PERFORMANCE POEM - TAKEN FROM A NEW COLLECTION "LIFE IN A SPAR TOWN"

An extract from a performance poem "Mean Little Town" from new collection of poems "Life in a SPAR Town".

Mean 'n' Nasty  Town

There’s something mean  'n' nasty in this nasty little town,

Outsiders feel inclined not to hang around,

For long...

Mean  'n' nasty people living,

Mean  'n' nasty lives,

Mean and nasty backstabbers with mean  'n' nasty knives.

The murmur and the tell-tale stare,

The shibboleth at play,

All roads lead to home,

We’ll point you on your way,

Thanks for buying from our artisans’ stalls

but don’t overdo your stay,

Because this is a local town,

So don’t hang around,

In our nasty tiny town.

Stranger beware, take care,

The still use the N word there - Nantwich.

Through the driving rain to the

Hamlet for the insane,

Don't worry darling,  Ophelia pain.

Like a line drawn in the sand

Now you've crossed the Rio-Grande,

Gary the cooper  won’t help you here,

James is a Jesse,

Custer's a coward

Honour was deflowered years ago,

The badlands beckon so take your last band stand,

You've got till sunset,

Before things get out of hand,

Get the next train out of here,

Don’t delay, be on your way,

Or you’ll come a cropper (or maybe a farmer),

Don't call a copper coz he's on our pay

We’ll give the vigilantes a shout,

Forget the village Inn,  you're out.

In tiny towns they’re impressed by the Express,

Read the Mail without fail,

Wear blue rosettes,

Gymkhana their daughters

Affair the au pair,

Boutique their pets

Range rove the roads,

Spit roast the Barbie,

So please form a barbecue,

All in all in a tiny town there's f**k all else  to do.

There's something mean and nasty in this nasty little town

Nasty little aldermen covet the mayoral crown

Welcome to the chamber

The ermine and the silk

The meanest men and women

There's dozens of their ilk

All butchered bakers, candlestick takers

Used car salesmen,  tax disc fakers

Scrapping metal merchants,

Tinkering tailors,

Low rent undertakers

Self publicising publicans

Troubled glazing traders

Defrocked vicars

Surveyors on the take

Propertied developers

Forever on the make

Shady loan shark operatives

Sell fifty shades of debt

They’ll repossess your shadow

If your payment is not met

The   village in Bloomberg winner

Everyone’s a sinner baby

In this one horse town resort

They gather round the village green to burn the Which Report

BlackBerry picking from your pocket

Is the local sport

You bunch of jodrell bankers

Seems an apt retort

To the sort

Who rule this mean  'n' nasty town.

There’s something mean  'n' nasty in all

Nasty rural towns.

Jack swore Jill was on the pill

The doctor said he'd sort her

A tale of everyday town folk

Cavorting with their daughter.

The art centre’s  run by pricks

The real ale pubs are full of dicks

The town hall staff are uber rude

The cab drivers are f**king crude

The chintzy stores are full of crap

The pastry shop is full of pap

All the roads are full of holes

The garden centre's full of hoes

The Norman church is always closed

The library's only got two books

The council chamber's full of crooks

The music scene is f**king dead

The f**king kids are all inbred

The farmer’s market’s f**king rank

The cafe bars are f**king w*nk

The pot-holed car parks all are locked

The dogging scene is all half-cocked

The tourist board is run by snobs

The rugby club is full of yobs

The sports complex is full of slobs

The migrant workers came for jobs

Took one look and f**ked right off

To a kinder fascist led regime

‘Cause they too know,  when they've seen

A mean  'n' nasty town.

Stephen Evans (c) 2014

BANSHEE

A guilty secret - darn - no longer a secret!

THE GREAT DISCONNECT

The great disconnect

The modern home's technology,

Surpasses Houston's haughty glory,

More science in a  mobile phone,

Than brought the lunar heroes home.

Where has your

Mighty Cape of super heroes gone?

Where now your island of the Titans?

Forbidden, verboten!

To we mere mortals,

Yet in the Land of the Free

Talos like your,

Statue of Liberty,  

Looms over all,

In its limitless generosity,

Welcoming Nazi refugees,

To blast the bellows of Vulcan's forge.

Technology rich in tinted Ray-Ban excess,

Hackneyed Press-Corp hacks,

Covet the cake-stand coiffured wives who,

Ornament slick haired men with serious faces,

Slick lives, slick cars, slick homes, slick pools,

Slick talk in the land of shtick,

Tick-tock,         

Check their wristwatch,

From the confines of convertibles,

Camped around the circling swamps,

Earth’s present preferred master-race,

Await celestial countdown.

Nearby. where advert hoardings herd,

Round, endless realms of real estate,

The stench of road-kill chokes the air,

Carrion and pink gum mosaics

The twenty-seventh state,

Splatters like cartoon blood.

Pop!  

Jaws drop in awe,

Before the distant turret towers,

From which the rocket powers to

Leave primeval pull of Earth,

Jet stream scream,

Birds fall silent,

Boosters steam,

In the distance,

In midstream.

Alligators feign indifference.

Where is your bronze-tanned God that met his fate,

Too late, late, late, the season of the year?

In gun toting Texas's,

Deepest heart,

Lover of Frost,

And Monroe.

Graves gives no account,

Of deities dying by the  sniper’s sudden

Sting.  

Pop, splat, magazine art,

The fallen God forever explodes in a haze of gory,

Super-8 reels away from the terror of that day,

Unfolds the tragic fall of venal yet great men,

Of deities dying amid the public glare,

Upon the winding plains and grassy knolls,

Look on y’all ye mighty and take great care.

To whom you speak, if witness to such strange events.

Where is your Arthur?

Sailed on to Avalon and left his tearful,

Guenevere  and Camelot a state,

And yet his dead-hand guides the levers still,

Oh captain! my captain!

The dead-hand sanctions the thrust and drive,

Towards the holy grail,

Of a country that space cannot contain.

Houston and that bubble-gum world laid now bare,

Traduced the tiny square through which,

A squinting world could see through sets,

The mighty three,

Make history,

That took one giant step etc. etc.

Way back in sixty nine,

Events so very black and white as when the UK,

Staying up all night, in fairness fuelled as much by fright,

As curiosity, that perhaps we had,

Disturbed some sleeping alien-race,

When in effect, we had disturbed, a sleeping desire,

By the dawn’s early cathode-light,

Something to inspire, embedded in,

That trinity, footprint annealing, surface memory,

So once profound, space bound,

Soundless trumpeted,

An era of exploration,

And heightened expectation,

Across the nations of the world.

They travelled in their god-named tube,

Argonaut or astronaut,

Theseus and Jason would approve,

Pandora like, Prometheus was unboxed that night,

Earth shattering moment we all shared,

Huddled around our tiny cube,

Unlocked, we raised our heads above,

The rat-run mazes of

Our troubled-lives, and for one moment,

Re-found our dreams re-read the stars, and

Aping our ancestors,

Stared in awe.

I was four.  

By seventeen, the seasons and the seventies had turned to fall,

The world switched off indifferent.  The grail lay rusted,

The  gravity of mistrust had crushed the poet heart,

Icarus crashed into the ground, shaken to the core,

Earth hoarded all her heroes for her own,

Her wayward children, firmly grounded in her home,

And alien accountants landed and spake only of costs

And bribed the temple-guards, to look the other way,

While they stole the treasures we had shared,

And gave them to their only kin,

The money-lenders and their money spending whores,

And built a calf of gold to worship, to

Polish and admonish those that,

Would not share their ways,

And false gods forbad  self-sacrifice and society,

And false gods mocked

Public duty and the common cause,

And false gods bade us dream only of 
Things that hands could hold,

And mouth could chew and drool its 
Crudest wants so visible,

Our sights dragged down from starlit hope,

Dreams tilted, tumbled, crashed, in smoke,

Dreams bought and sold by bears and bulls.

The blinded people’s heavy hearts,

Punctured, burst and leaden, led,

Helot like, in chains, the yoke,

Re-borne, the social contract broke,

Mission over, vision dead.

In agoras not yet conceived,

This tragic tale they will unweave,  of

How we lost the sense in why,

However hopeless it may seem,

We must always share the dream,

However distant, however high,

We must, stretch and strain and try,

To reach and touch,

The ever stardust-pregnant sky.

Stephen Evans 2014