Green men – as grey as stone, All talking with their mouths full, Look in any ancient church And you may find a houseful. Part of the grotesque gallery To keep watch on us mortals – Lurking round the capitals, And hanging from the corbels.
Green men, as Pagan as they sound, As yews and birches, As nature-sprites whose temples got rebuilt As parish churches. Or are they jolly demons, greening Hell And sprouting lies ? They don’t look very evil, though – But rather rustic-wise.
Green men, as vigorous as weeds Where priests don’t mow – Though Jesus doesn’t mind, it seems, Content to let them grow. So are they harvest gods of yore, Or mistletoes in larches ? Or are they merely hunkypunks, To decorate the arches ?
Puffing into Rugby, But this loco’s not a pipe, Shunting on to Inverness, With giant apples, ripe. Rolling out of Derby When the trees are like a fern, Let’s open up the fire-box, And watch the tubas burn. Pulling into Euston, Where the bowler-hatted rain – Then chuffing-up at Templecombe, A spiral-peel of train. She’s right on time, in weathered-black, But never bright cerise – The workhorse of the LMS, From Crewe to mantlepiece.
I don’t want to know If my favourite writer Served time for beating-up his wife. I don’t want to care If a star were a blighter With an ego and a wasted life. Their business is none Of my goddammed business, Their headlines are not worth my time. Only their art is worthy of greatness – Anonymous, timeless, and sublime.
I don’t want to hear If my favourite singer Is a boorish, boozy bro. I don’t want to learn Who’s an avid right-winger Whose works don’t let it show. Spare the biography, Don’t make a movie With kiss-and-tell’s cruellest stains. Only their art, not their story, can move me, Expression free of baggage trains.
I don’t want to make A god of my hero, I don’t want a perfect polished shell – But nor do I need To make them a Nero – I’d rather them faceless, truth to tell. Their interests are none Of my goddammed interest, Their privacy’s vital – as is mine. Only their art – for it shows us their best – And if you treat me the same, that’s fine !
Mentmore Towers by R~P~M (with help from Joseph Paxton & George Stokes who designed the house in the first place).
Mentmore-or-less…
Mentmore Towers, a fortress of a Rothschild – Safeguarding the badlands of the Buckinghamshire wild. You’ve never heard his name, but his face may look familiar – A character performer and Hollywood’s new star – Standing in for Chequers, Gotham City, or a pleasure dome. He’s classical of ornament, though Gothic more than Rome, His facade looking perfectly at home, as you do, And always coming to a screen near you. With O’s within his pediments we know we’ve seen before, Yet we’re facing the unknown when we knock upon his door – Butlers or rock stars or new-money wealth ? He’s a Chilterns Vancouver, playing ev’rybody but himself.
I never understood loopholes, I mean understood it as an actual thing – I get that they’re escapes from laws – But are we then fenced-in by string ? They might have referred to arrow-slits, But they only fit an arrow’s stem. They might be thinking of knotholes, But only secrets can pass through them. The breach in the wall of the castle of law Would be a backdoor, or overhanging beams. So I never understood why ‘loopholes’ at all – Their meaning escapes my logic, it seems.
Flat roofs belong to the Mediterranean, Roofs for sun-decks, cheap to build, For drying the laundry and gazing at stars, Where the gutters have never spilled. But Northern nations need their pitches, Steep and tall and highly skilled.
Forget the tar, that won’t keep rain out, That takes slate and tile and lead – And don’t let snow accumulate, It must be sheer enough to shed. Maybe some dormers, maybe a Mansard, Maybe even thatch instead.
But these days, and since the Georgians, Fashions favour flat and low, Yet walls get wet when eaves are dropped, And the drainpipes overflow. So ev’ry Winter spring the leaks From rain with nowhere to go.
You think you’re it – You think your charm enthrals, You think you’re sharply dressed, All cool unstressed – But you ain’t to me. You think you’re fit – You think you’ve got the balls, You think you’ve got the looks, And the baited hooks – But you ain’t got me.
You’re ev’rything masculine, powerful, and brutish, Ev’rything blandly manly and disputish – What you are is ev’rything wrong with the world, Ev’rything murky with stealth. You’re silent and strong and rigid and mutish, You’re clumsy and loud and blunt and uncutish. What I need is somebody saving the world, By helping me to save it myself.
Is it too much to hope ? Am I too naive and sucked-in ? Can’t anybody save this world from self-destructing ?, When not all of this world can be reached along the ducting, Or humbled with instruction, Or conquered with seduction – We need a man who’s handy, not a grope. And don’t think me too incessant If I find the world more pleasant When the other half is present, and can cope. Is it really, really too much that I hope ?
You got the moves, And you got the toys – Karate and kendo, And endless innuendo – But you ain’t got me. Cos all it proves Is you’re naught but noise – You’ve got no clout Once your bang’s gone out – You are so not me !
You’re ev’rything spying, lying, and deceitful, Ev’rything crooked and counterfeit and cheatful – What you are is ev’rything wrong with the world, Ev’rything cocked and askew. You’re ev’rything uncool and tepid and debacle, Ev’rything Oxbridge and Tory patriarchal – What I need is somebody saving the world – Saving from someone like you.
Is it too much to ask ? Am I being too demanding ? Won’t anybody save this world by understanding ?, When not all of this world is corrupt and underhanding, Or divvied-up and branded, Because of what the Man did, As if it’s only men perform each task… So I trust it’s not too queeny To insist you do not deem me Just a bird in a bikini or a basque. Is it really, really too much that I ask ?
I need a geek – Someone who ain’t so goddam macho, Someone who ain’t so suave and chatshow, Someone who doesn’t grasp and snatch so, Someone who’s gentle without being meek. Someone who can’t use force without balking, Someone who knows his Kant from his Hawking, Someone to save this world by just talking – Someone to be my freak.
I know I’m good, But I’m all alone in knowing, And there’s no-one shares my faith – I know I’m good, But my telephone ain’t blowing, And there’s no-one cares one-eighth. I never meant to be misunderstood, But I can’t make them see it in my neighbourhood – And even a tree has less dead wood than me, I’m just a nobody who knows he’s good, But the world will not agree. I know, I know, I could be mad, A self-deluding lad Who wants to crow – I guess I’ll never let it go…
I know I’m good, But I’m all Jack Jones to know it, And I’m very out of style – I know I’m good, But my funny bones don’t show it, When they just can’t raise a smile. I don’t understand why I’m misunderstood, Like it’s all been planned thus for my victimhood – From Sunderland to Hollywood, I’m panned I’m just a jobbing hand who knows he’s good, But the world is old and bland. I know, I know, I could be wrong, Deluded all along – But I don’t think so. I’ll guess I’ll give it one more go…
All the Summer, she shelters in her studio, Under the North-sent light, As she’s painting a curlew, a bird of the Winter, That, like her, flees when the Sun gets bright. She starts in April, starts from the tail-quills, Nothing but browns and creams – Slowly works forwards as evenings grow later, Until she can hear its call in her dreams.
At five-times life-size, her bird is a monster, A beautiful giant of the fens – With every barb of every feather, More real than in any photographer’s lens. So unlike the shy things they are, them and her, Avoiding the seaside crowds – They to their moorland, her to her studio, Waiting for the safety of the huddle’ing clouds.
By the late of May, she’s mottling the wing, By June, she’s glinting the eye By the height of July, she starts on the beak, As the burning Sun is stoking-up the sky. Inch-by-centimetre, longer and still longer, Polished to perfection as she goes, Longer than a godwit, longer than an avocet – This beak is magnificent, and still its black arc grows !
All through August, she’s stretching it out With the windows wide-open from dawn, Bringing-in the songs of the blackbird and the goldfinch – But the curlew cannot sing until its bill is fully-drawn. Till finally, finally, it tapers to infinity, Just as the September cools the air. She locks up her studio and heads out to the marshes, As the North-sent breezes blow the cobwebs from her hair.
This poem was inspired (but is not directly about) this painting by a friend, Anna Clare Lees-Buckley. She specialises in birds, but unlike the subject she doesn’t master in reclusivity.
A T-Rex guarded the first hole, As we played a round by the beach – Over the hump and round the bend With a club and a scorecard each. Fibreglass limestone hemmed the links With fossil ammonites – While bubbling streams built future cliffs As they laid down chalky whites. Triceratops was present, of course, And cute troodontids too – We admired their feathers as we let Another pair play-on through. The rough was an abandoned nest – The eggs gave a tricky lie. A pterosaur looked-on unimpressed, As my ball refused to fly. The sauropod was a juvenile, The size of a family car, And anchylosaurus raised her club As I came in over par. But the twelfth showed the first sign of trouble, With a draught through the plastic swamp To shake the early magnolias, As I teed-off with a whomp. The fifteenth had a river of lava Splitting the fairway in half – A pachycephy furrowed his dome, As I took a photograph. The seventeenth was watched by several shrews, To no concern. They looked-on patiently as we played, Content to wait their turn. And then, crowning the final hole, Was a crater upon the green – Only a metre across, but still, Here comes the Paleogene… As we finished our round at the end of the world, It felt like the nick of time – Then back to the seagulls along the Prom, And an ice-age ninety-nine.
Rhyming Couplets 