8 o’ clock in Britain

It’s always 8 o’  clock in Britain.
No matter how you try and avoid it – it looms.
Like Groundhog Day.
It’s always too late to go anywhere, DO anything.

(Friend – its too late not to do it, go there.)

In Barcelona, Paris, Rome they’ll be promenading.
We walk round Huddersfield, Halifax , Hades and Hull –
We get the train to Doncatraz, across to York,
Then down to Epping, Reading, Rhyl –
It’s 8 o’ clock and the country has closed.
May as well be Knocking on Heavens Door
(ever feel you’ve been here before ?)
Its 8 o’ clock and growing late –
It’s later than you think – mate.

Everywhere  the same story.
Lights on in one kebab shop –
Served by a yellow eyed dog called Delaney
The owner asleep in the Back of the Shop.
Everyone’s on drugs.  That Drug –
The “Sod you. We’re Closed.  Closed and you can piss off, pal” drug.  The “Bog off abroad, if you’re that bloody bothered.  We don’t do promenades round here”  mainline stuff.

Nah – we do – the Racing Times and Nuts blowing round the city centre.
We do 4 lads in hoodies that look older than me dad
Eating chips.  And 2 lasses – pretending to be coquettish but really
Only after’t chips.
Its 8 o clock and Britain has switched off, is in shutdown, meltdown, crackdown
Backdown, blowndown, growndown, thistledown, eiderdown, walkaround
Pissed town.
It’s 8 o clock and get yourself  indoors – because
We don’t do promenades round here – if you want that sort of crap
Piss off abroad.  That’s more your thing – (you look the type)
I’ts 8 o’ clock and we’ve got glass slippers on our feet.
It’s 8 o’ clock in Britain – and growing late.

Ain’t that right.
Its later than you think, mate.

Bob Dylan’s Toe-Nail

It all began like this.
I’ve got Bob Dylan’s toe-nail
and I’m doing fine.
There ain’t no need to toe the line.  No sir.
You, you’ve got Madonna’s thumbprint on a slice of bread and jam, left over from when she had tea with your mam.
It were grand , we had butties of Branston and ham –
is’nt it nice to know somebody famous.
That’s how it all started,
how it began.
I’ve got Bob Dylan’s toe-nail.

Do you remember we were down at Georges baths
and Sting lost his verucca that day – and you, you
scooped it up and had it clingfilmed and catalogued straightaway.
I was proud of you – no, really I was.
I see nothing wrong in what we do –
Robbie Williams will never miss that “fuck you” tattoo.
What’s all the fuss about ?? I just don’t see –
Cliff Richards face when we set his tennis balls free.
You’d have thought being a Christian, he wouldn’t mind –
but in this world, they insist you toe the line.
But, us, we don’t care – we’ve got Bob Dylans toe-nail.
And we’re doing fine.

We’ve got quite a collection now, you’re welcome to browse.
In the case in the hall – there’s Eltons first wig,
there’s a photo of you and Keith Richard’s sharing a cig,
there’s a Shirley Bassey sequinned bra, hasn’t been worn in years, there’s a piece of naval fluff from Britney Spears,
there’s a high note from the Bee Gees and one of Gazza’s tears.
There’s Bjork’s goose egg and Cilla Blacks first nose –But none of this compares a jot – because we’ve got
Bob Dylan’s left toenail phalange calcium addendum,
And that beats the lot.
(Sometimes – I think, I hear it -  singing to me.)

It’s not so bad in here, once you get used to the food,
and our lawyer – he reckons, to be fair ,
we didn’t need to have brought the gun – well, as
he says – Heather Mills was hardly likely to run –
but Mr. Cartwright, he reckons we’ll be out in the year –
we’ve got an appeal going on and then they’ll do a piece on me and barry in Hallo

Isn’t it amazing – how far you can go, JUST by being dedicated and once you realize you don’t have to toe the line.
It makes me feel special, it makes me feel high –
just think – THAT was on his foot, when he wrote – Mr. Tambourine Man.
I am the owner of  Bob Dylan’s toe-nail.

Baxter’s Crime 

Baxter, the dog , is being dragged down the lane.
Again.
I feel sorry for Baxter, in fact, most days –
I feel a bit like him.
Pulled this way and that.
Someone behind me with a lead that I can’t see.
Baxter has no idea what his crime is.
(Nor have I ).
Just that he is a dog who takes his time perhaps.
He investigates.  Sniffs too long in all the wrong places.
I can never hear the words – just that she is shouting.
Snapping and Snarling.
I imagine the teeth are bared – the hackles grissly and raised.
But Baxter I feel is undeterred.
He will go on being Baxter.
He will go on, going on.

There is no cure for being free of mind and will.
Baxter, my friend , my alter ego.
Baxter – I love you.
Go on – being, Baxter.

(Run amok – remain a dog with pluck.)

You bark at your side of the wall.
And I will bark – at  mine.

BIO  

Helen Burke has been writing poetry for the last 35 years. Her work is widely anthologised and has won many national prizes, including the Manchester, the Suffolk and the Devon and Dorset prize.  Her latest collection “The Ruby Slippers” by Valley Press ,was launched in London earlier this year .  She is currently writing and illustrating her own children’s book.  She will give a reading at the American Library in Paris this March.

Read the details on the EV Grieve blog about the East Village.

While we’re on the subject of Ginsberg and NYC, check out this article at Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York  about the Kiev, one of Allen’s favorite NY restaurants. Scroll down to see a wonderful photograph of Allen having lunch with Quentin Crisp at the Kiev. (Yes, it’s the same Kiev mentioned in the King Missile song Detachable Penis ).

Common Mouth

We are always right.

 We always agree in what we say
because we say yes to our language.

 Common mouth,
gutter mouth,
says “yes” to you.

 I could say, “I love you”,
and get away with it.

Escaping Injury

There are bees,
wasps.

 Wind
stays put.

Bio: Dane McCauley

After graduating from the University at Albany (New York) with an English Education degree, Dane travelled through the noose of careers as high school English teacher, professional musician and songwriter, freelance copywriter, and music critic.

When not scraping knees and stubbing toes in the pursuit of making something out of nothing, he believes in will over skill (except for surgeons), schooling over drooling (except for surgical patients), and that bad parenting rules the world (to the gratitude of poets and weapons merchants everywhere).

all these colors
combed and spun
into fine spirals
of cotton candy,
dying the sky
with a stretching sigh.

 morning rose
covers everything
with a patient brightness.
another day
of rise and fall.

Bent Angel
(for Raquel)

the bent figure
of a fairy girl
came to me in the box you sent.

with its distant eyes
and delicate lily lines,
one of the wings fell off
just laying there in the box.
like the curved shell
of a tear
she is lost
and found at the same time.

              a secret smile
as she looks down

bent knee
she leans on open hand.

Broken Paper Poem

“When you stop chasing the wrong things, you give the
right things a chance to catch you.”— MJ Garcia

you have to let go
to see things in a different light.
when you tell me to open my eyes,
you try to fix me
you push towards the point of breaking.

I just want someone to see me,
to know the life I know,
lay a whisper on my pillow and dream away
lonely silence.
winter on the ground
love is nowhere to be found.
where is the touch the time has run out.
pretending we’re together,
that’s not enough anymore.
feathers of broken paper
wind around the wind.

Bio

Sarah Calvello is an aspiring writer and City College student in San Francisco.

When John Martin assembled what he regarded as the best of the best of Bukowski’s poetry in the collection The Pleasures of the Damned[i], he included a poem Bukowski had titled simply as cancer and which was written not long before Bukowski’s death from Leukaemia in March 1994:

 cancer

  half past nowhere
alone
in the crumbling
tower of myself

stumbling in this the
darkest
hour

the last gamble has been
lost

as I
reach
for

bone
silence.

Martin was absolutely right to include the poem for it presents two dreaded elements of life: a person’s sense of loneliness in the face of death and death’s termination of communication with those one loves. The narrator who is soon to slip out of time has in the confusion of suffering lost track of time for he[ii] is ‘half past nowhere’. Loneliness is profound for the word ‘alone’ occupies its own line. There is no one to share ‘the/darkest/hour’. The narrator’s death is his own to face: no one can die his death for him or join him in it. ‘The ‘last gamble’, or the last efforts to remain alive, ‘has been/lost’. All that remains is the finality of the grave’s ‘bone death’ where the narrator’s decomposing corpse will write, speak and hear no more words.

cancer possesses extraordinary power, not only because of its title and theme, but because of its concision that is so unlike much of what Bukowski wrote. A Bukowski poem will often, though not always, sprawl across the page with the loose informality and rhythmic drawl of the bar room raconteur confident of his or her audience’s rapt interest. Here, the lines have become taut and gushing fluency has been pruned to the minimum of words. The poem therefore does not overwhelm with words and images. It achieves its devastating effect through what it implies or leaves unsaid, for with such a diagnosis emotions can lie deep and are therefore not easily bridled to words. The poem is still in the form of Bukowski’s trade mark free verse, but is presented in the rhythm not of conversation plied with whiskey, but the terseness that comes from sober pain. It could be regarded too as a concrete poem, for it is thin like the corpses of cancer victims often are and thin as the bone the grave strips them too.

The poem is personally moving because it reminds me of my father who died of cancer in 1991. Not long before he died, I remember waking in the night and going downstairs to fetch a glass of water and finding him sitting on the sofa and staring through the parted curtains of the living room window into the dark. He was physically weak and no doubt had stumbled through ‘this the/darkest/hour’ to find somewhere to reflect on his past and his future, and to avoid waking my mother who had to leave for work early the next day. I asked him if he were okay, and he said yes and he told me to go back to bed and sleep for he did not want me to worry. Perhaps he did not want his meditations to be disrupted by me. Perhaps he found such sudden intimacy with me after a lifetime of polite distance uncomfortable. Though unlike Bukowski in so many ways (my father never drank, never gambled on horses and remained with one woman all his life­) my father too had become a ‘crumbling/tower’, and was reflecting during the lonely watches of the night on reaching ‘for/bone/silence.’ My father was also unlike Bukowski in that he was not a poet, found writing difficult and had at times a stammer. But he attained something akin to Bukowskian fluency when he spoke as his last words a beautiful image twice: plenty of water, plenty of water.

Writer Bio:

Peter Harris is a teacher of English and is studying for a PhD in the history of the First World War with De Montfort University in Leicester, England.

Astro-Intoxication

Artwork by Christine Dennis

    Allure
By Kira Henderson

Watch while I move across the room
Coming closer
Seductively slivering
Coming closer
Intent fully enticing
Coming closer
Watch while I move my hands across my skin
Coming closer
Softly skimming
Coming closer
Barely brushing
Coming closer
Watch while I move my gaze to yours
Coming closer
Smokey smoldering
Coming closer
Peering piercing
Coming closer
Smell the fragrance swiped on my wrist
Coming closer
Feel the warm breeze from my breath
Closer
Hear the rhythm of my beating heart
Closer
Closer
So close
You are paralyzed
Stuck in my widow’s web
Watch as I pass you by
Linger in my
Allure.

Bios:

Poet:

Kira Henderson discovered her love for poetry when she found a collection of Nikki Giovanni’s works on the shelf of her Middle School library.  She immersed herself in the readings of Nikki, Maya, Langston and every other Black American poet she could find.  The day she picked up a pen and wrote her very first rhyme her world would be forever changed.  Kira writes poetry that challenges the readers thought process with her clever metaphors and battles the heart with her passionate outlook on love.

Artist:

  Christine Dennis is a USC graduate born and raised in Eagle Rock, CA. She is a creative producer and story analyst in the film industry. She pursues her art and poetry hobbies with great passion. Christine constantly explores the universe, nature, and the human condition with her art.

I
On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity
This is the month, and this the happy morn
Wherein the Son of Heav’n's eternal King,
Of wedded Maid, and Virgin Mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing,
That he our deadly forfeit should release,
And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.

II
That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty,
Wherewith he wont at Heav’n's high council-table,
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
He laid aside, and here with us to be,
Forsook the courts of everlasting day,
And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.

III
Say Heav’nly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein
Afford a present to the Infant God?
Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain,
To welcome him to this his new abode,
Now while the heav’n, by the Sun’s team untrod,
Hath took no print of the approaching light,
And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?

IV
See how from far upon the eastern road
The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet:
O run, prevent them with thy humble ode,
And lay it lowly at his blessed feet;
Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet,
And join thy voice unto the angel quire,
From out his secret altar touched with hallowed fire.

Christmas Trees
by Robert Frost

(A Christmas Circular Letter)

The city had withdrawn into itself
And left at last the country to the country;
When between whirls of snow not come to lie
And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove
A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,
Yet did in country fashion in that there
He sat and waited till he drew us out
A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.
He proved to be the city come again
To look for something it had left behind
And could not do without and keep its Christmas.
He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;
My woods—the young fir balsams like a place
Where houses all are churches and have spires.
I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas Trees.
I doubt if I was tempted for a moment
To sell them off their feet to go in cars
And leave the slope behind the house all bare,
Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.
I’d hate to have them know it if I was.
Yet more I’d hate to hold my trees except
As others hold theirs or refuse for them,
Beyond the time of profitable growth,
The trial by market everything must come to.
I dallied so much with the thought of selling.
Then whether from mistaken courtesy
And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether
From hope of hearing good of what was mine,
I said, “There aren’t enough to be worth while.”

“I could soon tell how many they would cut,
You let me look them over.”

“You could look.
But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them.”
Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close
That lop each other of boughs, but not a few
Quite solitary and having equal boughs
All round and round. The latter he nodded “Yes” to,
Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,
With a buyer’s moderation, “That would do.”
I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so.
We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,
And came down on the north.

He said, “A thousand.”

“A thousand Christmas trees!—at what apiece?”

He felt some need of softening that to me:
“A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars.”

Then I was certain I had never meant
To let him have them. Never show surprise!
But thirty dollars seemed so small beside
The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents
(For that was all they figured out apiece),
Three cents so small beside the dollar friends
I should be writing to within the hour
Would pay in cities for good trees like those,
Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools
Could hang enough on to pick off enough.
A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had!
Worth three cents more to give away than sell,
As may be shown by a simple calculation.
Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter.
I can’t help wishing I could send you one,
In wishing you here with a Merry Christmas.