poetry – Page 40 – Robert Garnham

Tinsel

Ho ho ho!

Every year for the last ten years or so I’ve written a Christmas poem or two. So this year I’ve gathered them all together as a present for some close friends, and then I thought, well, why not make it available generally?

So Puddlehopper Books and myself are pleased to announce to the world a pamphlet just for Christmas, Tinsel! It contains some of my various poems written especially for Christmas and it’s available through the Lulu website.

Tinsel is the ideal stocking filler, a book for evenings of warmth and that post Christmas glow. Details on how to order Tinsel can be found below, as well as one of the poems from the book.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/robert-garnham/tinsel/paperback/product-24334960.html

This Year’s Advent Calendar

Well this year’s advent calendar was a strange one. Here’s every day in it’s unusual glory.

Today’s advent calendar picture was of a duck wearing a Groucho Marx moustache, nose and glasses.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a clown waving his big shoe at a smoke detector
Today’s advent calendar picture is of the Easter Bunny trying to keep two sides of a build-it-yourself shed upright while Marilyn Monroe reads the instructions.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of the seven dwarves waiting, angrily, at a mobile chip van, while the lady serving, who for some reason is a panda, is looking at holiday photos being shown to her by Snarf from Thundercats
Today’s advent calendar picture is of Gandalf at the self service Tesco machine
Today’s advent calendar picture is of an advent calendar
Today’s advent calendar picture is of Vladimir Putin eating a Pot Noodle
Today’s advent calendar picture is of sixteen Laurels (from Laurel and Hardy) and Sid James queuing at a self service cafeteria.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a frog trying to push a sofa up a flight of stairs, backwards, sweating profusely.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of an igloo, a bin with contents strewn around, and a polar bear flaked out by tranquilliser dart.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a Peruvian brown bear wearing a scarf scraping frost off the windscreen of a parked car with its engine running.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a sneezing unicorn.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a badger and a rabbit having a row about who gets the last chicken mayonnaise sandwich in the chiller cabinet while TV’s Victoria Coren Mitchell sneaks in and grabs it for herself.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a stack of suspended ceiling tiles, £11 each plus postage and packing
Today’s advent calendar picture is of the nativity scene. (Bit early but there you go).
Today’s advent calendar picture is of fifteen donkeys wearing sombreros and a man at a stall trying to sell them more sombreros but the donkeys are having none of it.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a badger getting a refund on a pair of trousers.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of Lord Byron on roller skates in a crumpled heap next to a slightly dented Ford Focus.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a panda in a library reading a Will Self novel, double checking some of the weightier vocabulary in a dictionary.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of Mr T from The A Team at the boating lake in the park, rowing a rowing boat past some rhododendrons.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a squid waiting in the queue for the Primark changing room with a Tigger the Tiger onesie.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of Darth Vader in a lightsabre battle with Alan Bennett.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of Michael Portillo looking very grumpy on a rail replacement bus. Oh, and why not, Skeletor from HeMan is sitting three rows behind him, eating a Pot Noodle.
Today’s advent calendar picture is of a confused ostrich.

A Christmas miracle

It was a Christmas miracle
Just like the ones you hear about.
Mum had lost her glasses,
Couldn’t find them anywhere.

All year long without them,
Assumed for some reason I’d nicked them.
Why would I nick your glasses?, I asked.
For a crazy prop, maybe.
For one of your shows?

(I mean, seriously,
Don’t you think I’d have at least
Asked her?)

All year long without them.
Squinting at cooking instructions.
Just get a new pair, I said.
No, she replied,
They’re here somewhere.
Are you sure you didn’t nick them
For one of your crazy shows?

All year long without them.
Bifocals too, she said.
I remember having them
At Christmas.
It’s a problem which really
Does vex.
Seriously, what have you
Done with my specs?

All year long without them.
They’d hang on a chain round her neck
So that she couldn’t lose them.
And then she lost them.
And anyway,
At what point during my act
Would I need a pair of glasses on a chain?

It’s not like I’m a drag act.

All year long without them.
And do you know where they were?
In the Christmas decorations box,
Sitting atop tinsel having been
Packed erroneously
Eleven months before.

Another Christmas miracle,
Another Christmas delight.

Seriously, though, I protest,
I wouldn’t have just taken them.
Jeez.

Adventures in Swindon

I just thought I’d write a quick blog about the gig I had in Swindon this last week. I’ve always got on well in Swindon, ever since a slam I entered there many moons ago and managed to come second, performing a poem about the town that I’d written during the interval. I’d headlined or featured in Swindon three times over the last few years, at Oooh Beehive twice and at Rusty Goat’s Poetry Corner. I’ve managed to build up a small fan base, you might say. So Swindon has always felt like friendly territory for me and I’ve always loved going there.

It must be said that what Nick Lovell and Clive Oseman have created in a small backstreet pub in Swindon is really quite amazing. Oooh Beehive, (the name a not so subtle pun on the name of the pub), is that rare thing : a well attended and enthusiastic poetry night in front of a non poetry audience. Over the last few years, Nick and Clive have got some of the biggest names on the spoken word circuit to come along and perform at the pub and the nights seem to be going from strength to strength.

I suppose I am a little biased. As I say, I seem to have a loyal fan base in Swindon, and my poetry always goes down best with non poetry audiences. But the fad that the drinkers at the pub are so enthusiastic is all down to the efforts of Clive and Nick.

It took me five hours to get to Swindon from Paignton, due to the wonderful insertion of a rail replacement coach service from Tiverton to Bristol. You have to wear seat belts in coaches now and the seat belts on this particular coach strapped me to the sit with very little room to manoeuvre. I couldn’t even bend down to get my iPad or a book out of my bag, so I was consequently strapped there for the whole two hour ride up the M5.

Shortly after leaving Tiverton, I noticed the good looking young man across the aisle from me. I’d seen him getting on the coach and I marvelled at his incredibly symmetrical face. Indeed, he looked almost like a robot, a created idea of what a human should be. His skin was smooth and his hair clipped and blended at the sides and back. His eyes were a luscious blue and he had the most amazing eyebrows of any man I had ever seen. And there I was, strapped in to my seat, unable to move and unable to concentrate for the next two hours.

As is often the case in such situations, I thought I’d try and figure how he lived his life. He could have been a male model, and would not have looked out of place on the pages of a magazine, or perhaps he was an actor, with his Hollywood classical looks. But then I happened to notice his hands. I’d never seen such bruised, battered, misshapen hands, with the dirtiest fingernails. How can his face be so beautiful, and his hands be so disgusting? A part of me felt appalled. This bizarre mix of the sweet and the sour, like carrot cake served with sour cream. And then I noticed his mobile phone. He was swiping through Google search images of tractors and farm equipment. Ah, I thought, he’s a farmer. That would explain the hands. And then I started thinking about his life, a country lad, chugging along on his tractor.

I stayed in a very cheap hotel just round the corner from the Beehive pub. It was run by three young Indian men. One of them let me in, and led me to the reception where the next greeted me warmly, and we exchanged a joke or two, but then he turned to the young man who’d let me in.

‘You haven’t finished preparing the rooms yet! Look, it’s four o clock and our guests are arriving! Go! Go and finish the rooms, you are lazy!’

The receptionist then turned to me and smiled as if in apology, as his assistant scampered away. And I found myself smiling in agreement with him, as if sensing his frustration. People, eh?, I felt like saying.

That night, as I prepared for the gig, I heard a fierce row break out downstairs, accompanied by the slamming of doors and one of the men yelling, ‘we’ll see! We’ll see!’ A part of me felt glad that I would only be staying there for a short while, though I was keen to know more about my hosts, as I felt it might even be the basis for a sitcom. What with that, and the sign on the wall telling guests that if they brought anyone back to their room, then the police would be called.

Things got even weirder the next morning when I left early to book out, to be greeted by the assistant who was standing at the door to the breakfast room in the most amazing hotel uniform, resplendent and stately, as if this cheap bed and breakfast were now a high class London hotel. He even bowed as I came down the stairs.

As I say, the Oooh Beehive gig went very well. About a third of the way into my set I became conscious that I had the attention of everyone in the pub, even those in the next room, and they were attentive and appreciative in a way that other audiences tend not to be, or at least, tend not to be with me. And once the evening was over, myself and Tom Sastry, who had been the other feature act, were treated like poetic kings, titans of the spoken word scene, by the audience, who were genuine in their excitement and gracious with their praise.

The next morning I went to Primark and then to the station to catch the train and coach back to Paignton, and I told myself not to be too complacent, that gigs will not always be as good as this one. The scene that Nick and Clive have fostered in Swindon is unique and loving, accepting and open minded, and both of them are people for whom I have a lot of time. I would recommend anyone with an interest in spoken word to get along to Oooh Beehive at some point.

Horse

https://youtu.be/NQdDlilcQ0Y

Poem

I always wanted to meet a horse
And last night I did!
My word
You’ve got big nostrils.

The horse said.

It’s not every day you see
An equestrian pedestrian.
He had the grooves.
He had the moves.
He couldn’t work the cash machine
With his clumpy hooves.
The Neon shone in his flanks.
I felt something move in my
Soul.

Psssssst!
I’ve always thought there was
Something equine about me, myself.
My favourite TV show is
Neighhhhhh,
Which is Horse for Coronation Street.
I said to my ex, Floyd,
Whack a saddle on me
And ride me round the bedroom,
Now whinny for me, Big fella!
Whinny for me!
Whinny like there’s no tomorrow!
Since then I’ve been
Desperately lonely.

Give me a call some time, I said
To the horse.
I can’t, he replied.
The mobile phone is too short
For my big head,
Plus,
I’m in a stable relationship.

We went to a bar.
The barman said,
Why the long face?
Ohhhh,
Just the usual ennui, I replied.

Why have you got that horse anyway?
Are you going to race him?
No, I replied, he’s much faster than me.

Clipperty Clipperty clop
With my horse I did trot
I could have such fun with one
I would buy a bun for one
My friend Ben is hung like one
That’s why we call him
Dobbin.

Ohhhh, horsey!
I want to take off my shirt,
And grab hold of his tail,
And twirl it around my nipples
And feel its thick horse strands
Sending me into raptures of heavenly oblivion.
It’s how I got banned
From ascot.
Naughty horse!
Naughty horse!

Briefs or boxers?, I ask,
Boxers or briefs? I say.
Briefs or boxers, boxers or briefs?
What are you wearing today?
He replied,
Usually, just jockeys.

We’re meant to be together,
But oh, the smell!
The rancid putrid smell,
I’m sure the horse will get used to it.
The two of us, having happy fun,
So carefree so rampant , the night comes undone,
Happy beyond belief,
The bit between my teeth
Life in all its horsey beauty falling in on us
A stirrup for the senses,
Love sublime every day
From the moment we wake up
To the moment we hit the hay
But instead
The horse did say,
Nay.

Oh look,
There he goes now!

Year of the Cassowary

So recently I found the manuscript of my first ever home made collectin, Year of the Cassowary. These poems were written during the first couple of years of my spoken word career. I thought I’d post them here for your delectation.

The book was home made, printed and stapled by myself, and it offers a fascinating snap shot of my preoccupations at the time!

Robert Garnham

Year of the Cassowary

Contents:

Poem (Lines Written Inspired by Somerset)
Plop
Barn Conversion on an Accident Black Spot
On the Subject of Mister Shaw’s Private Life
Poem Which Starts with the Words ‘ Pull Up a Chair, Philip Larkin’
Matt’s Duvet
On Air Trapped in a Parisian Radiator
Doc
Nowhere Near Magnetic North
The Jacket of Agnes
Llama-Trekking with Kim Jong-Un
I Am The Wardrobe Man
Poem
Mister Purposefully-No-one-wish-I-Was-Someone-Man
Poem
Frank (1-1=0)
Karaoke in the Departure Lounge
Love Poems Love Poem
Lament of a Noted Brazilian Anglophile

Poem

Alack! Do some settle
In Somerset.
Sunset’s set, sat un-set
And stomach upset.
Somerset.
Somersaulting vaulting sum of
Greater parts. Haunting dauntless Taunton,
Summer parks.
I’d settle soon in Somerset,
Besotted thus with summer sex,
Haystack fumbles, aching, wet,
Hanging round at nights with the badger set.
Think of all the joy I’d get
In Somerset.

Although, I do suspect
A seldom sudden thought remains unsaid.
I don’t like barns. Or farms.
Or country vets.
And that is why I’ll settle not in Somerset.

(written on a train just outside of Taunton, 2010)

Plop

I have probed the depths of literature.
But my friend Mark only remembers
The one poem I wrote.
The one called ‘Plop’.
And it goes something like this:
Plop.
Pah-lop.
Plop.
At nights I reach right in and thrust my hand
Deep into the fiery furnace of metaphor,
And I grab the human condition
And I throttle it.
And I squeeze the truth out of it.
And I tear the words from the sky.
And I wrestle with sentences like a demon.
I am the king of ink, monarch of the pen.
My nib moving faster and faster as my fingers
Grip the shaft of the biro,
Spilling on to the page beauteous visions,
Truth, honesty, existential angst
And what it means to be alive.
And yet Mark’s favourite poem of mine is
Plop. Pah-lop. Plop.

(Paignton, 2011)
Barn Conversion on an Accident Black Spot

Our love was like a barn conversion
At an accident black-spot.

We’d took time to transform decrepitude
Into something quite hot.

Aesthetically-pleasing,
Occasionally teasing.

A place of comfort in which to reside
And yet, on the road outside

There was carnage on a nightly basis.
Our beautiful home, once a quiet oasis

Tarnished, ruined, a private hell
Amid the chaos of tearing metal.

Perhaps, we reasoned, architecturally-speaking
The drivers of the cars, continually seeking

Perfection, driven mad by our decadence and style
Had kept their foot off the break just a while

Too long.
(Brixham, 2009)

On the Question of Mister Shaw’s Private Life

For years, carved in hot melted tarmac
In the suburban commuter town where I grew up, the words
Mister Shaw is a Tosser
A permanent memorial to a teacher
Long since, having passed through, forgotten by most,
His name a mystery to succeeding generations.
He lived in a flat tacked to the side
Of the church hall. I suppose it came with his job
In our C of E middle school.
The place might even have seemed exotic, bohemian
Divorced from the humdrum of growing up,
Though, a deeply religious young man,
Probably he disapproved of anything remotely bohemian.
A bachelor.
My dad said he walked as if he had
A roll of lino under his arm.
Jutting chin, and the Alex Hurricane Higgins hairstyle
Of the early 1980s.
Was Mister Shaw a tosser? No, he was reasonable.
He encouraged me to write, and for that,
I shall never inquire as to what he got up to
In his church hall bachelor pad,
Scene of nativity plays and jumble sales,
Whether tossing or not.
(Cairns, 2010)

Poem Which Starts With The Words ‘Pull Up A Chair, Philip Larkin’.

Pull up a chair, Philip Larkin.
Help yourself to some cheese and onion Hula Hoops.
Stop frowning, I wont hurt you.
Tell me, Philip Larkin, is it true that you couldn’t work out how to use the self-service machine at Tesco’s?
Or that you lost your glasses while jumping on an inflatable bouncy castle?
Help yourself to a fondant fancy.
Oh, Philip Larkin!
You looked so glum when I suggested we go clubbing and then when we got there you shocked everyone by asking for a cup of tea at the bar.
That reminds me, shall I put the kettle on?
How did it go last night, by the way?
Taking on the Americans in an impromptu tug of war.
You and WH Auden and Christopher Isherwood
Verses the Beats – Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs.
Trounced, you say?
You let go of the rope to pick up the 50p coin?
And Alan Bennett called you a knob?
He’s got a point.
Is it true, Philip Larkin, that you stayed up late last night to watch Wrestlemania?
Would you like a jam tart, Philip Larkin?
Would you? Would you? Would you really really?
Is it true that when you met Princess Anne you sneezed all over her?
I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were allergic to horses.
Is it also true that you put stones on the railway lines to see what happened when the fast train came through but you got arrested by the Transport Police?
Is it also true that you fancy Sarah Palin?
Well, we must meet again some time, this was nice.
You’ve got a bit of something just . . . Just there . . . That’s it . . . No, to the left . . . Never mind.
(Paignton, 2011)

Matt’s Duvet

I see you
In that photo message you sent
Wrapped in your duvet.
Why do they
Say that our love should be
The way that it should be.
Heteronormativity.
I see you
In that photo message you sent
I now repent
My life has been spent
It’s such a cruel day.
I wish I was there with you
Wrapped in your duvet.
(London, 2011)

On Air Trapped in a Parisian Radiator

Last night I dreamed, initially,
Of Paris
And then of those plastic keys
One might use to bleed a radiator.

Post-midnight, REM-induced fluctuations
Bubble and spurge into my psyche
Tinkling like the sound of bubbles trapped
In the central heating system.

The spotlight on top of the Eiffel Tower
Illuminates rusted metal
And the thermostat throws crazy shadows across the wall.

I wonder what it is in my life
Which needs such adjustment
That I should dream so sullenly
Of radiator keys.

Mind you, it was cold
And the last time I was that cold
I was in Paris.

A turn of the screw and things hiss out like air.
A turn of the screw and its all much warmer.
A turn of the screw and the relief is gradual.
Flower-patterned wallpaper and 1950s chintz,
Gurgling pipes, rusted controls, non-traditional plumbing.
Flaking, stippled ceiling, subsidence cracks
Ill-fitting sash windows and damp duvets.
So much work, so much work needs doing
But a turn of the radiator key is the very least I can do.
And it becomes a little warmer
Like my love for you.

Oh! That’s what the dream was about!
(Paignton, 2012)

Doc

Doc and I ran to pee
Before the river ferry left.
We had two minutes at the most.
We aimed for a small copse of trees on the riverbank.
We didn’t realise until we ran into it
That we’d waded into a swamp.
Ideal crocodile territory.
The relief was fleeting.
Bladder pressure replaced by a sudden swarm
Of mosquitoes biting eating feeding,
Slapped blood splotches on itchy exposed skin.
We ran back to the backpacker’s van along
The jungle road, arriving swiftly
To high-fives and exuberant cheers,
But at what price?
Eaten alive in twenty different places at once
And we’d not had time to wash our hands!

But, as Doc, who is wise in outback lore explained,
You never know when you’re going to get another chance
To visit the bathroom.
(Cairns, 2010)

Nowhere Near Magnetic North

Hallowed be thy onion rings.
Now the yoots have big hair.
And you with your M
Increasingly, slaphead : Forlorn.
The line dissecting forehead constant frown.
No wonder they think you’re the boss,
You always look so cross.
Answering the phone with a packet of crippens.
Infatuated with Doctor Hotch!
You hate it when I say ‘calm down’
Or say things like, ‘You only know you’ve got a dose of the Hotch
When you’ve got it’.
Talk about obssessedness!
(Paignton, 2011)

The Jacket of Agnes

I wonder whether she’ll be wearing the same old coat again.
The green felt long one with the big green buttons.
And the compartments in which she keeps
Ocelot.

She looks like a walking
Prairie.
And the coat is slightly hairy.
And she often gets lairy
In her coat, the one that she wears.

It’s got a hood.
The hood isn’t very good.
When she talks she can’t be understood.
On account of the hood.

She looks like a barn.
She looks like she should live in Chard.

The zip zips up but it doesn’t zip down.
The often causes her to frown.
Going up and over in an endless zip
Of zip-pulling rip-cord zip-rip-torn
Zip-a dee doo-dah
Zebadee zip slip knot zip not
Stuck fast zippy zip zip
But in any case she’d got those big green buttons on the front there
That I spoke about earlier in this poem.

She often wears a scarf with the coat.
But the scarf is the same colour and you can’t see it
Like a Patagonian mule falling into a castle moat.
I seldom gloat at her coat.
She’d grab me by the throat.
I’d probably choke.

And the shoulder pads.
Like boulders. Balanced on other boulders.
She once broke the nose of a postman
While turning around a tad too quickly.
Whacking him across the mush with those boulder-like shoulder-pads.
He’s been off work.

I wonder if she’ll be wearing that coat.
It’s grubby at the hem.
And every now and then
She’ll tug on a sleeve
In a kind of compulsive manner.
And its inner lining
Puts me in mind of 17th Century Czechoslovakian porcelain
In that you hardly ever see it
Unless she wears the coat inside out for no reason.

Have you seen her coat?
Have you seen her coaty-coat coat?
Have you seen her coat coat coating coat
Coat coat coatily-throatily
Coat coat coca-cola-coaty coatie coat coatilly coat?
It’s from New Look, or one of those other high street fashion retailers.
(Paignton, 2012)

Llama-Trekking with Kim Jong-Un

I went llama-trekking along the Dorset coast
With Kim Jong-Un.

On the edge of a cliff
With our llamas in tow
He confessed to me he’d never seen an episode
Of The Only Way Is Essex
And it ate at him inside.

I said, now look here, Jong.
You’ve got to be true to yourself
And approach life as if it is a picnic basket
Because one day, when all the mini-pork pies have gone
And the last fondant fancy consumed
You’ll be left with nothing but angry wasps and the washing-up.
Jong just looked perplexed.

The waves broke below us, and the wind whistled
As we made our way over dale and hill
And at one moment we stopped and Kim Jong-un made
As if he meant to reach across and peck me on the cheek,
But then he changed his mind.

The grass was tall and wet with dew
And it made his trackie-bottoms sag.
And he told me that rather than being the
Supreme Commander of the North Korean Army and
Prepared at all moments to strike down with venom
The imperialist West,
He’d rather be bouncing on a trampoline.

We headed back to base, it was late
And our llamas were weary
And Kim Jong-Un was keen to show me
His collection of staplers.
And that’s when I decided that if I were ever going to change the world,
This was the right time.

Jong, said I.
Put down that pot noodle,
Stop fondling that llama,
Grab your anorak and listen.

Should we march in unison,
Should we maim and kill
Should we divide and rule
Should we conquer, should we judge, should we frame,
Will it ever be the same, Kim Jong-Un?

Is it all a silly game, Kim Jong-Un?

Are you a freak or a peacemaker, a geek or a ruthless dictator,
A monosyllabic slab, a leader wrapped in glum,
Are you coming undone Kim Jong-Un?

Are you pliable by nature, a first-rate hater,
A war-widow maker, an atomic risk-taker,
Have you ever seen the sun, Kim Jong-Un?
Would you like a cream bun, Kim Jong-Un?
Is it really so much fun, Kim Jong-Un?

Will you grab at the truth or will you let it fly by you?
Will you reach out towards the absolute screaming necessity of peace?
What do you have to say for yourself, Kim Jong-Un?
What do you have to do?
What does the future in all its
Pounding incessant ever-so fragile easy-gone
Quivering army-painted atomic
Parallelogramatic sensomatic
Button-pressing most-depressing dissent-oppressing
Nation-starving one-heart-beat away from senseless oblivion
Have in store for you?

To which he replied,
Let’s go for an ice cream.
I Am The Wardrobe Man

Big hulking presence.
I loom in your room.
I am the Wardrobe Man.

On uneven floorboards I lean
Ever so slightly at an angle
As if politely implying deafness.
I am the Wardrobe Man.

Fling my doors with gay abandon.
Like arms releasing coats and jackets
Faintly, the smell of mothballs.
I am the Wardrobe Man.

Flat-packed self-built
And not nearly as solid as my
Oak veneer might otherwise indicate.
I am the Wardrobe Man.

Shift me uneasily
It’s a two-man job
To get me moving.
Coming out of the closet that I am anyway.
No-one is in the least surprised.
I am the Wardrobe Man.

Oil my hinges!
Mister Carpenter!
Or else I’ll squeal for England!
Opening my doors
Like the parting of the flasher’s mack,
I am the Wardrobe Man.

I linger
And hide from your acquaintances.
All of your mess, your transgressions
The squeaky scratchy scrape of coat hanger on steel pole
Like the inner protest of one who is so often so profoundly wronged.
I am the Wardrobe Man.

Get those coats out of me!
I can’t stand it any more!
And the chest-of-drawers keeps winking!
I am the Wardrobe Man.
(Brighton, 2011)

Poem

I only asked you to show me round several districts of your home city.
The Icelandic district.
The Museum of Badgers.
The building that’s so tall they don’t let anyone go up it
Unless they’re scared of heights
Because they know that they wont get further than three storeys up.

You showed me the Museum of Dust.
The cremated remains of my Aunt Peggy
Being perpetually sucked up a vacuum cleaner
From a rug, and then the whole lot emptied back on the rug
And the process repeated. How ironic.
She was always complaining about the mess.

You showed me the Tesco’s Metro.
You showed me the World’s Largest Dartboard.
You showed me the atomic bomb shelter
To protect the city’s strangely large giraffe population in the event of nuclear annihilation.
You introduced me to the fishmonger who swears she got a text message from
Vincent Van Gogh.
The blind Morse code operator who swears he transcribed last year’s Booker Prize winning novel by decoding
The twenty-four-hour tap-dancing competition upstairs.

You showed me the bus station and you said.
You see all this?
You see all this?
What’s all this about, then?
What the bloody hell is all this about?

And that night we went to the zither recital,
The duck philharmonic
The wardrobes-on-ice show
And when we went to kiss in the underpass I strangely shied away.

The next morning, when I caught the train
From Platform 3, out of the city and off to somewhere else,
The whole place looked more or less like any other.
(Brighton, 2011)

Mister Purposefully-No-one-Wish-I-Was-Someone-Man

You stride, purposefully
With keys jangling from your belt
Like a caretaker or a taxi driver
Bereft of that which would otherwise mark you out from the moment.
Perhaps you should fashion a natty moustache,
Mister Purposefully-No-one-Wish-I-Was-Someone-Man.

You effect, without reason
The odd opinion, then guffaw
As if it had meant nothing at all.
How apt, Mister Purposefully-No-one-Wish-I-Was-Someone-Man.
That you should disappear in a crowd of your own invention
When you’d rather be chasing squirrels
Across Platform 3 of Exeter St. David’s station,
Mister Purposefully-No-one-Wish-I-Was-Someone-Man.

You tell jokes. You are not a joker.
You tell jokes, and each one falls like a conker
From the horse chestnut of incomprehension.
And those who laugh do so because your flies are undone,
Mister Purposefully-No-one-Wish-I-Was-Someone-Man.

And when you effect a jolly demeanour
No-one thanks you, Mister Purposefully-No-one-Wish-I-Was-Someone-Man.
But when you add a tad grumpy
You encounter a strangely hostile, singularly perplexed and not a little affronted
Grouping of pensioners, who then laugh at you.

Once, Mister Purposefully-No-one-Wish-I-Was-Someone-Man,
You fell down the stairs in KFC.
The perfect somersault,
Your hand-held carton of diet coca cola
Perfecting a neat parabola in the air.
Individual globules of carbonated soft drink crystallised like jewels
Before splattering on the sticky tile floor.
It was the prettiest thing you ever did,
Mister Purposefully-No-one-Wish-I-Was-Someone-Man.
And then, Mister Purposefully-No-one-Wish-I-Was-Someone-Man,
You were fired from your position in the office
For drinking in the work place.
Alas, it was not alcohol on your breath they smelled,
But a lunchtime banana sadly fermenting on the windowsill.

Do you remember, Mister Purposefully-No-one-Wish-I-Was-Someone-Man,
That time you met the perfect woman
And you poured out your heart
And you told her your feelings
And the state of your life
And your sincerest motivations
And your penchant for strawberries
And your fear of death and of dying alone
And your fears in general
And your philosophy that the world exists somehow as a kind of personal affront
And of your years of crippling horrific tedious soul-draining mind-numbing loneliness
And she looked you in the eye,
Mister Purposefully-No-one-Wish-I-Was-Someone-Man
She looked you in the eye and said,
Enthshuldigung, mein Englisch ist nicht so gut.
You hardly saw the funny side, Mister Purposefully-No-one-Wish-I-Was-Someone-Man.

Oh, Mister Purposefully-No-one-Wish-I-Was-Someone-Man.
You looked in the mirror once
And saw me staring back at you.
It freaked you out. And I’ll tell you what.
It freaked me out, too.
(Paignton, 2010)

Poem

If the most obvious explanation
Is the most likely
Then why do I presume the worst?

Apricots.

Admiring the smaller moments over the large,
And always being optimistic,
That all the small moments build up and become the large.

Thunderry showers.

I bland into the blandground,
Overlooked and quite bland
In the blanding bland bland of the bland.

Maroon.

Grabbing at several things simultaneously.
Surreptitiously.
Bland.
Obvious.
Optimistic.

Badminton
Shuttlecock.
(Paignton, 2011)

Frank (1-1=0)

One minus one equals zero.
One times one equals one.
One divided by one equals one.
One plus or minus the square root of one divided by a half percent of one plus one equals one.
And a bit.
One divided by infinity equals nothing but not quite.
One divided by infinity equals almost nothing, very nearly, hardly a speck.
Nothing therefore exists, not even one.
One equals zero plus a smidgen.
(Paignton, 2010)

Karaoke in the Departure Lounge

Deep beneath so many layers
Of postmodernist subterfuge
Like an accidental Wotsit in a packet of Frazzles.
A glistening gem, a rhyming couplet
A misaligned toupee on the crown of a slaphead.
There once there once there once
Was a man from Newton Abbot
Who did nothing funny or clever, nor did anything he do rhyme with Newton Abbot.
Deep beneath so many layers
The poetry,
Like honey dripping from the claws.
Of a monster.
In Poundland.

(Paignton, 2011)

Love Poems Love Poem

When I gaze into your eyes
I think of all those poems written
About gazing into someone’s eyes.

When I stroke your skin
I think of all those poems written
About stroking someone’s skin.

When we make love
I think of Wagner,
Which is a little odd.

When I feel the magic in the air with you
I think of all those poems written
About someone being with someone and feeling the magic in the air with them.

I’m always thinking of different things
More or less connected to what I’m doing.
(Paignton 2012)

Lament of a Noted Brazilian Anglophile

The fire chief of Jakarta,
Solitary in his quieter moments,
Playing chess with the station porters,
And dreaming, dreaming
Of the rural English countryside.

Of barns and church steeples
And farm implements
And hot rampant rumpy pumpy
With a milk maiden while inexplicably
Someone plays bagpipes,
And knights in shining armour
Move like Jagger
In the rural English countryside.

The fire chief of Jakarta
Resplendent in his uniform,
His brass buttons blazing in the hot Brazilian sun
(Or wherever the hell Jakarta is),
Dreams of Newton Abbot
With its market
And its culture
And its skyscrapers
And its metropolitan nuance.
With Robert de Niro in the local Costa Coffee
And crocodiles in the River Teign
And Manchester United playing
On the local village green.

The fire chief of Jakarta
Taking time out from squirting his hose
At a bush fire near a shanty town
To daydream of bowls tournaments
And maypole dancing
And sausage butties
And tractors toiling the soil
And doing all their tractory toil.
And Betjeman playing hopscotch in a pub garden
And Elton John balances a Cornishware jug on his head.

Snap out of it,
Fire Chief!
The favelas are aflame!

He sees
Contrails in the evening sky.
Hot air balloons vibrant in the sun.
Ducks lifting en masse from the village pond.
Hedgerows and barns
Hedgehogs and farms.
Afternoons in Chard.
Broad-meadow swamp-monsters.
Cluster-thatch mis-match cottagey
Cottages two-storey stone-wall
Two-up two-down cottage-type things
Combine harvesters
Harvesters
Harvesters
Harvesters
Harvesters
Harvesters
Harvesters
Harvesters
Harvesters
Harvesters
Combine bloody harvesters!
He sees all of this and he aches within
And his heart pines for the metaphysical
Dread-beat nuance of one who is enraptured, trapped
By his own dark imaginings,
Oh what a fool you are
Fire Chief of Jakarta!

What a fool you are!
With your National Geographic magazines
And you dreams
And those endless TV repeats
Of Last of the Summer Wine
What a blazing fool you are!

Or are you?
I’ve been to Newton Abbot and it sucks.
I like your version much better.
(Exeter, 2012)

Limerick

There once was a man from Aberystwyth
Who was an existentialist.
While eating some ham
He said ‘I am’.

(can’t remember when or where)

Aviator

A few years ago I made an improvised poem to some music and I was very happy with the result. Alas I did not hold the copyright. Anyway, it’s taken a few years but I’ve remade it and added some footage I took on a flight a couple of weeks ago. Hope you enjoy this!

I remember the taste of destiny on the wind

Poem

I remember the taste of destiny on the wind,
Like the merest hint of autumn
At the end of a summer’s day,
When all of your friends have just left,
Their voices still ringing in your ears.

I’ve always thought myself a
Bright dancer,
Owning the very constellations
On which I moved most sensual.
Only a fool would deny
That fortune was my friend.

But seldom my bedfellow.
I may have been a lover,
A mate, a poet, a companion,
But I’ve also been alone.
The hours I’ve had of reckless abandon
Resulted just in abandon.
I didn’t waste the years.
I wasted myself.

And now I hold on to the present.
Another lonely night won’t make
The slightest difference.
My soul shakes so often
That I disregard it as a
Natural phenomenon,
Nothing to be scared of,
Like thunder.

I remember love as an oblivion,
Cancelling common sense and
Making me act so foolish,
Heart racing in the promise
Of pure physicality,
And I acted the fool,
And easy, and occasionally sleazy,
And thinking of this now
Makes my stomach queasy.

And that was living!
Grinning in the kitchen,
Tomfoolery with the fridge,
Waiting for the toaster with
Your arm around my neck,
Your tongue in my ear,
I never once got burned.
Japes in the bathroom,
Silliness in the hallway,
Falling on the sofa and it
felt so good.
How domestic we both were!

One of these days
I’m going to work it out.

Gaze into my eyes, you said.
We trekked for eight days across the scrub.
The princes in their castle one by one surrendered.
There was hail on the ground hard ice nuggets,
Limestone rock strata, fossilised sea creatures.

Gaze into my eyes, you said.

A silver locket with a small clasp of hair
Bound in ribbon
Honey from tropical climes
A flash of dark from the hypnotist’s cape
Mythic beasts a prowl in the night
There was no escape,
There was no escape.

One of these days
I’m going to work it out.
A splinter stuck under my skin,
One of these days,
I’m going to work it out.
A hard yell tearing myself from pain.
One of these days
I’m going to work it out.
A maniacal grin you’re the hooded fiend
And I fell at your feet
One of these days
I’m going to work it out.

Time passes.
Disco dancer laser baby,
A loose mover, a midnight groover,
How often do I get a chance
To become the disco king?
I move, though,
To forget
But it’s all in
Muscle memory.

Enough about me . .
Enough about me . .

A sunny morning red bright elongated shadows
On the pavement,
You hurried past and stopped,
We were both aghast,
Spoke of meeting up knowing
We never would.

And I felt that taste on the wind once more.
Another autumn breathing lightly
On a late night summer breeze.

Home from Edinburgh and a gig in Hampshire

I’m writing this in a chain pub in Woking, Surrey. The pub rhymes with never-vrooms, you know, like a car that’s just built for show. It’s been the weirdest three or four days.

On Saturday I did my last show at the Edinburgh fringe, and while it was not one of my best performances, some friends came along and we had a great time. Indeed, as I fed out into the Saturday night drizzle of Cowgate away from my venue, I felt a little sad. I also felt something else, because the venue has been plagued by drain problems all week and the pungent aroma kind of became second nature after a while. Indeed, while I was flyering outside I would worry that people thought it was me. And then even this worry dissipated, unlike the stench, which just kept on going.

On Sunday I caught a train to Devon. Yes, all the flipping way, changing at Manchester Piccadilly. The first leg of the journey was interesting because I was sitting in a seat that was sideways to the direction of travel, so the Scottish and English countryside was just a blur in front of me. Once we got to Preston, the train became very busy indeed. And when someone went to the toilet cubicle next to me and had a power dump, it took me right back to my venue on Cowgate.

Things got interesting just as pulled into Paignton. This was the moment that I discovered someone had absconded with my luggage. This was annoying more than anything else, because the suitcase contained a week’s worth of dirty laundry, but it was all of my usual every day clothing and a hell of a lot of pants. The only comfort was the idea that it would have been opened excitedly, the criminals wondering what kind of designer clothing might lurk within, only to find vintage Primark pants. Alas, though, the teapot hat was in the case. Yes, the hat which I wore during every performance this summer. The teapot hat, lovingly knitted by Bristol poet and artist Hazel Hammond, was no more. A victim of crime.

The effect of this was that it kind of ruined any sense of achievement in actually arriving home. Instead of relaxing and pondering on the week, I had to go on to websites and fill in description of the case and what was in it, knowing that it would probably never be seen again.

I spent one day in Devon, and then I was off on the road again. I arrived at my hotel last night here in Woking and the receptionist asked me if I had any form of ID. Passport? Drivers licence? Don’t worry, she said, we can take a provisional drivers licence, too. Alas, I had nothing like this, but then an idea struck me. ‘I’ve got my book’, I said, reaching in to my backpack and pulling out a copy of Nice. ‘That will do’, she said, smiling.

Last night I performed in Petersfield at an event called Write Angle. This was an event that I have wanted to get to ever since I took up spoken word ten years ago. I remember looking for videos online of my favourite performer, Rachel Pantechnicon, and the videos seemed all to have been filmed at Write Angle. I caught the train from Woking to Petersfield, a town I knew nothing about, and found the venue. The demographic was somewhat older than my usual audience, and that’s saying something, seeing as though I normally perform in Devon. ‘I thought you were much older’, the host said. I noticed that he had used a picture of me in a wig in the publicity material. ‘That’s because I was wearing a wig in your photos’, I pointed out. ‘Ah! Now, do you wear that so that you look like John Hegley?’, he asked.

The gig went well. I did the Spout show, hastily removing all of the more fruity, sexual poems, and I had no way of knowing if the audience liked it or not, as they were all very quiet and respectful, though at one moment there were four camera phones trained on me, which was a little weird. And I knew that nobody would tag me on social media later on because for some reason the host announced me as Mark Garnham.

Back at Petersfield station last night, I waited for the last train home to Woking. It was a warm night and the moon was riding high, and I felt that strangeness within of not really knowing where I was, geographically, and perhaps mentally, too. The whole week has been an odd blur. Two young ladies arrived with a blow-up inflatable man, which one of them had tucked under her arm. And when the train arrived, it was full of football fans. And yet, this being the Surrey Hants border, everyone was very quiet and respectful and for some reason, as the train approached Woking, the football fans replaced or covered up their football shirts, and gently wished each other a pleasant evening. I don’t know if this is just because people are more polite in these parts, or if their team had lost and they were all embarrassed. I might look up the result in a moment.

So yes, it’s morning now and I’m in the pub adjacent to the hotel. I shall be getting a train very shortly back down to Devon. I’m absolutely loving life as a spoken word artist at the moment, even if I did wake up this morning and not even remember which town I was in!

An overview of my career : I have no idea what I’m doing!

I’ve been performing spoken word for ten years now. Yes, this is my big anniversary. And it only seems like yesterday that I started performing. I remember the first gig, I was incredibly nervous but people laughed in all the right places, and this was the first ever time that I thought, okay, perhaps other people might find what I do funny. And since then I have performed all over the place, at festivals and fringes and spoken word nights and comedy nights and anywhere else that will have me, and I get paid to do it now, and that’s amazing and excellent, but you know what?

I’ll let you in to a secret.

I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.

That’s right. Every time I sit down at my desk with a pen in my hand, every time I rehearse a poem, every time I get on stage, I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. There’s no grand master plan, there’s no overriding theme, my poems are spur of the moment in the most part, and my performances are heavily dependent on the audience and the location and everything else.

Now I know this might not sound terribly professional. I know I should sit down and work things out. But I’ve spent ten years just going with gut instinct on absolutely everything. I have no idea what the right way of going about a career in spoken word looks like. I’ve had no training either in being an artistic practitioner, or the administrative side of things, and everything I’ve done I’ve had to teach myself to do.

And this is quite a comfortable position to be in. I don’t feel the need to follow any trends. In fact, my biggest influence is music and specifically, pop music. I don’t often watch other poets in my free time, and I don’t read page poetry, so I have no idea what the trends are. My main thought when concocting a poem is, hmm, I wonder if people might like this? And when I’m not performing or writing, I’m not a spoken word artist, I’m just a normal bloke who doesn’t even ink about spoken word until he’s actually doing it. As I say, I have no idea what I’m doing!

But this lack of a master plan has given me some fantastic memories and led to some amazing experiences. The best thing about ignoring boundaries and seeing beyond the narrow confines of the spoken word community is that it gives you the chance to collaborate with other artists from other areas of expression. Over the last couple of years I’ve worked with a film maker, a rock band, a jazz band, a violinist, a visual artist, comedians, improv artists, actors and art gallery curators. And these opportunities have all come about by not having a specific master plan.

Take poetry slams, for example. About seven years ago I got drawn in to the murky world of poetry slams and did quite well for a bit, but then got drawn in to the mindset that everything I wrote had to be a potential poetry slam poem. Dispensing with that mindset helped me write both shorter and longer poems, Poems that rely on props, music, and everything else, and I’ve been much happier creatively realising that you can go much further if you’re more relaxed in your writing.

But it has its downsides, of course, this mindset. There are long hours of existentialist dread where I have no idea of what I’m doing is worthy. And then I start wondering, well, does it have to be worthy? Does there have to be a message? I’ve just spent over half a year working on a show about tea and I have no idea yet if this was a waste of time. And the same goes for almost every project I’ve worked on.

So my career plan for the next few years is not to get bogged down in detail or on career plans. I’m just going to carry on going on instinct and having a fun and creative time. The artists I admire the most, Frank O’Hara and Laurie Anderson, spent their creative time being as open as possible and this is how I shall carry on. I have no grand plan to conquer the world or be the best spoken word artist there has ever been. I just want to have fun and help others have fun too.

Ken Beevers’ new book

Ken Beevers’ book, Aquamarine, is a beautiful concoction of autobiography, humour, timeless emotion and a real sense of physical place. Beautifully put together by Poetry Island Press, it’s a constantly surprising source of that kind of momentary excitement one gets when reading real poetry, the kind that speaks truth and universal experience but with humour and a deftness of touch. A fish and chip shop described as a ‘utopian supper palace’ will forever remain one of my favourite lines in any poetry. Aquamarine is filled with such momentary gems, inviting the reader to read just one more page, oh, go on then, maybe one more. And, unlike a lot of poetry books, it’s got pictures.

In honour of Ken and his book, I have put pen to paper myself. And this is my very own ode to Ken Beevers.

Ken Beevers

A shaft of early morning sun through a crack of curtains.
Another day dawns bright and new.
I jump out of bed energised by the journey this planet has taken
Once more round the sun
And I run
To the bathroom.
Excitedly, I glance in the mirror, then let out a groan.
I’m still not Ken Beevers.

And I don’t think I ever will be.
There’s no mechanism for this,
One cannot simply pull some levers
And become Ken Beevers.
One must look inward if there’s ever a chance
Now and then
To be Ken.

If poetry was like a car
Then mine has just been towed
Like my grandads driving
I’m too middle of the road
Whenever I scribble a note
It hardly comes out as an ode.
But Ken is the real thing
He can shoulder the load
Words are his playthings

He’s the bad boy of south Devon poetry
He’s a trouble maker
An instigator,
Like trying to make a toasted sandwich
With a coffee percolator.
He’s never died on stage so he
Needs no undertaker
His rhymes are so hot
They put him in the refrigerator
He’s so damn cool
It’s because he just came out of the refrigerator
His name is Ken Beevers
But they call him The Beevinator

His poems are exquisite gems,
He needs a guard.
He’s so well hard
He’s the fish bar Bard
Yet he doesn’t expect acclaim
Like some of the other divas
He’s Ken Beevers.
Some of his rhymes are so potent
They often give me fevers
He’s Ken Beevers.
He once dropped his baseball cap
And a friend said,
Is that Justin Bieber’s?
And I said no,
It’s Ken beevers’.
Someone asked once,
Is he rowdy or serious?
And I said, neithers,
He’s Ken beevers.

He stands on the stage
Filled with just the right attitude
He’s so cool he’s got rapitude
He knows his place in the world
Both longitude and latitude
He looked after his neighbours puppy
But he made them pay for the mat it chewed.
Oh I feel such gratitude
In knowing Ken beevers.

So raise a glass and drink to Ken
This super poet
This titan of men
A man more genial is seldom seen
And his book is called Aquamarine
Some poems are risqué
But seldom obscene
He’s the hottest thing
On the Torbay scene
Don’t doubt yourself for a minute,
You’ll become believers
And it’s all thanks to the magic
Of Mighty Kenneth Beevers!

And Jacqui is lovely, too.

In the Glare of the Neon Yak Live at the GlasDenbury Festival 2018

In the Glare of the Neon Yak is a riproaring piece of spoken word storytelling set on a sleeper service in the middle of winter. A train full of circus performers are being stalked by a mysterious entity which seems to mean more than just its eerie manifestation. A portent, an omen, the Neon Yak symbolises dark times. Will our hero find love? Will Jacques, the tight rope walker, get back together again with his ex, the circus clown? Does the secret of the Neon Yak lie in the hands of a randy old lady? Has the buffet car run out of sausage rolls? Will Tony the Train Manager find where they’ve put Carriage F? An hour show combining poetry, storytelling and music, In the Glare of the Neon Yak is the sparkling new show from spoken word artist, Robert Garnham.