I don't recall a greeting - mere entreating us for money
Why 'twas clear, we were only here on someone else's terms
Shovelled rudely from the gangway, eyed up coldly, then benignly
tolerated as they packed us in like pachyderms!
While minstrels, brittle not with butterflies but advanced age
gurning like the floor beneath them churned with worms,
blundered and barged back and forth from the stage
and did not read poems at all, but 'perms'!
'Perms?' Our fellow, Paul, searched for Kevin Keegan
But hair was sparse as venison in the larder of a vegan.
Not a one of the assembled seemed to care for the parade
With rigid grins they sat - I pondered each unswerving gaze
And they applauded gratefully when every 'pert' awayed
Was this some kind of day-trip for residents of Strangeways?
I should have lunged like Rimbaud when that lady of good breeding
stooped to softly chide, "We do not talk during the reading!"
And I was merely whispering a query - how exceeding-
ly rude! If I'd a rapier, I'd soon have sent her bleeding
from the elbow or arse, while old farts leapt to restrain me
(or rather, rose stiffly in an effort to detain me,
like Gandalf in Bullet Time, or traffic in Slough when it's rainy,
like an astronaut expiring, or a blind McDonald's trainee.)
I should have stood on a table like that rumbunctious heathen
after drawing blood from the harridan, and bellowed, "Evenin'!
I couldn't help but noticing that, though this tavern's heavin'
It's slightly less enjoyable than your average cave-in.
And having made that observation, I think I'll be leavin'."
Then carving my way through the impasse of buggers
I'd furnish our escape from the hole that they'd dug us
Out from this drug den of upmarket muggers
And into the busy streets of Earl's Court above us.
It would then, were I a tommy, be the perfect occasion
to yank a pin out with my teeth, and toss a small grenade in
the trench from which we had emerged, shout, "Fire in the hull!"
And put an end to that underground legion of the dull.
Alas, we only waited. Then went out, crept aloft.
Advanced homeward via rail, our clothes tiredly doffed.
All that I can do is say to every poet-toff.
Fuck off. Just fuck off. I am sorry, but fuck off.
