderous feminism.

   How ironic are our constant arguments about the mass immigration deemed necessary as a solution for the growing shortage of working age people in the British labour force. No mention is made that since abortion was legalized “for difficult cases only” in 1968 over ten million young British workers have been killed in the womb by the moral foulness of abortion – thus resulting in the current labour shortages and the rapid ageing of the population.
   “And what goes round goes round:” during the Covid pandemic abortion was returned to its “roots” when unsupervised home abortion by pills was made universally available. Inevitably, the casualty list of women needing emergency treatment for incomplete or botched abortions has soared. Back street abortion is once more a reality.
   We have ended up in the “civilized” post-Christian position of doing all we can to keep the elderly alive and all we can to kill as many young as possible. Is it a surprise that the judgement of God is upon the entire West?

   On a lighter note, I wrote another poem about a horror - "The Constant Companion" - in July 1980 and posted it on this blog on 1 March 2012. It is linked here.

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(Note: Ann Furedi retired as BPAS Chief Executive in December 2020 and is now Vice-Chair of the Governing Body of MidKent College of Higher and Further Education).

Since 1968
When killing in the womb
Became a “freedom” thing,
10 million in spate
Young British folk and true
Have fallen to their fate:
And that is why I sing
In praise of Ann Furedi.

In 2021
A quarter million plus
Of young in the womb’s spring
Were drugged or knifed to none;
The mothers, fraught, went home,
The slaughter slick and done:
And that is why I sing
In praise of Ann Furedi.

A “libertarian,”
Gradgrind in her logic,
The right to keep or sling
One’s child, for her is clarion;
Thus, that boys might live
Girls must become carrion:
And that is why I sing
In praise of Ann Furedi.

“The best job in the world”
She called her work at BPAS
Attracting the media’s bling –
Their approval blatant, birled,
For “record-breaking growth”
Was hers, like a black flag unfurled:
And that is why I sing
In praise of Ann Furedi.

Abortion policy,
She’s said, should be a blank,
A Wild West where money’s “ping”
Kills up to birth scot-free.
She’s helped at a late-term killing
Then slept all night like the sea:
And that is why I sing
In praise of Ann Furedi.

Well, Britain’s millions short,
We’re told, of working folk,
But that’s abortion’s sting –
There’s pint where should be quart:
At MidKent now, Mère Ann
Tempts the young to abort:
And that is why I sing
In praise of Ann Furedi.

And what goes round goes round:
Home aborts by pill –
What joy, the postman’s ring! –
Bring back to its old ground
Death with its cramps and blood –
Back street killing is crowned!
And that is why I sing
In praise of Ann Furedi.

And so, the self-demise
Of the West’s Christian fact
To which so few now cling
Results in Ba’al’s flies
Crawling the newborns’ faces
Exposed under pagan skies:
And that is why I sing
In praise of Ann Furedi.

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© May/June 2023

The Years Decay

The first line is obviously borrowed and adapted from Tennyson's marvellous poem, "Tithonus." The metre and rhyme are obvious, except that lines 4 and 5 in each stanza are trochaic with feminine endings.

   Another poem which sounds similar in tone to me, despite being written 43 years earlier, is "Winter's Ape," written in January 1980 and posted here on 11 December 2011.

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The years decay, the years decay and fall
And in an eyelid’s blink you find you’ve aged:
      The sea mist like a shawl,
   Clammy on your shoulders creeping,
   Stifles health to old man’s weeping,
      And rain that’s unassuaged
         Drops tears for all.

Sing songs of rue, sing songs of rue and cry:
The years were good, life’s pluses richly stored,
      And none might say that I,
   Love’s rewards betraying rashly,
   Peacock-strutting, glaired and brashly,
      Strange gods embraced, or whored
         From truth to lie.

But still this pain, but still this pain unstopped
Insists that love and mind’s appel have failed,
      And age, for which none opt –
   Epidermis dryly shrinking,
   Bowels aching as if kinking –
      Drains off like slops unpailed
         Which can’t be mopped.

Why cling to life, why cling to life and mourn?
Oh sun that’s warm upon the dew-dropped stone
      What agonies forlorn
   Scarify dark death’s wide marches,
   Skulled and boned in soil which parches?
      Unhoped, we sink alone,
      Mocked by death’s rictus-yawn.

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© May 2023

That Which I Would

Well, this poem is simple enough. In the ninth stanza "the Tarsan" is, of course, St Paul. There is a simple pattern of alternating feminine and masculine line endings throughout the poem.

   For something similar but different here's a link to "An Ending" which I wrote in trochaic tetrameters in December 1980 and posted on 7 November 2012.

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(Romans 7, 15-25, Douay-Rheims)

That which I would, I do not,
That which I would not, do;
And so I’ll dance to Hades
If it’s all the same to you.

St Paul knew all the struggle,
The sting which grouched his side,
But back-flayed at the pillar,
Or sunk in the sea’s wide tide,

He held to the unseen knowledge
Which unsat him on the road,
And like a stubborn palmer
Strove to the unmoved Node.

But I, and you! like clubbers
Sway to the swing of the groove;
Ecstatic, the sound deck’s pounding
Propels our every move:

Shouting, laughing, lusting,
We hog the floor on speed,
Faces and loins are sweat-soaked
Like metaphors for greed.

Ha! chastity you flat-foot,
I’ll game whoever I choose:
Lying, fawning – well-practised! –
Are tools for those on the cruise.

Be perfect, One said, like your Father,
He who sees all, and will judge,
Though pre-1960s fancies
Are but a social misfit’s grudge.

And here’s a jug of Jack Daniel’s,
Some “kick of a mule” pills,
There’s porn on my iphone in plenty,
All’s pluses, no nils!

Yes, I know about all the sorrow
Caverning the world’s face,
But hand-wringing like the Tarsan’s
Is not a social grace.

And as for the globes now spinning
Above our strobe-lit heads,
Relax, they’re safely hanging
By Damoclean threads!

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© April 2023

A Detestable Habit

The streets mentioned in this poem are the five main thoroughfares in Penzance - the granite Lyonesse of the west. Apart from the rhyme scheme the stanzas are patterned by alternating feminine and masculine line endings.

   For comparison here is a link to "The Lilies of the Valley," a ballad which I wrote in 1979 and posted on this blog on 1 March 2012. Incidentally, King Solomon's Mines remains a tremendous read - and to hell with political correctness.

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“...as I grow older I regret to say that a detestable habit of thinking seems to be getting a hold of me...” (Allan Quatermain in King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard).

As I walked on the prom in the morning
Nodding to him and to her,
And the shopkeeper pulled out his awning,
Market Jew Street beginning to stir,
A sudden great horror enwhelmed me,
Cold as a wave of the sea,
   For a detestable habit of thinking
   Bounces me on its knee.

As if struck I froze in an anguish –
Ah, Sartre, Huysmans, de Sade! –
And Chapel Street started to languish
At the sun’s curdled aubade,
For life’s but an ill-willed hormone,
It starts, it’s lived, it’s flown,
   And a detestable habit of thinking
   Pierces me to the bone.

Futility and sadness
Torment even the little child,
In Causewayhead there’s madness
As the dead limp single-filed,
And tonight the moon will perish,
Throttled in its own wish,
   Oh a detestable habit of thinking
   Dangles me like a fish.

Well, the wind upon the mountains,
Like Life, will ever ring,
And words like spray from fountains
Through Bread Street will hiss and sting,
But the one unique loved other
Will die though balmed with myrrh,
   And this detestable habit of thinking
   Thrashes me like a cur.

Is the All but an absurd cipher,
A French farce that laughs to weep?
Does Sisyphus, the eternal lifer,
In Alverton Street beg for sleep?
Oh, I long to be a bourgeois,
Small-minded, safe below par,
   For this detestable habit of thinking
   Must mend but only to mar.

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© April 2023

Another Prod at Auden

I decided I had more to say about W.H. Auden (see my previous post, "Just a Prod at Auden"). This much longer poem uses the stanza from Spenser's "Up Then, Melpomene." The rhyme scheme and line lengths are obvious; line 7 in each stanza is trochaic, and lines 8 and 10 always have feminine endings. The first phrase in the first stanza is adapted from Pound's "Canto II." The two direct quotes in the poem are both from Auden.  The reference to Christ Church in the first stanza recalls how undergraduates would exasperate their tutors when challenged on some view by responding, "Well, Wystan says..." "Rhoda" in stanza two is Rhoda Jaffe who did indeed have an affair with Auden. Unfortunately, and unrelated to Auden, she eventually committed suicide.

   Way back in 1976 I wrote "The Thing Which Sticks," a long unfinished poem about writers in the 1930s (in some people's view, not mine, Auden's heyday). I revised it in March 2013 and posted it here on 1 April 2013. And in October 1981 I wrote a sonnet, "The Artist," which is self-explanatory. I posted it here on 14 June 2012.

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Hang it all, Wystan Auden: great your gift but veined
   Like cheese with worm: from Christ Church – “Wystan says” –
   Camply declaring law, to late life ’blained
   And slippered, all men’s uncle in a faze
   Of fag smoke, mourning moral ills in your maze
      Of words, your work was feminate,
      Mother’s teat your lifelong bait:
         A flouncy archness
   Too often flabbed its florid fine-meshed bays,
         Like linen starchless.

“Unfinished weaning”? No, rather a wilful urge
   To “other” your third son status; thus to claim
   Dogmatic rights in world and love, to merge
   And part Mama and son, and itched by shame
   Embrace vocation that the Muse might tame
      The Lord’s command that babes be born,
      Jack and Jill one-fleshed in spawn.
         But did not woman,
   Pert Rhoda, tempt your manhood to enflame,
         Become your leman?

All failed: once more you grieved in Kallman’s pathic clutch.
   Think though! To scorn man’s duties to his girl
   Invites perversion: two men’s sexual touch,
   Then man and child, or animal; and whirl
   The tables, girl and girl; then last, the skirl
      Of transdom, screaming against fact,
      Wigged or trousered, science quacked!
         And contraception
   Forborne by church and state – that fatal pearl! –
         Loosed this vexation.

So sex for fun, not childing, thus became a “right,”
   Quick-followed by abortion’s blade: what doubt
   The child was double-victimed, killed like a mite
   Enwombed, or sexed-with, grown? But they who pout
   At Law face ends, their tribe grown old and stout –
      For childless – cursed to dim and die:
      Nature, ruthless, puts them by,
         And a tribe that’s virile
   Swamps in, seizing, smashing, what once had clout,
         Laid bare as puerile.

This post your death, but trahison has its harsh deserts.
   Your crust of Goethed wisdom failed to mute
   Your nanced “Miss God says no!” wealing no hurts
   But trifling, rather, the Kind’s self-dispute.
   Waysided now by epoch’s turn, your bruit
      Of late-termed Christian Staat must sink,
      Spurned as frankly too much ink,
         For the struggle’s started
   ’Twixt withered West and Crescent which will moot
         Who’s firmer-hearted.

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© March 2023