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LOVE IS ...

Love is feeling cold in the back of vans
Love is a fanclub with only two fans
Love is walking holding paintstained hands
Love is.

Love is fish and chips on winter nights
Love is blankets full of strange delights
Love is when you don't put out the light
Love is

Love is the presents in Christmas shops
Love is when you're feeling Top of the Pops
Love is what happens when the music stops
Love is

Love is white panties lying all forlorn
Love is pink nightdresses still slightly warm
Love is when you have to leave at dawn
Love is

Love is you and love is me
Love is prison and love is free
Love's what's there when you are away from me
Love is...

ADRIAN HENRI

TONIGHT AT NOON

Tonight at noon
Supermarkets will advertise 3p extra on everything
Tonight at noon
Children from happy families will be sent to live in a home
Elephants will tell each other human jokes
America will declare peace on Russia
World War I generals will sell poppies in the streets on
      November 11th
The first daffodils of autumn will appear
When the leaves fall upwards to the trees

Tonight at noon
Pigeons will hunt cats through city backyards
Hitler will tell us to fight on the beaches and on the landing
     fields
A tunnel full of water will be built under Liverpool
Pigs will be sighted flying in formation over Woolton
And Nelson will not only get his eye back but his arm as well
White Americans will demonstrate for equal rights
In front of the Black house
And the monster has just created Dr. Frankenstein

Girls in bikinis are moonbathing
Folksongs are being sung by real folk
Art galleries are closed to people over 21
Poets get their poems in the Top 20
There's jobs for everybody and nobody wants them
In back alleys everywhere teenage lovers are kissing in broad daylight
In forgotten graveyards everywhere the dead will quietly bury the living
and
You will tell me you love me
Tonight at noon

ADRIAN HENRI

HELLO ADRIAN

skip to next at present

ADRIAN HENRI'S TALKING AFTER CHRISTMAS BLUES

Well I woke up this mornin' it was Christmas Day
And the birds were singing the night away
I saw my stocking lying on the chair
Looked right to the bottom but you weren't there
there was
            apples
              oranges
                     chocolates
                    .... aftershave
- but no you.

So I went downstairs and the dinner was fine
There was pudding and turkey and lots of wine
And I pulled those crackers with a laughing face
Till I saw there was no one in your place
there was
            mincepies
              brandy
                   nuts and raisins
                     .... mashed potato
- but no you.

Now it's New Year and it's Auld Lang Syne
And it's 12 o'clock and I'm feeling fine
Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot?
I don't know girl, but it hurts a lot
there was
            whisky
               vodka
                  dry Martini (stirred
                    but not shaken)
.... and 12 New Year resolutions
- all of them about you.

So it's all the best for the year ahead
As I stagger upstairs and into bed
Then I looked at the pillow by my side
.... I tell you baby I almost cried
there'll be
            Autumn
              Summer
                  Spring
                    .... Winter
- all of them without you.

ADRIAN HENRI

POEM IN MEMORIAM T.S.ELIOT

I'd been out the night before & hadn't seen the papers or
      the telly
& the next day in a cafe someone told me you were dead
And it was as if a favourite distant uncle had died
old hands in the bigstrange room/new shiny presents at
     Christmas
and I didn't know what to feel.

For years I measured out my life with your coffeespoons

Your poems on the table in dusty bedsitters
Playing an L.P. of you reading on wet interrupted January
      afternoons

Meanwhile, back at the Wasteland:
Maureen O'Hara in a lowcut dress staggers across Rhyl
      sandhills
Lovers in Liverpool pubs eating passionfruit
Reading Alfred de Vigny in the lavatory
Opening an old grand piano and finding it smelling of
     curry
THE STAR OF INDIA FOUND IN A BUS STATION
Making love in a darkened room hearing an old woman
      having a fit on the landing
The first snowflakes of winter falling on her Christmas
      poem for me in Piccadilly Gardens
The first signs of spring in plastic daffodils
on city counters

Lovers kissing
Rain falling
Dogs running
Night falling

And you 'familiar compound spirit' moving silently down
     Canning St in a night of rain and fog.

ADRIAN HENRI

HOLCOMBE POEM/POEM FOR A GIRL I DIDN'T MEET

walking on the moors thinking about how I didn't meet
   you yesterday
heather underfoot and mist over Pendle
the moor changing like an animal/brown to green grey to
   purple with the weather
sky blue at the edges
                               like a letter that came too late.

...Undine rising from the waters her golden hair
dripping in the moonlight...dead bird on a fence blood
dripping from it's neck...Isis searching the rushes
for her murdered lover... small girl with a fishingrod
in a rushing valley full of ferns... the last supper
followed by the Four Just Desserts... watching the
white mocking figure at the edge of the Dark Forest
... beating naked blondhaired girls with
longstemmed purple flowers... Osiris judging
the dead mist rising up the valley seaweed tangled
in her moonlight hair...

trains
    moving through valleys
chimneys
     sprouting from hillsides
streams
    tumbling through boulders
clouds
    tilting from the horizon
and
     me
     on the moors
thinking about the girl I never met.

ADRIAN HENRI

VINEGAR

sometimes
I feel like a priest
in a fish & chip queue
quietly thinking as
the vinegar runs through
how nice it would be
to buy supper for two

ROGER McGOUGH

THERE'S SOMETHING SAD

There's something sad
about the glass
with lipstick on its mouth
that's pointed at and given back
to the waitress in disgust

     Like the girl with the hair-lip
         whom
            no one
              wants
                  to
                     kiss.

ROGER McGOUGH

AREN'T WE ALL

Looks quite pretty lying there
Can't be asleep yet
Wonder what she's thinking about?
Penny for her thoughts
Probably not worth it.
There's the moon trying to look romantic
Moon's too old that's her trouble
Aren't we all?

Lace curtains gently swaying
Like a woman walking
A woman in a negligee
Walking out through the window
Over the sleeping city up into the sky
To give the moon a rest
Moon's too tired that's her trouble
Aren't we all?

Wasn't a bad party really
Except for the people
People always spoil things
Room's in a mess
And this one's left her clothes all over the place
Scattered like seeds
In too much of a hurry that's her trouble
Aren't we all?

Think she's asleep now
It makes you sleep
Better than Horlicks
Not so pretty really when you get close-up
Wonder what her name is?
Now she's taken all the blankets
Too selfish that's her trouble
Aren't we all?

ROGER McGOUGH

SLEEP NOW

In memory of Wilfred Owen

Sleep now,
Your blood moving in the quiet wind;
No longer afraid of the rabbits
Hurrying through the tall grass
Or the faces laughing on the beach
And among the cold trees.

Sleep now,
Alone in the sleeves of grief,
Listening to clothes falling
And to your flesh touching God;
To the chatter and backslapping
Of Christ meeting heroes of war.

Sleep now,
Your words have passed
The lights shining from the East
And the sound of the flack
Raping graves and emptying seasons.

You do not hear the dry wind pray
Or the children play
A game called 'Soldiers' in the street.

BRIAN PATTEN

SONG FOR LAST YEAR'S WIFE

Alice, this is my first winter
Of waking without you, of knowing
that you, dressed in familiar clothes
are elsewhere, perhaps not even
conscious of our anniversary. Have
you noticed? The earth's still as hard,
the same empty gardens exist; it is
as if nothing special had changed.
I wake with another mouth feeding
from me, yet still feel as if
Love had not the right
to walk out of me. A year now. So
what? you say. I send out my spies
to discover what you are doing. They smile,
return, tell me your body's as firm,
you are as alive, as warm and inviting
as when I knew you first ... Perhaps it is
the winter, its isolation from other seasons,
that sends me your ghost to witness
when I wake. Somebody came here today,
asked how you were keeping, what
you were doing. I imagine you,
waking in another city, touched
by this same hour. So ordinary
a thing as loss comes now and touches me.

BRIAN PATTEN

 

LITTLE JOHNNY'S CONFESSION

This morning
      being rather young and foolish
      I borrowed a machinegun my father
      had left hidden since the war, went out,
      and eliminated a number of small enemies.
      Since then I have not returned home.

This morning
      swarms of police with trackerdogs
      wander about the city
      with my description printed
      on their minds, asking:
      "Have you seen him,
      He is seven years old,
      likes Pluto, Mighty Mouse
      and Biffo the Bear,
     have you seen him, anywhere?"

This morning
      sitting alone in a strange playground,
      muttering Youve blundered Youve blundered
      over and over to myself
      I work out my next move
      but cannot move;
      the trackerdogs will sniff me out,
      they have my lollipops.

BRIAN PATTEN

TRAVELLING BETWEEN PLACES

Leaving nothing and nothing ahead;
when you stop for the evening
the sky will be in ruins,

when you hear late birds
with tired throats singing
think how good it is that they,

knowing you were coming,
stayed up late to greet you
who travels between places

when the late afternoon
drifts into the woods, when
nothing matters specially.

BRIAN PATTEN

ON THE DAWN BOAT

on the dawn boat,
coming awake,
the land empty, I thought

about it, about
the many warnings,
the many signs, but

none to lead me
away from here, none
to lead me there.

BRIAN PATTEN

AFTER BREAKFAST

After breakfast,
Which is usually coffee and a view
Of teeming rain and the Cathedral old and grey but
Smelling good with grass and ferns
I go out thinking of all those people who've come into this room

And have slept here
Sad and naked
Alone in pairs
Who came together and
Were they young and white with
Some hint of innocence?
Or did they come simply to come,
To fumble then finally tumble apart
Or, were they older still, past sex,
Lost in mirrors, contemplating their decay and
What did the morning mean to them?

Perhaps once this room was the servants quarter.
Was she young with freckles, with apple breasts?
Did she ever laugh?
Tease the manservant with her 19th Century charms
And her skirts whirling,
Did she look out through the skylight
And wish she were free, and
What did she have for breakfast?

Waking this morning I think
How good it would be to have someone to share breakfast with.

Whole families waking!
A thousand negligees, pyjamas, nightgowns
All wandering down to breakfast
How secure! and
Others coming out the far end of dawn
Having only pain and drizzle for breakfast,
Waking always to be greeted with the poor feast of daylight. How many halflives
Sulking behind these windows
From basement to attic
Complaining and asking
Who will inherit me today?
Who will I share breakfast with?
And always the same answer coming back -

The rain will inherit you - lonely breakfaster!

BRIAN PATTEN