I Remember John Peel

 

Somewhere in the north of England

Trying hard to be a teenager

Arthur Scargill had been crushed

And Margaret Thatcher proved that there

Were more important things

Than being lonely

CND badges were pinned

On our school blazers but somehow

We felt The Bomb was on our side

Because it left nowhere for anyone to hide

And we looked forward to the day

When we could take our O-Levels

And all sign on the dole

And every morning the whole world

Stopped dead for Simon Bates’ ‘Our Tune’

But in our bedrooms late at night

We tuned the dials of our transistor

Radios until

Through all the fuzz and static of

The mediumwave signal we

Could hear the clatter of guitars

A singer with an accent just like ours

A band that would be playing in

The next town on, in weeks to come

And then a voice came through

As dry as matches

Starting a slow fire

Yes, I remember John Peel

And things seemed better then

 

I swapped some comics for a tape recorder

Sat it right next to the speaker

Captured all the sessions and

Then took them proudly into school

Where everyone said that they were just noise

But some of us sat in the corner

Talking about our band and how

One day we’d make a demo of our

Ten watt bedroom punk explosion

Send it to the BBC

Where John might hear it and we knew

That if he liked it he might play it

On the air and offer us

A session there and then

And we would get the train to London

With our guitars and our drums

Yes, I remember John Peel

And all the things he did for you and me

 

And then one day when FM came

We couldn’t get it for the hills

So I left home to study at

A polytechnic in the city

Never paid my Poll Tax, John

And I still played guitar and sang

And even though you never played my demos

Even when I burnt them on CDs

It doesn’t matter

I’m still proud that I once shook your hand

And now some people have

A million songs downloaded

In a space you cannot see

And radio is digital

And wireless is just some connection

That you find in cafe bars but

Somewhere there is still Peel Acres

Somewhere there’s a shed that houses

Creaking shelves of vinyl records

Somewhere there’s a voice like matchsticks still

Still striking sparks

Do you remember John Peel?

Well I do

Slow News Day

 

Entangled in a false mythology

We hurry blindly to the grave

Barely waking but for

Occasional glimpses of the light

We have built a vast cacophony

Identical in contradiction

To keep us sleeping, hypnotised

So we can murder and perpetuate

Abomination idly

The games we play distract us from

The taste of our own blood

Each Day is a Doorway

 

Walk like a cat

Through tumbling dreams of ascension

Wear your hairdo like a halo

Let go of your ego

And wake up singing

Lie in the arms of the one that you love

Flow with the Mojo

Be gratefully laughing

Wonder at all your illusions

And know you’re invisible

Choose what to lose and be glad

That you got here at all

The angels are naked

The tollbooth is empty

The road is a river of mirrors and light

A Day Like Today

 

The woollen sky that warms

This chipboard town

Betrays no answers to

The mystery below

Our shadows lengthen

On the walls between us

We never stop to wonder

Where the light is coming from

I Bought A Guide

I bought a guidebook to a foreign land

I took it home and read it, savouring

The rich descriptions of the rivers

Forests, mountain peaks

And sumptuous valleys

All the manifest delights

Of this far country’s landscape

And I read about the people

And their customs and their culture

All were as a revelation to me

Noble, proud and so in tune

With my own temperament I wished

Quite fervently that I lived in

That land so far away

And so to recapture that feeling

I went out and bought

Another guidebook

Took it home and read it through

And was transported once again

Though not, admittedly, quite as before

And partly through desire for more

Delight, and partly to assuage

My secret disappointment I bought

Guidebook after guidebook

Trying increasingly in vain

To recapture that first initial thrill

Of sheer discovery

But alas instead the feeling

Faded with each book I bought

Each page I turned, and so instead

I sought a sad solace

In building up a fine collection of

Those guidebooks on my shelves

Arranged pristinely in an esoteric order

I devised, they were perhaps

The finest near-complete collection

Of guides to that foreign land

Assembled in our country and

So it was I spent my time and money

And these many years I’ve sat at home

Admiring my collection

Occasionally still I might

Take down a guidebook, usually

The very first one that I bought

(It’s still my favourite)

And turn its pages with a sweet

And tender melancholy

Recalling my passion for

That foreign land

And all that it contained and represented

Then I’ll smile and shake my head

Grow weary

Place the book back on the shelf

And turn away

To draw the curtains closed

Against the night

Poppies

 

Poppies from the pavement

Burning red against the breezeblock

Screaming at the acid cold of dawn

As I walk wearily to work

Scattered promises along the roadside

Charm the morning buses into shame

At feeding us to factories and offices

As all the while these seaside dreamers whisper

‘Life is more than this’

And silently invite us to

Remember our own death

The Grades of Love

 

I am studying

The mysteries of sex

By opening the textbooks of your thighs

I am turning the pages

And entering

The school of your flower

I am learning to banish

The ghosts between us

The static in the Song of Songs

To penetrate the algebra

Of sin and shame and skin

To break down all

The constructs of repression

With this geometry of freedom

The angle of our bodies joined

Suggest new forms and possibilities

And it may take

A thousand years

Before I can begin to understand

The study hall is long and dark

The discipline is harsh

But I am ready

6 Margaret Close

Tangerine skirting board

The fingerless mandrake screams

Ride a goodbye cycle through the seasons

Changing reasons

Needing to be safe at home again

On Primrose Hill

Looking back upon that night

With London laid before us like some

Jungle lit with burning eyes

I felt the terrible

And endless beauty of the world

Was pressing down upon me

Vicious colours forged by light

The absolute reality of things

The intricate patterns made by nature and

The often sublime imitations made by man

It all belonged to us

Vivid in the mist and lamplight

Even in the way we smiled and moved

The colour of our clothes, the way

They crumpled creased around us

And then across the twilight London park

I heard the roar of elephants

 

They called to me, as vast and strange

As my own dreams, as wild

And as frustrated in their cages

As I was in my skin

With all my senses straining for release I felt

The need to shriek out all my fears and secret insecurities

Explode and burn ecstatic in the night

And filled with holy hermit knowledge I

Ran down to the outside of the zoo

Thinking taboo crazy mystical-type thoughts

I knew I was the centre of the universe

And everything was to be found within me

All the ancient mysteries

And all my questions about good and evil

Life and death and destiny

I knew all the answers, as I’d always known them really

In a surge of instant understanding

I was in the moment, finally

But for a moment only-

 

Why could I not accept myself?

Why could I never get beyond

The iron fence

Or break through to the other side?

Now, looking back upon that night

On which I seem so young

It seems as though a door had opened in the cage

And that I should have leapt through it and kept on running

From up on Primrose Hill, through the city and the night

Never forgetting

Never stopping

Never looking back

At Head-On Warren

 

Leave the road

And disappear into the hedgerows

Climb up through a canopy of trees

A bramble bower

Passage through a dream of night

A new sun waits upon the other side

The stolen holy light

Upon the purple earth

The rocky craters, strange formations

Here above all meaning

The mist that comes in quickly cross the cliffs

Like some pagan enchantment calling to be born

Below us lies the world

A failed amusement park

We stand upon the ancient dead

Upon the edge of land and life

And suddenly the sea and sky are merged before us

Infinite and awful, empty

Broken by the jagged towers of rock

Like savage cries that penetrate

The murderous silence…