The Yesterday Papers

In Philip Lee’s new installation at Tate Owl, rapidly ageing verse stages a virtual attempt at staying up late. (When the The Avengers with John Steed & Mrs. Peel were on, it was,

     Aw, please Mum! Dad! Just this once!)

Miserably failing to persuade, lines that nevertheless raise a titter here & there while risking everything from nuclear war to the Mutually Agreed Destruction of Truth & Beauty.

 

OUT SOON

 

Meanwhile, not in this volume…

 

Toilet Wars

Zonk Pifflequaite’s new curation of stupid bloody nonsense: Porcelain Pan gets Pancake Tuesday’d.

 

Downstairs & Under

ADC Retro TV presents a series steeped in 1970s basement chic. From larks on the Loading Dock and Tom-Foolery on the East Berlin u bahn, through A Journey To The Centre Of Eartha Kitt.

 

Meanwhile On Horseback…

 

tramp hunting to packs of hounds

jinx within existing laws

biting bums off with their drawers

savour the sounds

 

trah-la-lah la-lah-la-lee

trah-la-lah la-lah-la-loo

trah-la-lah la-lah-la-loo

trah-la-la-lee

 

Or sans culottes:

 

tramp-o-line on steeple chase

Springheel Jack has got your backs

heart attacks in gummy sacks

piano drums bass

 

trah-la-lah etc.

 

Or the pedestrian:

 

tramp tramp tramp the game’s a foot

tramp tramp trampling down the grapes

tramp tramp tramp on Kipling’s grave

face load of soot

 

trah-la-lah etc

 

Or at sea:

 

tramp’s a steamer full of coal

U-boat victim food for fish

never granted one last wish

fire in the hole

 

trah-la-lah etc

 

And finally:

 

tramp’s a spelling bee mistake

stead of U he’s got an A

raspberries on their parade

cut like the cake

 

bumpetty bumpetty bump

rumpetty rumpetty boop

rumbelly rumbelly poop

trumpetty trump

Not Him Again!

If purple is the new red…

 No boots on the ground yet, but it’s canvas shoes on warship decks and flying helmets over enemy towns…

So last week it was World War Three already!  But Mr Zelenskyy would say that, wouldn’t he? Even though what his country has been going through for the past four years is not the trauma it experienced in 1941-5 - raped and left for dead by the first Axis of Evil - then reoccupied by the Soviets. Actually, the Nazi invaders at first thought the people of Ukraine were sub-human Slavs (fit only to be wiped out or enslaved), but by 1943 the war was going so badly they began to recruit them into their depleted armies. There was even a Ukrainian branch of the SS. So, when the Russians pushed them back out, again the Ukrainians were seen as enemies to be rounded up and shot, or at least re-educated and enslaved. Hence the current Russian anti-fascist rhetoric. Of course, to Russian eyes, it doesn’t help the Ukrainian cause that large areas of their territory were once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But is what’s been going on since 2014 the start - god forbid - of World War Three?

Well, as we saw in World Wars One and Two, none of them gods ever stepped in and stopped the killing. The tragedy was left to act itself out to the bitter end, like the death wish of the totenkopfs came true. Perhaps Germany should have had enough after the horrors of 1914-18? But no, they, their leaders and allies had to have another go in 1939. And isn’t that just what’s being re-enacted now?

Russia is generally agreed to have lost the Cold War in 1989. Like Hitler in the trenches, Putin cut his teeth as a Cold War KGB operative. He and the others who’d had things good during the communist era could see no good reason for the Soviet collapse, just as Hitler and the Freikorps who roamed Germany after 1918 were just looking for the chance to turn the clock back. Isn’t this what’s happening now? And like the Cold War, which dragged on for decades in proxy wars, economic and ideological conflicts, is likely to last decades before the Russian people are completely exhausted and the regime finally collapses?

So now it’s Iran they turn to again, the black hole of war reopened on this front, too. Starmer announces, British planes are in the air. France convenes the Security Council. Meanwhile a so-called Board of Peace presides over the collapse of rule-based International politics. Leaders are openly targeted, schools obliterated simply because they happen to be located next door to military facilities. The people of Iran are expected to take to the streets and with their bare hands overthrow a ruthless Revolutionary Guard that has in the past month or so butchered thousands of protestors. And already (this is only Day Two), as in Venezuela, there are signs the Americans are ready to deal with whoever takes over the government, even if they are basically the same mob that were in charge before. How much more of this bored of peace can the world take before the tipping point into general chaos is reached?

I’m afraid massive rearmament is inevitable. So are reds under the bed, though they’re more likely to be the Farages and Le Penns of this era than the Corbyns and Sanderses  of yesteryear. I guess purple is the new red. But the new blue - who’s that, eh? And stirring in a little yellow, what do we get? Isn’t the US, after its carrier fleets withdraw, destined for an era of inglorious, tariff based, protectionist isolation? And a preoccupation with China and South America that leaves Europe and Africa to fend for themselves. Well, it’s ha-bloody-ha to that. Shares in BAE, anyone?

Not Another Bloody Cease Fire, uh?

Up the Garden Path

with Porky & Klone

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bard of piss talks

 

elevating Sir

Jeffrey Epstein Lord

posthumous award

ain’t it absurd

 

shucks the geezer had

royal houses licked

servants Maxwell picked

cut him a tad

 

heaven knows the sex

crimes they faced but died

long before the lies

surfaced on X

 

evidence of guilt

barely graced their lips

on dictatorships

empires were built

 

excavate their bones

relics to revere

bung the guy a peer

age of the clones

 

 

 

these lies are true II

 

nineteen thirty-eight

history books shall prove

Hitler was removed

dude sealed his fate

 

when the world was faced

nineteen sixty-nine

with a heinous crime

being well placed

 

saved the Rolling Stones

as they came on stage

from a shooter’s rage

sent on the drones

 

in the year of dick

taser Epstein’s tricks

nineteen ninety-six

dude had him sicked

 

best of all same guy

in that fateful year

took one in the eye ear

truth just won’t die

 

 

 

merry-go-round

 

if we’re honest love is false

having people live on lies

loitering as passion dies

stuck on a waltz

 

have the author drill a new

book of what to say & do

who to ditch or tootle to

hang on a clue

 

time they asked was it a whore

feeding off an empty drive

keeping villagers alive

knocking on doors

 

screw the romance out of sex

the transactional kiss good

riddance to its shall & should

wait for the next

 

bus but maybe save on fares

senior citizens unfazed

catalogued by fantasies

musing on chairs

 

*

 

love is one long song

clever words & tune

worming through the moon

light on a pond

 

trip in a balloon

safety harness on

smooth as silicon

no parachute

 

broken biscuit tin

full of Christmas pud

extra helping should

do your head in

 

love is better glued

on the sides of trucks

advertising hook’s

babes in the mood

 

buried down the park

underneath a tree

aid to memory

light in the dark

 

*

 

hell it’s no

just a mo

in your ear

dear

 

sell by date

hand of fate

time we spilt

milk

 

sound of words

sense absurd

fond of cheese

Jeez

 

tie the knot

get the lot

on a plate

Kate

 

come & go

straight or queer

seeing here

blow

 

 

 

U-Crane

 

Congress Gaza Venezuela God

who they gonna skyjack next them black

holes Iran Afganistan Iraq

building a squad

 

call them greatest architect of all

Newton Heisenberg & Einstein cloned

Marie Curie Stopes on speakerphone

Pink Floyd on Wall

 

Street they’ll say it one more time or ten

shoot the Milky Way belongs to us

Proxima Centauri’s claim is pus

who’s got the men

 

Adolf Joe or Genghis Julius

Satan none of which American

only bloke round here to get things done

hoots on the bus

 

deconstruction plant for sale or lease

get in while they’re hot now place your bets

human race or self drive 3D chess

lifting for peace

 

 

 

untitled draft

don't worry they’s nothing but Americanisms

 

& them a stand-out politician whose improv routines popular for their wooden repetitiveness spends hours at the mirror literally hurling brown tuppences at their audience in the manner of a padishah disbursing golden coin & therefore do we offer this irreverent verse

 

passions torment then

torrent back as joys

smoking with the boys

do it again

 

infantile regrets

get a vengeful twist

lance them like a cyst

guard dogs for pets

 

bugger me I shan’t

let these feelings go

someone ought to know

don’t say you can’t

 

tell a tout from Top

Cat in jury doubt

who am I to out

think like a cop

 

chocolate money fake

scrip the name of peace

wonders sure will cease

grift on a take

 

 

 

fragment

 

what you see & who you get

ain’t the same as how you bet

you can tell them by their eyes

piles in the skies

 

 

 

nature reverse

 

herds of tame wildebeest graze the virgin plains of New Antarctica

a commited schizophrenic versus a pair of conjoined arm wrestlers for president

penguins in plastic suits cross the frozen crusts of gas giant moons

glib vegans beat anthropomorphic vegetarians senseless with selfie sticks

an albino hippopotamus appears in the room of an elephant with diarrhea

refugees from Mars sign on as unemployed former astronauts

underground golf clubs nudist camps & sewage farms held on alternate Sundays in March

but if the children of the workers are still bored call Henry Ford

these & other lines are all you get after Don & Elon’s delinquent comedy set

 

 

 

hometown myth

 

pardon me there

have to observe

temporary

reasons to swear

 

all of us here

lovely my dear

don’t even care

everything’s queer

 

numbers of folk

working like dope

just to survive

see how it poke

 

flexible lies

dormant the files

back of their smiles

share your unease

 

here’s what to hope

four to one cope

odds on we’ll mope

given the mop

 

 

 

dim view

 

Venus Earth & Mars are no

three-ringed circus act although

orbiting or what they go

on with the show

 

outer planets take the view

all their fuss is mainly due

to an over heated blue

shift in the glue

 

put another way they don’t

give a monkey’s cos it won’t

make no difference simply note

some rocks will float

 

as for Pluto who knows how

such a lump can take their bow

planetoids just ain’t allowed

audience cowed

 

stupid solar system bored

asteroids may not afford

ticket prices having soared

comets outlawed

 

 

 

honest

 

isn't America great

making work for blokes like me

dumb-arsed circus runaways

fish in the sea

 

jokes aside you know my name

silver dollar all my own

Bumph’s the one you’re betting on

talking the game

 

folks it’s what the market wants

wearing out your daddy’s pants

what’s inside them hornets ants

taking no chance

 

lo-down ho-down Würlitzer

seven rides a penny Ma’am

get your curlies straightener

it’s an exam

 

contrast me with anyone

officer I’m willing take

down my every word I make

no more’n I fake

 

 

 

Police Canteen S4E17

 

cos there’s been a poisoning

quarantine the force

call Inspector Horsemeat in

 

tho the gossip’s getting worse

larks have gotta sing

time to blow the coffee curse

 

liver bacon sausage rolls

suspect frying bread

beans on toast with garden gnomes

 

fishing at the river’s end

flounders in the zone

dealing with the plateful dead

 

let the owl informants in

now on Nitflox One

indigestibles begin

Not Real Woods Again!

GLOVES ARE COMING OFF

Abdul Jnr does Balmoral

Jury is out?

If we took twelve persons good, true and from a broad range of backgrounds who just happened – by their lingo, culture and commitment – to be a temporary community, then paraded the so-called truth before them, and waited while they deliberated (taking what expert and esoteric information was required into account) until they had deliberated… where would we be? Cos the truth is that fleeting thing, which applied to one set of circumstances will inevitably produce quite another verdict when applied to another. Nevertheless, as the archbishop said to the wanton chile, truth is all we got to go on. Ditch the truth, and the rest is white lies, dirty lies and the adulterated facts’n’figs of their opinion.

 

 

 

childsplay

 

easy not to say

hard to leave unsaid

words are grave as stones

spaces undead

 

cut between the lines

mix & rearrange

sentences such strange

blending of wines

 

sounds intoxified

better check that one

no just let it glide

meaning’s a con

 

what’s the art of noise

like philosophers

flock of homing birds

stuck for a choice

 

human life you dig

down the studio

in its judge’s wig

just an owl role

 

 

 

‘twas Christmas Day in the Workhouse..

…and Joseph was pregnant with a star crossed heart , which I don’t mind telling is no laughing matter. Playing with fire, the very thought crosses so many boundaries it’s simply not cricket. Go&Wash your brain out with milk & alcohol. And another thing, he’d woken up that balmy morning to find himself in a different universe. Somehow he had slipped intact through a Black Hole, defying not just the Laws of Gravity/Physics but the Jaws of Heaven/Hell. Forget the barn load of angels, shepherds, kings and animals, because anyroad, what really matters is not where you are so much as what you're going through. “It’s a stage!” - as the artist said to Mrs Worthington. “Wash your daughter’s feet in soda water, it’ll wear off.” Then you’ll be faced with a choice. Actually, we’re always faced with one, but on such a barmy morn as this, the starkness of it all strikes him as dumb. Keep your hair on, Joe!

NOT YET!