no hols barred

an Aegean ringed in flames

no hols barred

 

all you folks who think you know

me & hate my evil ways

do your worst to bring me down

these are the days

 

let’s do battle round the square

open warfare draw no draws

here’s your chance for once & all

these are the days

 

ammunition stocks are high

all my troops are fully trained

plus this piece of paper says

these are the days

 

launch when ready use surprise

any dirty move you like

this time no calling foul I cry

these are the days

 

meanwhile now the summer’s here

have I slogged all bloody year

to avoid Marine Parade

these are the days

 

 

 

empire games

battle zone

shivers bones

like

ancient stones

gods don’t die

hold the sky

bound

homeys fly

 

underground

upside down

keep

marching sound

 

try to creep

in or sleep

out

on the heath

steering off

had enough

speak

tough get stuffed

 

 

extinguish the blue touchpaper & retire

 

an Aegean ringed in flames

schools of whales & porpoises

turning tail translate here goes

calling us names

 

who would set this fuse but men

careless know-alls on the take

never-never merchants poised

stealing at this

 

opportunity to blow

downwrite lines of doggerel

raised in guilty voices when

everything shows

 

just how high the odds are staked

one of them to all of us

every breath they take a bite

snatched from the truth

 

still the seas will rise again

wash away these lies till then

on your bikes & take the heat

with when you’re done

 

 

 

Letsbe Avenue

 

teenage sox appeal

soap for boys & girls

Jimmy Saville types

Maxwell House

 

make yourself at home

innocence reframed

modern cons retrained

fool a queen

 

talking Lady Jane

Grey the fallgirl be

on the bus by first

light no sweat

 

cooking filthy socks

pocket money fixed

fantasies in tact

high men lords

 

princes finance king

pins the bloody lot

where’s the harm it’s just

social-lite

 

 

 

Britannia rules

 

when in Little Venice don’t

play the gondolier barge

poles at twenty paces knives

out on the weir

 

life may be an opera

comic tragic take your pick

long as no one dies before

that lady sings

 

Ruritanians beware

England's music calls for chairs

comfy inquisitions like

Spaniards expect

 

but the overture pipes on

some appear to sit & read

others chewing legs of safe

seats in the red

 

while the musical drags on

with its tortuous refrain

grinding monkeys understand

plain as the rain

 

 

 

hands on gov

 

tolerant

asses would

sit this one

out

live & let

be they'd shout

mooching's not

on

but with gay

room for doubt

pinch yourself

school

have a drink

Dude relax

trouble is

when

number ten

rears its glass

prejudice

rules

 

 

 

hold your fire

 

so the sold-out pantomime is wound

up its stars gone off to other roles

some to act in tragedies or sit

coms on TV

 

wotcha think I'll be a trouser snake

half of Cumberland The Severed Hand

Jimmy Saville in a foreign land

even myself

 

don’t I got it in me Jesus' blood

never failed & all that copy-book

puppetry's me sock in trade you can’t

shuffle your spots

 

got no turn of heel who says I need

help I'm only half the man I should

be my better stuff is yet to come

yep could be right

 

open to new partnerships I am

always was a player on the team

give & take philosophy's me game

stick to the plan

 

 

 

forgiven nearly all

 

at the siege of Downing Street

for the Guttersberg address

rank reporters flashing phones

officers' mess

 

Hovis Bunsen took the stand

sweating like Henry the horse

winning their attention but

quite at a loss

 

struck by the occasion not

moved to swear a churlish curse

through the thunder storm he was

counting his purse

 

when they reads me book he thought

they’ll remember I St George

pulled more dragons by the hair

mastered the forge

 

plus I'll live to fight again

England's first postmodern lord

since the Union's doomed why not

give them my word

 

 

 

cloak of truth

 

are you deaf

can’t it wait

must I speak

out

 

don’t you know

what went down

plain as day

stank

 

who'd believe

half of it

truth be told

no

 

on my life

swear to god

honesty

lies

 

far beyond

proof of fake

broken news

lines

 

 

 

who the Dickens is Kelvin Bilal Fawaz

 

kidnapped just like Mo

Farrah but would smoke

dope & steal from shops

Oliver Twist

 

trafficked from abroad

did unspeakable

things at nine years old

Oliver Twist

 

barely rescued was 

put in care then farmed

out & taught to read

Oliver Twist

 

keeping true to poor

character he boxed

under pseudonyms

Oliver Twist

 

never had a pass

port to call his own

in his way the real

Oliver Twist

Want Still More?

Click here to get the free chapbook. By downloading you agree to the conditions. See page 39 of "where the truth lies".

right on yer Nellie!

Eric Gill

Mother Of ABusers

Rameses II & Bent Anat

Sculpture, not just the most plastic of the arts, is the most political. In cahoots with its bedfellow, architecture, sculpture's vision has dominated human landscapes for five millennia. Colossal works by Egyptian carvers of stone – artists whose lives we can barely imagine - still haunt the human psyche. Try blowing up the Pyramids, Mr Taliban. Imhotep's designs are MOAB proof, they consign all other wonders to the trump of history.

Gaze on these tiny figures of women, queens and princesses, curling round the calf muscles of giant pharaohs - apparently their fathers, bothers AND husbands. Ancient Egypt used to be thought of as a matrilineal society, which explained why its kings had to marry their mothers, sisters and daughters: to keep control of the royal family. Actually, explanations are for the birds; all most of us can do is stare in disbelief – if not dismay – at images created by this distant human society. While Shelley, in his sonnet Ozymandias, quotes an inscription on the pedestal of a broken statue in the desert,

Looks on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

...no such text (had it existed) could have been translated by the time he was writing. But surely, it's fair to assume all the gigantic figures of Rameses II (Florence Nightingale's great hero) represent the dominance of men over women in ancient Egypt. While arguments supposing a historical struggle between matriarchy and patriarchy twitter on (Engels, for example, with his dialectical twist on lapsarian fall theory), the evidence for an enduring aggressive male trumping of human society is stark. Carved in stone, it has outlived all the destructive efforts of the Taliban and so-called Islamic State. (Not that their scholars – sic - deserve any points for history.)

Gill WWI Memorial vs. Assyrian Warrior

It is curious - maybe predictable - how the sculpture and reliefs of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Anatolia came to inspire Western art of the early twentieth century. For example, how the triumphal art of Babylon and Nineveh is echoed in monumental works commemorating the First World War. The stylised human, animal and vegetable features on the clean lines of modernist buildings hark back to the starkness of figures seen at Mount Nemrut and the Meroitic Kush. The addition of these follies nowadays almost guarantees a building Grade One listed status. Moreover, the accessibility of such pieces (which Art Deco grew out of) meant that this type of expression achieved popular success – unlike Dada and Cubism. Since their creation, they have survived many changes of taste. They are even embraced by post-Modernists, fgs.

Why did barbaric, pre-Classical sculpture move artists to create pieces for modern churches, palaces of culture and the HQs of capitalism? Had the traditions of their antecedents turned moribund? Or where they simply reveling in the barbarism of the war years?

Gill's “Slaughter of the Innocents”

Gill, who never really went out of fashion, has survived revelations about his personal life that would have demolished him had he been alive now. Instead of tearing down his work and locking it up in some Vatican dungeon, he continues to be celebrated by curators and writers on art; and voices raised against him are muted by supporters and apologists. In fact, his acts of incest, paedophilia and bestiality are all seen as part of the show. This seems at odds with our post-Savile world, but it's a fact of life that Gill has been posthumously accorded artistic licence to rape his grateful, smiling children.

Does this mean the future may bring about a reassessment of child abuse? Sooner or later, may folks be saying it's quite alright so long as the kids themselves look back fondly and claim, well, it was just Daddy's way of loving us? Will the future gawp at us, shaking its head at our prudery? Will Allen Ginsberg's membership of NAMBLA (the North American Man/Boy Association) be lauded as the saintly act of a sexual pioneer? Notwithstanding the great archness of his poetry, wasn't he just standing up for men who wreck the lives of young boys?

Of course, all people are flawed. Even genuine saints have their peccadilloes to bear, along with their crosses. St Anthony of Padua, tripping out on acid, did take himself rather seriously. While preaching to the fish, he might have thought he was making a moat point, but at only 35 years old he was consumed with the very fire - ergotamine – that probably inspired his skill in the pulpit. Gill croaked on lung cancer before reaching old age. Maybe the gods punish those who abuse their powers? I don't think so. There are people getting away with abuse right now. At this very moment, the Jimmy Saviles of this world lurk in the lavatories of culture, snorting the finest cocaine and popping the cherries of youth. And some of their victims, I'm afraid, will never turn on their abusers. Many out of fear, yes. Others, like Ginsberg and Gill's daughters, out of solidarity. They just won't see what is done to them – and others - as wrong. Theirs is a special case. And this is how the blasted pharaohs live on, dragging their great hides into the 21^st century to be reborn.

Just as Savile was cloaked in charity work and association with royalty, Gill is protected by a deep Roman Catholicism and - of course - that other old excuse, for the sake of his art. So when we admire the seductive curves of his drawings and sculptures, we mayn't connect their eroticism with incest & paedophilia. Not even the nude drawings of his daughters? Fie! Religion has a long history of shielding monsters while pontificating in sermons against the morality of the day. Let's not allow art to be subverted any more than it is already. Picasso was a misogynist, which is plain to see in Les Demoiselles D'Avignon. He was no friend to bulls, either.

Lion God of Meroë

And let us set religion's own scriptures against those they offer sanctuary. When Lot's family were escaping from Sodom, his wife was so loathe to leave their life in the fleshpots, she looked back and was turned to a pillar of salt. Thereafter, the daughters were forced to 'seduce' Lot and protect the family's blood line, creating the tribe of Moab. Later on, when hordes of Moabites invaded lower Palestine, they slaughtered the menfolk, while leaving the women and maidens.

Avast ye modern warriors of MOAB! Pierce the armour of the Savilites - but spare their victims and bairns.