Nose-picking in the Adirondacks

with Cowboy Joe

scrap

dear everyone I used to groan

only people who were anti were

cool as if the pros were banging drums

braying for war

now of course we're fighting side by side

peace at any price is not too dear

all my friends agreed & no one cried

prayers for war

god don't listen any more she's sick

devil took her stick poor girl I swear

still she hardly misses much the trick's

learning from war

recession in lunch cart verse

the opportunity cost of language

when sales are artificially low

is the coining of emotional verbiage

which can leave the average Joe

on the lookout for a ham-free sandwich

with saucy waitress to go



most people shy away when making hay

deploy euphemisms & if they do

occasionally let it all hang out

flush the Polaroids down a Portaloo

it's not as though they object to display

in other walks of life they strut around

almost naked for inst on holiday

play volleyball lark about at the pool

barbecue England's bangers by the pound

convinced their muscle tones & tans look great

yet doing what comes natural in the round
though dressed as organ grinders shall we say

how many folks would make a single sound

poetry revolution

nobody is physically killed

in the poetry revolution

stood up against the lectern

and shot by readers in blindfolds

while Frost is kept out in the 
cold Lorca survives to write

of humble retribution

dipping his pen in the blood of

gay marriage and gypsy
divorce meantime

rhyme & rhythm are hung

up to dry on long lines of reason

except Whitman who according

to some traditions is strung out on effigy

MAD women

with the naked thrill bananas feel

peeled in bedrooms Peggies compose

jingles advertising ready meals
pens between toes

O’Donald care

& yet another take on
this fake president's

likes & dislikes

is

how they make out Cuba’s

one of the few countries

Rockefeller's little

finger isn't on the pulse of

as if a crummy little

island couldn't transplant

a heart better & cheaper

than a few strands of hair

ink from the old

is it a duck-billed platitude to ask

if George the third etched his plan

on the bum of a waiting lady

or am I a stark staring Dutchman

experts may be divided

bisected on the rack

in efforts to reach the truth

for what can be extracted without gas

Master Nothing has nowt to say

& Mistress Telltale uttered no less

but Mister Social has spilled his all

& Madam Such as voluble as a fish dish

untitled

the pied wisecracker

drunk on gunk rhyme

don't do twitter

which ain't such a crime

their daily bread

not feeding the ducks may be lame
a meaningless walk in the park

struggling to dig up a name
too busy hunting of the quark

this universe ain't obvious
& the god complex a puzzle

religiously irreligious
at times in need of a muzzle

I come to the overwhelming
answer never ask a poet

if they've ever given delving
fifteen minutes in the toilet

& forgive my not trespassing
on the water dwellers' diet

My Potty Political Statement

So what do you get for your Brexit?

Cut to the crap

You get what you deserve.

In the 2014 elections for the European Parliament, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) increased their number of MPs from 13 to 24; which made them the number 1 UK party, with nearly a third of the 73 seats. The turnout was only 35.6%.

By letting UKIP dominate at the polls, the message the people of the UK were sending to the Europe Union was basically Bog Off. Anyone who has watched TV the antics of UKIP's MPs in the European Parliament should agree. The UK dissed the European Union to such an extent that had it been any other kind of club, she would simply have been bounced out - never mind given leave to slink off.

Actually, it's fair to question whether the UK ever wanted to be in a union of European states. In the 1975 referendum, the Brits were only asked if they wanted to stay in the European Economic Community (still known as The Common Market). There was some dissent, but generally they were OK with the EEC: the result was a respectable Yes (67% on a turnout of 65%). But what if the question back then had been “Do you think the United Kingdom should become a member of a Union of European States?” rather than “Do you think the United Kingdom should stay in the European Community (the Common Market)?”? Would the UK have voted YES to having a European Parliament?

Of course, many of us would have preferred if the UK had remained in 2016. We should have stayed and fought for common sense and a return to the pleasant neighbourhood of the old Marche Commune – not some creeping federal system that mostly benefits big money, international corporations and the hegemony of a sinister Franco-German axis. But now the UK has voted out - by 52% on a turnout of 72% - the time has come to accept what the majority has decided for us. All progressives – remainers included – need to get behind our leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and fight for a fair and mutually beneficial withdrawal from this Union of European states.

Vote Labour!

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.

The First Hundred Years

as posted on... the Cheese Wall of America

mad dogs & other men

by TS Idiot 

I

when the soul of Hamlet's father

haunting the walls at Elsinore

told the prince of his murderer

what Tudor audiences saw

in that ancient tale of brother

hate was fable enshrined in law

Cain & Abel in other words

though Hamlet's vengeance is perverse

to be or not to be he hurls

equivocations at the curse

from Yorick's skull a flock of birds

flies out to stay his hand from worse

but the mad dog of revenge is no more

than brother Seti killed Osiris for

II

with the entry of the French Horns

in the scherzo of Beethoven's

Eroica the world was told

sit up & have a care to hold

on to your pants Napoleon's

armies will drain the swamp of crowned

heads & the dogs who scraped & fawned

but Ludwig scratched to a great MAN

on the manuscript's outer fold

where Bonaparte was once writ bold

for as emperor the new plan

was replaced by the old reformed

& still like men to hounds those horns are heard

wherever music lovers have gathered

III

they may not be the choicest words

used by an emperor elect

sorry scratch that for precedent

but the style of all his content's

appropriate in this respect

on TV nothing sounds absurd

pure & simple was the contest

arcane the process what the heck

goes with the territory learn

from his example the intern

has four years to triumph or wreck

& this candidate was the best

mad dog sir it was the name that swayed it

mad dog yes he's the best mad dog he's great

Down Boy!

Global Soothsayer

Jean Jacques Rousseau

That the authors of the American and French revolutions took many keywords from him does not mean Jean-Jacques would have approved their programmes. His own revolutions, converting (par example) from Protestant to Catholic - then back again, were expedient moves that harmed no one but himself. With the impunity of a true Swiss, he crossed the lines in wartime; and, despite wielding a seditious pen, managed his whole life to stay out of gaol, unlike his sometimes friend Denis Diderot. He was a polymath in all fields except of battle. (Like most gentlemen in those days, he set out on his wanderings with a sword, but pawned it at a tender age.) In his private life he was something of the Casanova (another contemporary), though the conquests he boasts of were of himself. Women - especially rich and powerful Madames - often took him under their wings, installed him in splendid cottages and brought him presents of honey and money. He was, in every sense, patronised by the glorious and great; yet he was not shy of writing to rulers – Frederick the Great for one – to give them a piece of his mind.

With the composition of a successful opera, he set himself apart from the other philosophers and earned their eternal disrespect. His enemies numbered almost as many as his former friends. He wrote books that were both wildly popular and burnt in public (we learn that the destruction of proscribed books was the executioner’s duty). The system of musical notation he devised anticipated sol fa (bringing him the dubious distinction of an association with Julie Andrews). He pontificated sensibly on the education of children, contributed to l’Encyclopedie, nailed inequality to the mast, put the state to rights, wrote novels (one hugely successful), botanised and even dabbled in chemistry. For his daily bread, he worked variously (and vicariously) as an engraver’s apprentice, a diplomat, estate manager and music copyist. He was a frequent guest in the top salons of the ancien régime. He declined to accept a pension from Louis XV, but was miffed when Madame Pompadour (the king’s official mistress) sang the lead role in his opera the Village Soothsayer - then neglected to honour the composer (all the more irritating since he had known the dame before she rose to glory).

So what are these Confessions for, besides providing a fount of opportunity for the artist to declare his genius? Most of us have committed shameful acts in our times, so what can this self-centred, vain hypochondriac gain from putting his hand up? His share of sins and omissions is just not all that. Actually, Rousseau spends much of the book telling - and retelling - us what a fine, decent fellow he is, every fifty pages or so confessing he is the only truly honest man of his acquaintance. So it's all the more shocking to discover the sly act he committed as a seventeen-year-old footman in the Vercellis household (in Turin). He filched a pretty ribbon, then passed off the theft on poor Marion - a cook of his own age. Admitting to his readers he’d been sweet on her, the treachery is doubled. Both of the youngsters are dismissed from their posts, the girl's only crime being to have thought better of him. Writing thirty years later, the shame of this memory still plagues him. It is an anecdote that comes early on, and would have been enough for me to curse the oaf and throw his book against the wall. But a token of Rousseau’s appeal is that I go on reading despite this, ashamed for him and trusting - as Marion might have done - he would somehow be redeemed.

He frequently admits the embarrassments of his youthful exploits, for example, passing himself off as an Englishman to impress a faux widow. With a return bout on offer, his feet grow cold and he runs in fear of being found out. Such accounts, though qualified by their incomplete exposition, persuade me of Rousseau’s ultimate sincerity. For it’s hard not to have sympathy with the basic misfortunes of his life. He lost his mother days after birth, and had nothing to remember her by but his father’s rose tinted reminiscences. This same father then farmed him out long before he had grown up. Which goes some way to explain all the romantic attachments to matronry beauties, in particular Madame de Warens – the lover he calls his Dear Maman. Timid he must not have been, bold enough to leave his native Geneva at a young age and take to wandering the country lanes of Savoy and straying into Italy. But sensitive to an excruciating degree, he writes page after page complaining of the sleights upon his person in people’s behaviour. And content with a peasant’s fare at the dinner table, he nevertheless judges those he considers his peers by their manners towards him. I take it, Rousseau was easy to please but the very devil to cross. On the other hand, he was as prone to sulks of self doubt as to piques of chagrin.

Women feature as guides and counterparts throughout the Confessions, as we have said in likely recompense for his having known no mother; but what of Rousseau's philosophy do we see in his relations with the opposite sex? Though he is not numbered amongst proto-feminists (what men were in the eighteenth century?), I don't see his reference to Madame Pompadour as Prime Minister of France as a flippant jest. He shows us the considerable power wielded by figures such as the Madames Luxembourg, d’Epinay and Dupin. Even the young Venetian prostitute he visited (the one time in his life he claims he ever paid for sex) is both fabulous and real. After his handling of her - so he tells us – the enterprising girl hardly knew whether to cry or laugh, and the scene is transformed from a smutty story into piece of reportage. BTW, this lapse into one convention of male behaviour, we are to surmise, is a case of, When in Rome... But I think Rousseau's fondest moment with women came very early on. Out for a stroll one Sunday, he bumped into a couple of fine young ladies who bade him join them on their picnic. The day he spent romping with them in the meadows, though entirely innocent (he has us believe) is the simple pastoral idyll he will strive for in female company for the rest of his life. One assumes, he and Thérèse Levasseur (his common-law wife) shared a stock of sweet nothings (though less refined) that kept him happy enough. Too bad, even those simplest pleasures had the tendency to spoil.

Misfortune, he never tires of moaning, was always waiting round Rousseau's corner. Does he exaggerate these? Well, while his book probably contains no downright lies, I doubt if we should take many episodes as literally true. More than once the contrariness of grand dames forced him to up sticks; he was stoned in the streets (and out of his home) while supposedly living under the protection of Frederick the Great. But professing himself to be a humble music copyist is ingenuous. It’s hard to believe that at the height of his fame as author, composer and star guest at salons, he spent the daylight hours laboriously copying out other people’s scores for casual clients. At the same time, he brags of the handwritten copies of his books he had made to give as presents to friends and patrons. I suspect the truth is that Rousseau exchanged copies of his own music for coin and other emoluments. These documents would doubtless have had more than just sentimental value at the time. And when he took to wearing Armenian dress (actually, something like a fez and kaftan) and began greeting people with Selaam haliakum! (sic) - he remained a welcome visitor at rich folks’ homes, not shunned as an infidel. Though at times he was unlucky in his choice of friends, on balance he led a charmed life, enviable by the standards of his days and well above the station of a watchmaker’s son. Even when his compatriots turned on him, he was offered sanctuary in England.

Unpublished in his lifetime, these Confessions (like others of his books in print) were banned all the same. At least, he was warned to stop giving private readings from them. The interest and notoriety the manuscript generated shows just how big he was in his day: stirring up storms of adoration and hate, turning the heads of kings and queens, and being a prime mover across multiple fields (music, politics, literature, education & etc.). I still find them fascinating today, four decades since I first read them. There is something in the man’s voice that draws me to him. It’s a pity he stopped writing them when he did, long before his misfortunes were over. To find out what happened when he finally landed in Britain – and why he didn’t stay long - I have to look elsewhere (and learn he made the crossing during a storm, remaining out on deck the whole way and exhibiting a surprising degree of physical stoicism). Few people get to write their own eulogy.

Postscript: I’ve always assumed Voltaire’s Candide to be a parody of Rousseau. Now that I look into the matter, I can’t find anyone who shares that notion. At least I am reminded here that Rousseau was convinced of it. But the Confessions make few references to his great rival. Perhaps because Voltaire published a pamphlet exposing the unwanted babies he and Thérèse had dumped on a foundling home? The author of a book on educating children could never really live down that disgrace. And yet, do we not detect a degree of envy in the portrayal of Candide? Is not the simpleton who ends up urging us all to "dig the garden" somehow divinely inspired? Although it seems rather hard on Voltaire that the piece he is chiefly remembered for (at least, outside of France) is a backhanded tribute to his greatest rival, I wonder if to mock Rousseau isn’t somehow to fall under his soothsayer’s spell?

trying it on

fake news quiz

fake news quiz #1

who has crossed the purple line again

spoken out & interposed his views

point the moving finger down with him

grumps in the house

now that Lady Gaga sports a flob

half a mind to let my tummy out

state the type of Nachos she has gobbed

plump's in the house

whose address in Stoke-on-Trent inspired

hate mail bi-election fraud & worse

nutty-ash die-backs if it transpired

Wump's in the house

will the Sleaford Mods' Carnegie Hall

Ukip benefit be sold out or

will the boys be left to foot the bill

chumps in the house

name the former barrow boy who flogged

throw-bananas outside footie grounds

then went on to pen the viral blog

Trump's in the house

celebrating the 1^st 100 days  

Trumpy McTrumpetface

Trumpy McTrumpetface

in auguration of

when he frowned it was upon some frogs

not his friends for he was mean with odds

demanded loyalty from bed nobs

give him a chance

he's the people's choice their homey voice

karaoke's turn to run the place

listen to sense so what if there's vice

give cheese a chance

from beauty pageants to golf resorts

thru malls bouncy castles & now walls

Trumpy McTrumpetface pulls in hordes

save him this dance

on the scaffold he makes a great face

if he's the last trump what's all the fuss

did we kill the first who made a fist

send him to France

no let's give him an auspicious launch

listen to the band enjoy the lunch

there'll be time to cheer & time to lynch

given the chance

(Archie Locost)

these lies are true

by TS Idiot

trumped-up round-up

divorcees reconciled during

first nude attempt on Everest

workers on Pacific tunnel

eat lead in Mariana Trench

snowflakes found on Venusian moon

not fake though out of sell-by date

Brexit menu signed by Farage

finds no bidders at Sotherbys

Dem Libs merger with UKIP goes

live on Black & White Minstrel Show

mad dog appointed United

States Secretary of Defence

& Europe awards fried Mars Bar

controlled appellation status

let nothing ye dismay

should Christians take it lying down

or hanging up for all to see

god rest ye merry gentlemen

go carol singing round the town

or voice dissent on live TV

god rest ye merry gentlemen

should Christians wear judgemental frowns

or smile in bland hypocrisy

god rest ye merry gentlemen

for shame should Christians play the clown

& hang out round the Christmas tree

god rest ye merry gentlemen

or swop their scarlet caps & gowns

for plastic bags like refugees

god rest ye merry gentlemen

alt empire

as the Democracy Show goes into

its millennial season who else but

Boris is chortling over Winston's grave

hand out the Victory Scotch & cigars

grill some of that fat Welsh rabbit

& while you're at it stick Irish online

git the owl gang round the Brexit table

kick your shoes off boys time to celebrate

& let the whole world know the search is on

for stars anyone willing & able

to make with the lingo can do just great

from Skid Row to the Mars Hotel kiddo

this here's yr chance to stand up to the crease

show the good folks the state of your Plato

though seriously folks

what isn't cricket Gunga Din

ain't the colour of your foreskin

but of the team you supporting

for in the words of Fu Manchu

Confucius met his Waterloo

on the back route to Kathmandu

hauling that South American

dreamboat up the magic mountain

took more than lateral thinking

yr grandma knows how to tango

& decode calls made in bingo

halls by sheiks like Ali Bongo

but you'll only get the rules of the game

when your coat is on & you've left the room

a cheap petty Osiris

CPO Gadfly was no more Arab

than Mr Trump a card-carrying scab

neither had their nobs robbed by a scarab

old Gads was in fact on a hush-hush job

when he came neck-to-neck with a carob

tree whose juice those days would rush you ten bob

switching from Judas to Colonel Cobweb

he took out a dealership in Red Leb

to Mick & the Stones he was known as Zeb

while the real Zebedee strummed in a club

he troubadoured to Bombay flogging dub

reggae but got throttled in the hubbub

which was how Gadafy twigged the whole fib

painting his own as the true face of lib

not the last trump!