It was the tattoo that told me all
a collar of S’s on his Staffie
disgust
I’d inscribe on its back to let it scream
the Sun in Splendour! the Neon Cross!
no excesses! no German! no bloody quotations!
just the right size in the right place
– now that’s what I call ein gutes Gedicht!
We’re all going to hell in a handcart
the little one sang so I relented then, a bit
the air reeked of buddleia & country-rock as well
the signs of an English summer as it all turns to kitsch
I accept no responsibility
not for your choices now
a true radical poetry can’t be written in English
what it utters cost too many lives
Is there any language where the word for “blood”
does not thrill you to the heart w/ all that’s lost?
OK, that’s what the dog said, & it knows
– not as a concept but a syrupy smell
yeah, like summer, like poetry, like radical chic
coming back again & again & sticking to us, oozing
to loopily annoy our skin
I won’t hurt it now
Encrust it all with gore! stick its Staffie head
on top of Bassett’s Pole – know nothing but hate
coating me up like ancient gloss paint – tacky
my eyes water for the little children covered with our hate
our excesses scar their lives already
what we lost in our long war with ourselves
gone absolutely: time for total strip out
I’m sorry about the dog
not it’s fault either
chuck the rubbish maybe & then get digging
Nothing holding us here once the dog’s dead – let’s
steal away, far from the buddleia, now, the salvia
all the chrysanthemums & dahlias that flock & flutter
they give me no pleasure
no understanding or ignorance
just gardeners filled with joy at their plugging of the void
I ought to like this world & trust but don’t
who would?
time to stop killing dogs, then maybe to get some fun
Bassett’s Pole: passed by the road between Staffordshire & London, and a suitable spot for ancient rage against Staffies to be vented.