TOT O' RUM FOR YER MUM, A NOTEPAD FOR YER DAD
Sing high! Sing low! Ho ho!
Splendid green leopards
Thread, Oh! Marsh shepherds
Splendid green leopards
Flick silly, nicky pastry
Delectable grass creatures
Of filigree rabid features
Delectable grass creatures
Go westerly, cummerbund
Flame-toed three boffins
Magnolia bland coffins
Flame-toed three boffins
Throw blowflies a stick
Menace five period costumes
Suck a sweetie, suck a sweetie
Grow feathers, grow plumes
My budgie's called Petie
Dig your nails in batter
Push a button, push a button
It doesn't really matter
Eat anything but mutton
Feed me to the nine-o-nine
Pull a cracker, pull a cracker
Dip a quill in turpentine
Have a chorus of "Frere Jacques'
Pink things in my pockets
Tiddly thing, tiddly thing
Put wires on bronze lockets
Listen to the pimplies sing:
Ho! Hee Hee!
La! Loo Hat!
Tell me, Smelting Woman
Waddya think of that?
As I turned the corner into The Avenue, I realised the birds were no longer singing. I mopped my brow and sighed heavily with relief - at least they hadn't stopped Mondays...
...And so I sit here, Shinpad The Sailor, all alone in my room, parching my underwear with cardboard. I listen to the flowers - have you heard the kind of things they say? No, really! Did you know that plants don't actually like Baby Bio? Make you think, doesn't it? My friend promised he'd pop round sometime next October... Ladies and gentlemen, my tribute to Kafka... Hup! Now the other leg!...
Look into the bedroom, Sharon's turned into a pencil! Oh no! In the lounge, look! My brother's a video game!... A man who collects Victorian bed linen is called a Pelganist. Dog soldier, roll me over, Bonio! Cat Stevens licks anything - he's the cream!... Ant Mixture irons out embarrassing wrinkles in your lawn. The Great Opossum sleeps through anything you can do... Expanding spanner, branches everywhere, seeks similar, any kind, must be green... GENTLEMEN, I GIVE YOU... THE PLASTERBOARD BROCHURE
Look out, Jeff! Melanesians!... Phew! Fortunately, I was wearing my OGUS Safety Helmet, Top British Standard, as used by the BBC and totally undetectable in everyday use... Look out, Dennis! Two-thirds of an extinct eel!... Warning! - Do not give up FUN for ART! Me, I sit in my dark green room, listening to the sound of rain in my watch...
Christmas is coming and the geese
Are worth two in the bush
A stitch in time... WRRRRR! CLICK! No moss!
Herds of sheep fly south for the winter
BUZZZZ! WHOOOOSH! BUZZZ! CLICK!
My metaphors mixed by my Melanesian mind
In monochrome Moulinex mode.
Oh Watford! Have you ever stopped to think (between bouts of heavy lunch-hour traffic) about your health? Is it natural for a city (Yes, Watford, CITY, not town or village!)... for a city, such as you, not to go jogging?
Have you heard of Watfordshire Puddle Cranjing? It's an old tradition, celebrated throughout Watfordshire, on the last Friday in October. Revellers march to the High Street, blowing simple hooters. It is traditional for an art student from Fareham to lead the march. The marchers wear red bands round their waists. On reaching the High Street, everyone gathers round a puddle.
The leader of the march then says, "Merry Folk of Watfordshire! I blow my hooter thrice, that you may hear my call! (He blows his hooter the requisite number of times) Since the Crusades of old, we have Cranjed the puddles of Watfordshire! All company present! We shall put our left feet in the water and blow a long call on our sacred hooters!"
There is a sustained volley of hooting (and splashing), after which, all revellers shall cry forth "Hail King Richard!"
The leader then says, "We now step out of the Great Symbolic Sea and blow our hooters thrice!"
They do so, then the leader announces, with great conviction, "CRANJE THE SEA!"
All sound their hooters at random, then the gathering replies, "CRANJE THE SEA!"
Then they go home.
DIDN'T I SEE YOU AT PARADIGM '73?
We analyse the twentieth-century phenomenon that is OUR CHUM! Amused, amazed and quite astounded, when he beats the verbal drum, no chum could have done this! Ohm Eye Guard! It's horrendous! Which scumsucker melted the snowman and drank his head? Own up, you bastards! Strange minions from the drugged pinnacle lear sanctimoniously on the masses, evading the point, which is "Which is?" Which group of Little America wants this pisshole in the snow? No one does, you tired scribbler, go get extinct! Go "en Afrique" and slaughter, you deserve it. Go fuck apes - even they don't need your shit! All fucked up and no trousers, smear your shit for the audience's amusement in Arcadia Ego. Just what does the twentieth-century glamour girl need?
I think you will find my terms extremely reasonable. Chrome carbon barber, look like a leaping lemur, while the astronauts go past my darling daughter. Any daughter oughta - beyond dreams, any desire is possible, any pleasure drained, any lust bled.
Weren't you nervous on Golgotha, Monty Finniston? Did not Scafell seem threatening, much more so than Lake Coniston? Back now our CHUM OF CHUMS with, we beat the wild geese. Insensible against a log, bulk transport at half-cost. Tradition stems from legends well, dryness gathers back above the tideline.
Just another dunlin scuttling for the waves, wells and microbes. Just another wave dodging the flotsam. Just another... it never ends, does it? Superman will now sing, using his throat.
Like a night-time sleepy dreaming in your company,
While in the most repulsive rat-filled septic tanks
Without you
And like the famous chicken at the curb
I wait in anticipation
For intensive verbalizations
In the organically-grown
Letraset emporium of names.
By the bookcase,
In the candlelight
Stands my Grandpa's
Battered pipe,
Gnawed by sets
Of ill-fitting teeth.
For fifty years or more,
Grandmama
Would oft extinguish
That honest, noble briar,
When Grandad blew
Instead of sucked
And caught his beard on fire.
LOOKING AT THE WORLD THROUGH LEAD-COVERED GLASSES
Start here... "Nothing good ever came out of water!" said the Quack-A-Hoot. The beech trees are shining like test tubes, the demented King lazes on a wrecked barley chair. The air is heavy with thin lines and the Queen hugs a picture of the Waldorf Astoria... She mumbles softly into an Irish linen trumpet... Spudiado! Spudiado! Spudiado!
The moon slides through the upturned rice field, Billy wakes up in a pool of soft blood, the pictures on the castle walls drip slowly onto good Quack-A-Hoot's hat. Forty-six years ago, the prostitute had a rubber foot, but that was Berlin and the fat man in the white scarf... it's a metallic blue Mercedes with "Zee" written on the side in felt-tip Americans. This novel is true, only every single word and every single idea has been changed to protect the innocent...
Oh crumbs! I've got two thumbs!
Oh heck! I've got one neck!
Oh no! I've got more than one toe!
Oh cripes! I've got two windpipes!
Oh Mum! I've got a bum!
Oh blimey! My tongue is slimey!
"Hi Mom! Is that me? Come on in and burn your legs on the fire. Would you believe it - I've just won the Olympics in the Valley of the Skulls!"
The demented King has multi-coloured eyes, he doesn't wear his crown because the dangers of static electricity lurk behind his wrecked barley chair. All the horses are munching quartz rhubarb under the wondrous canopy of dry jelly dreams. Chameleon children shoot out six-mile tongues into mountatains of cold blue chalcedony ice. Black rabbits flood from the sticky lungs of two-hundred-zillion living garden ornaments. Don't switch on that light, it might wake the monster! Tell me a joke about a baboon, tie your legs to a piece of rope and balance Neptune on the end of your nose. Draw a slogan on a recruitment poster - THE ARMY NEEDS YOUR BODY!
Wolf Girl! Wolf Girl!
On m'appelle du loupe!
Wolf Girl! Wolf Girl!
On m'appelle du loupe!
Your appearance says it all for you...
The rats come down to drink in the morning... they're not ordinary rats... they're peculiar rats... peculiar morning rats... The morning is peculiar too, because it only lasts for a flicker and then it goes away... Look out! There's a comedian! (GIBBON! GIBBON! GIBBON!)
Brushing your hair makes your brain grow, drinking paraffin puts brains in your stomach. You walk into the bathroom and brushing your teeth sounds like a symphony of lead bells in your eyes... so there is life in the toilet, waiting to be discovered amongst the Rolo wrappers and discarded fingers. A Spanish waiter met me later with my alligator called Mike.
But now it's time to put on your overalls and dig for saucers in a kaolin mine. While other people stand on windy street corners and say "She taught me how to yodel, Yodel-ay-it-eee!", you have to dig for saucers with rude noises written on them. One man's scandal is another man's holiday in `Love Cement', another man's sulphuric acid nasal spray. A nasal laser beam with a pulsation, understood by fudge mathematicians on a cold stage in town. All of human life is here... in this bucket.
A gondola of bears floats by my window, the silver steam from their toy breath curls gently into the wings of my telescope. They seem to be eating the Gulfstrem, but were really eating a local radio station between two matresses. Things are never what you think they are, when you're searching for saucers in a kaolin mine.
A TOUCHING STORY OF WOODLAND FOLK
Once upon a time, in a land far, far... quite near, there lived some trousers called Dave. Dave lived quite alone, apart from conjugal visits from a pair of shoes called Sh and Oes. The dead shrimp on the table stared up at me, with cold black eyes, it seemed to be saying NOTHING!
One day, after Dave had just finished inserting his turn-up into a piece of shining leather, there was a knock at his front door. Dave was surprised by this, because didn't have a door. Dave endeavoured to carry on this pointless story by finding out who it was.
And wasn't he shocked and stuned (sic) to realise that it was, in fact, none other than ROCKY RACCOON, a crap character in a Beatles song.
"My My!" said Dave, "I thought you'd died next to Gideon's Bible!"
"Oh," said Rocky, "that was just a part which I played... but I took it as far as it would go."
"Wow! That's interesting!" replied Dave. "Now f**k off and leave me alone!"
Rocky did just that and Dave went off to perform acts of gross indecency with the shoes... And so ends this heart-warming tale of mentally-deficient folk.
I am your uncle, you are my auntie...
Be my Auntie Tina,
I'll make it worth your while!
(You know she can't be cleaner
With her winning smile!)
THE DAILY STEREOTYPE REINFORCER SKETCH (OVER THE TELEPHONE)
Or "Life With The Totally Unsuitable Ethics of Fleet Street - A Cautionary Tale"... I can hear a bus... Trestle table! Trestle table! Trestle table! ...So this bloke goes into a police station and says, "I wish to turn myself in, Officer." "Certainly Sir, but on what charge?" enquires the desk sergeant. "Why, Officer, I'm the Surrey Puma!" says the man. "...Name: Puma... Address: Surrey... you're a long way from home, old chap," says the sergeant. "I'm on holiday!" explains the man claiming to be a puma. "Fair enough!" says the sergeant, "But you don't seem to fit the description we have here, Sir - approximately three feet long, large cat, very dark in colour..." "I've grown a beard since then!" replies the man.
A TRADITIONAL JAPANESE LEGEND
In the Garden of One Million Stones, high above the Juniper Forest, sat a wise monk called Tokay Haiku. It was his task to rearrange the stones every morning at daybreak, for he was a Zen Buddhist and the secrets of the cosmos would one day be spelled out in rock capitals before him.
Tokay Haiku was a patient man which, under the circumstances, was fortunate. He knew it would take an infinite number of monks as long as it takes for the rain to turn to dust, before the correct phrase or saying would become apparent.
So, to while away the incarnations, Tokay taught his pet monkey, Hanuman, to blow smoke-rings.
"Look Monkey, draw on your cigarette deeply and then, using your yogic throat control, emit short, strong puffs of smoke."
"I can't do it, Tokay!" coughed the monkey, "It makes me feel dizzy and sick!"
"You've got the fag round the wrong way round, you twerp! You put the filter in your mouth!"
"I think I'm going to throw up, Tokay! Eeeeeeuuuuurrrrgggghhh!"
"When the sun rises above the sacred pagoda, I'll take five and get a bottle of Dettol and a bucket, for you have obscured the universe with sick."
"That's awfully Zen of you, Tokay, thanks!"
"YOU'RE going to clean it up, Monkey King!"
"Why?"
"It's your mess!"
"It was your bloody cigarette!"
"You speak in riddles, Monkey King!"
"No I don't!"
"We will settle this by the flip of a coin, Ape Monarch! Have you got any five yen bits?"
"Yes! And I'll toss! Heads or tails?"
"Heads!"
"It's tails!"
"Best of three, Champion of Chimps!"
"No! I've got a better idea, Tokay! We will each try to guess the weight of the universe."
The monk and the monkey wrote their estimates on a goat-skin scroll and sat by the Garden of One Million Stones, waiting for the answer. Spring followed summer... and autumn followed winter... and the blue snows melted... and the eagles landed, had babies, took off again and, finally, pegged out... and still, the monk and the monkey waited... until they both got ZEN-ophobia and went back to their day-jobs.
THEME PORK
Snakes and apes and thumbs and ropes
Cock-eyed bees and hollow popes
And racks and racks of fronts and backs
X-Lax! X-Lax! X-Lax! X-Lax!
It's a multi-storey wildlife park
Full of zebras, snakes and apes
Eating metaphysical stripes
Of zinc...
Just think!
Zinc!
He's a wierd kind of monkey
And he don't like food mixers
Clang!
Dink! Dink! Dink! Dink! Dink!
That's the sound of zinc...
I think!
Cock-eyed bees ride solid soaps
To see the sound of hollow popes
And all the hollow popes sing,
Zinc!
I think!
Zinc!
Blue pink!
Black!
Front and back!
In a theme pork
Extreme theme pork
Ex-dream theme pork
Where post-industrial shaver magnates
Ring bells and cry
UN-GREEN!
Unseen theme pork
For riding on the micro-waves
And surfing through hot autoclaves
Oh yes Baby!
They are my nostrils!
In Dublin's fair city, where the chips are so gritty, I first met the tart they call Bad Breath Malone. What a gross lady she is! She was so vile she wore dead spiders and elastic bands on her legs! Eeeeeaaaaccchhh!
'Concurs' is an agreeable game... Dial "B" For Octopus, snuffle for flamethrowers in the vast areas of meringue exposed at low tide and the left of a gyrating slum-beam, with a tramp between every two specks of micro-toaster.
"I have this awful Spain in my Europe, Surgeon General."
"Alright, just lie back and we'll give you something to make you bleep. Look into this one-thousand faceted light-bulb!"
"Y'aint got no seasons to change in, use the dimmer switch instead of salt!"
Pile concrete fauns willy-nilly, camp out on this for months. This nail goes slow to the neutered bench. Time and tiles wait for Gnome "N". Sweet chrome yellow waters of the Yang Tse, stay there while I get my Mao cup, dew-fresh liquid of China, I'm gonna drink you all up. He's the man with the spiteful head! The man with the spiteful head! The man with the spiteful head! He's got an awful lot of street-cred! Have you seen inside his shed? It's full of stolen lead. You'll never see him eating bread. You ask his brother Ted! It's put on with a left-handed thread.
Criss-crossed absurdities in my real handwriting, it's an overhill drive. The soft substitutes in a talking station, where do buses go to get on a train? Boo-Bah Blaby, shake my takeaway with a sticky gravestone and I'll soon forget the Sawdust Chow Mean. Marco Polo was a greasy trekker, the regular guy who had a disease named after him. The Monkees revival starts here...
And that cadence will only be resolved when next week becomes this. Tata and ta for now.
No comments:
Post a Comment