Performance poet and Professor of Whimsy
I had a wonderful time performing in Woking last night. As ever I recorded my set. I have so many of these recordings that I don’t know what to do with them. But here, at least, is last night’s.
The poems I did were:
Are you Cool?
Mariner Man (Edith Sitwell cover)
Seaside Soul
The Nature Reserve
Butter Cake
Smurftown
I Wish I Was a Panda Bear
Surfer Dude
Sofa Phobia
Shakka Lakka Boom
Oh my goodness you really are a repulsive little man.
If we should ever pass in the street I certainly
Wouldn’t doff my cap.
It makes my stomach churn even to think we are
The same species.
Your utterances are toxic and deliberately
Pugnacious and delivered with all of the wit and grace
Of a turd.
I don’t like you very much.
Oh, you saggy-bottomed baggy-jowelled loud-mouthed
Orange-faced dolt
With an expression like a spinster aunt
Straining out a poo in a station toilet
Three minutes before her train is due.
You weak-willed flabby-cheeked oddly-coiffured
Stumpy-legged dunderhead
With a mouth like a cat’s arse,
I bet you’ve got a really small knob.
You red-capped Diet Cola-quaffing potty-mouthed
Egotistical scare-mongering morally-bankrupt pile of
Upchuck.
I don’t like you very much.
You no longer need compassion to be President, apparently.
Nor any sort of wisdom nor decorum,
Just a feel for the simple prejudices that sound good
In their repeating
And an inherent inferiority complex which migh stem
From your minuscule Willy
And a hint of righteous indignation,
The last simpering gasp of mature debate
In which the ultimate insult is to accuse your enemies
Of kindness
And list among their number
Those less fortunate, less privileged, less straight,
More trans and definitely less white than yourself,
What kind of thinking does this legitimise?
What message does this send out to women
Who have been the victims of sex predators,
Or men who think it’s fine to act on such urges,
What message does this send out to the casual racist
You cry baby
You big cry baby
You white supremacist cry baby.
I don’t like you very much.
You name is an old English word for fart, how apt,
For thou art
A rancid wind passed on to the pages of history,
A stench, a gaseous build up let rip
Leaving in its wake an odour of smug pomposity
Oh, you snivelling snot bag,
You drivel-emitting weasel-brained rapscallion,
You bulbous-cheeked odious
Clay-brained tit, you crusty scab
On the face of common decency,
You pungent base fascism-obsessed unnecessary
Foul-brained ass of a man.
How I long for you to be photographed
Making love to an life sized cardboard cut out version
Of yourself while
Elon Musk wanks in the corner
How I long for that
How I long for that day.
You were on TV the other nigh
Speaking your usual complete and utter bollocks
And I had a sudden urge to lick
Oh please let me lick
Let me lick the side of your
Craggy orange face.
Poem
My tyre is flat
My roof is flat
My cola is flat
I live in a flat.
My pancake is flat
My iron is flat
My enthusiasm is flat
My coffee is a flat
white.
My battery is flat
The joke I told fell flat
Norfolk is flat
I played a piano in B
flat.
My carpet is flat
On the floor of my flat
My cap is flat
It’s a flat
Cap.
I showed this poem
To a friend.
They thought it was too
one-dimensional.
It was a beautiful day so I decided to go for a stroll on the beach and recite this poem by one of my poetry heroes, Dame Edith Sitwell. I hope you like it, and if you don’t, it’s not very long.
As someone at the cutting edge of poetic expression, I thought I’d share this sound poem which, I believe, will tear apart poetry and poetry performance in such a manner that life will never be the same again.
My poetry has often brought people to tears. It’s nice to know that it has such an emotional response.
Hello, once again this New Year’s Day I took to the airwaves with a 45 minute poetry show. This was a mix of new poems, old poems, borrowed poems, but thankfully, not many blue poems. And this year, I set up another camera next to my IPad so that I could record the whole thing!
So in the back room of the shop where I work, I launched into a very eclectic set of poems which included four ‘cover versions’. The list is as follows:
Humming
Bunger Up of Rat ‘Oles (Jack Warner cover)
Surfer Dude
Smurftown
Are you Cool?
Coffee Shop
Mariner Man (Edith Sitwell cover)
The Aviator
In Love and Aviation (Rose Cook cover)
Show me the World
Gom
Gruts for Tea (Ivor Cutler cover)
Ted Talk
Tomas
Straight Pub
Straight (New version)
Fozzie
Traction Engine
Robert Garnham