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John Whitworth
STONE VARIATIONSHe moved by night. He went alone.
He crept through corridors of stone
Into her reveries of bone.He’d drawn a blank. The bird had flown.
His friends were fled, his cover blown
And this time he was on his own.In Peter’s Chair the Pope was Joan.
She cursed him in an undertone:
You reap the crap that you have sown.He wouldn’t listen to the crone.
He heard his own testosterone.
Out there beyond the panic zoneThe night was right as pheromone,
A scattering of starlight thrown
Across the void of the unknown,The wind became a sousaphone
Beneath the howling of the drone,
His homicidal chaperon.Her wildernesses overgrown,
Her staunch, indomitable moan,
He guessed, though he was never shown.He moved by night. He went alone.
THE SPIDER SONNET‘The solution to pollution is not eating spiders’: Newspaper headline
The solution to pollution is to stop ingesting spiders,
Just say no to the arachnida that copulate inside us,
How they pullulate and ovulate, the octopod articulate,
Auriculate, testiculate and oft times unguiculate,
The narrative of nightmare and the stuff of holy terror,
They’re the creatures that convince you all your life has been an error.
So you’re sicker than a parrot and you wish that you were dead?
Just you wait till they migrate and drill themselves into your head.
Creepy-crawly, creepy-crawly with a subtle sideways motion,
Some detestable detritus from the bottom of the ocean,
Something feral, fanged and furry with a flush of nasty habits,
Now they’re ferreting like ferrets, now they’re rabbitting like rabbits,
Now they’re occupying occiputs and populating dreams...
Eating spiders isn’t nearly as attractive as it seems.
RULING CLASS SONNET WITH CAPITALS & OBSCENITIESBad people are out there, extremely bad
And into some extremely scary stuff,
Unreasonable people, BLOODY MAD
DOGS to be frank; you have to treat them rough.
Their purpose is to overthrow the state.
Democracy is not the thing at all
And utmost rigour is appropriate
Countering forces so inimical.
Complete the enclosed therefore, in triplicate
With photographs, two for each and one for luck
Attested by a Justice of the Peace,
Vicar, solicitor or, WHAT THE FUCK,
Some nob, then send it back to the Police.
NONE OF US NEEDS TO TAKE THIS SORT OF SHIT.
ALL IS SAFELY GATHERED INMorituri te salutant,
Alan Jenkins, whom we can't repay
since you fêted us with Clicquot
on our bachanalian nuptial day.Harvest, and the neutral combine
shears the puny full-grown to the stubble
(fetch the shoebox, fetch the shovel, as a chap might say).
Toodle-pip (and don't think you'll be very far away).
INFLATIONARYIn the old days
you would have been charged
one obolos to cross.There became so many passengers
that the Authorities
had to lay on more ferries.Today it will cost you
1,200 euros, £1,000, 1,377 U.S. bucks, 130,380 yen
to achieve the further bank.
MAJOR INTERSECTIONTo fly to the mark faster, you fly in, out
of the Marriot Lobby, without patronage,no bellboy you know from kept luggage.
To Kendall Square from South Station,you walk through a major intersection next,
Hampshire, where you could have been chasingwith a short-winged hawk, direct off the wrist
in the air, whose attack is flight,called hawk-of-the-wrist, who doesn’t wait
for the game to be put up.It might have looked like sneezing,
with your arm out, feathers shooting past your face.It might have looked like an orgasm,
feathers covering your face like hands.It's a pure one-hundred yards towards the circle
you remember, the brewery with its patio seating outaround the waiter you’ve come to Cambridge for,
around him like a whole covey of young for several seasons.
DRESSMAKER'S LAY FIGUREAnd in that one shop are all those heads,
called displays, spare parts of a mannequin,
dressmaker’s lay figure, or sexless busts,
you don’t know, but see the wigs with mullets,rat tails, fringes, of horse hair or human hair.
The French invent the guillotine,
and the historian who knows it all
rubs the knobs of shoulders passionately.The dancer’s mother requests John
the Baptist’s head on a silver platter,
and the dancer asks on her mother’s behalf.
How high? If your lover asks you to jumpoff a cliff? Having gone through the mother,
now your mother goes through you
for things. You know it hurts to behold,
behold mother, father, brother, child,history. The historian’s greatest thrill
being mid-run going down on one knee, pissing
in public, secretly, and no one would even see
the small stream or anything out of you.
HUNTING FOR SCORPIONSThe boy takes the WarDance crew to the scorpions, miniature lobsters,
having followed the camera all day, carrying the tripod during footage
of Rose, whose voice goes thin, high, so soft the crew decides on her last,
but whose story who doesn’t know, imagine two parents broken, pieced,
heads in cracked pots. This time I would have asked not for an egg,
but asked my father to give me a scorpion’s kiss, or the scene of a self-embrace,
the poor thing killing itself with its own stinger on the point of its tail,
in a ring of fire it would rather not enter. The boy the crew chose first,
filmed without Q and A, taught UNO, boy with raised eyebrows,
with washed foot, xylophone pieces he aligns in the frame,
Donald Duck and Goofy T-shirt, with words for a rebel soldier,
boy embracing or hijacking another Northern Uganda sunset.
I want to touch the harmless bones of the xylophone, the stock skull
with ants crawling over it, the good corpse, not the bad corpse, decomposing
carrion, not yet picked over by birds, virginal, not yet married.
ALBDTH (Good Vibrations)Averell Harriman went about his business, ignorant of the new ear on his wall
Lev unveiled the etherphone to Professor Ioffe in October 1920
But the work of cutting through the permafrost was exhausting
Despite this flicker of rekindled interest within the Soviet Union, Lev Sergeyevich
still remained dead to the Western World
The sight of Lev, standing at attention, arms outstretched, his two hands
hovering, fluttering, and diving in air around two antennae, willing melodies into
being, was spellbinding, even to the young physicists who took scientific
wonders for granted
He held out a pile of civilian clothes to the inventor and suggested he change out of his prison rags
TO MARKET -- 3Lucian Freud ($33,725,319). Collectors renewed their attachment to the artists from the London School with some outstanding bidding 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 which resulted in a new record for Francis Bacon. Home again, home again/Jiggerty Jig. His 2 metre-high painting, Portrait of George Dyer Staring into a Mirror (1967) fetched $4.9 million (including fees) with a pre-sale estimate range of 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 $2.5-3.5 million. On February 9, 10, 2005, 6,7,8,9,10. Lucian Freud beat his previous auction price record when Red-haired Man on a Chair ,an imposing 1962-63, 4,5,6,7,8,9,10 canvas (originally estimated at $1.2-1.8, 9,10, million) sold at Christie’s for $3.5 6 7 8 9 10 million. In June, July, August, September, October, November, December, Bella, a portrait of one of the artist’s many daughters painted in 1982-83, found a buyer at Christie’s for $1.6, 5 4 2 1 million. Back to Steely Wooly. At Sotheby’s, a self-portrait entitled Man with a Feather went under the hammer at $3.7 million (including fees) matching its high 6 7 8 9 10 estimate. Number 10. TOP TEN ARTISTS,2005.
AS LUCK WOULD HAVE ITScene: Hotel Sordid, Las Vegas, Nevada
Enter: Fat Anguish, Walter Hopps (Stamping
Of feet), Field Marshall, Marcel and Teeny, Big Foot,
--a whole cast. Enter: Sun from the rear
[3,924 I win the Jack-pot!] Rising to its full
height, Sun sheds such blinding light
cast to bandage eyes, right arms outstretched
pointing across the desert sands.Scene: The Golden Nugget. Enter: Tart
Donald and Betty Factor and Betsy Asher
(collectors) sat chatting: his Monte Carlo
system, this and that. [4,254. Jack-pot
winner that I am, I congratulate ME!]
Walter, To himself: Marcel's eye on
the game’s one thing, his lack of interest
in my unexpressed desire, another.Marcel, as an aside (obscure): as
Metaphysics, the velocity of her love vaulting
naked over opaque order at all points has her
falling panting into a further dimension!
Aloud, to Walter Hopps: Put your chips on that
table and let's see what happens. (Nothing
happens.[I shall have the Jack-pot!]
Walter Hopps nods and smiles.Scene: Stardust Hotel, Las Vegas, an oasis.
Enter running: Slim Anguish, Walter Hopps,
Richard Hamilton, Teeny, Onion et al.
Again the croupiers spin the wheels
Enter: Motley Eye, powdered in stars
and jasmine clouds. [ I saw you from afar]
Hands Hopps a ticket for tonight's National
Lottery, Powerball, Mega Millions.Scene (often stolen but as often set)
Marcel: Place seven chips on the corners
of the high numbers, [ I'm going to win the lot!]
and we’ll see what happens. (Later) Make
Diagonal patterns. … Set them out diagonally.
Walter: Whadda night! Soft touching China night!
After about an hour I begin to win.
My numbers just keep coming up.
[60, plus 200, and a thousand,
and 007, I win the jack-pot too!]Scene: Cesar's Palace, Sin City, Nevada.
Picture this: Tart, Betsy Asher. They speak
As one: Talcumed bedsheets stardust
memories celebrity matrices, we are all
as doves tossed against a hail of bullets!
[I've always been lucky, tho’] Mean-
whilst Marcel, he of the Field, continues
sagely to call the numbers. Exeunt those
boisterous fools Fat Chance and Slim
Big Foot and Onion running their usual gamut
Pointing across the desert sands.
Jack Beeching (1922-2001). Three late poems.
OLD VILLAGE WOMEN CARRYING LOADSLoaded with fruit and wine, the women lift
Burdens of memory, their heavy flesh
Such wrinkled trash as no one, now, will touch.Yesterday's dalliance marks their loaded stance:
Pink satin once. Exuberant as drink
The split peach of their sex. No passing faceWill ever turn those burdened women young,
Nor bellarmines of wine confer on them
Apple of love, gulp of oblivion.
GOING, WAITING, COMING BACKNothing doing nothing night. No conquest.
Night of neutral nothing, no, not even
Negative responses. Nothing. Nothing.No progress. No rebuff. No sort of answer.
No questions, either. Passing faces muffled.
No secret smell. No perfume, breath or sweat.Not hers, those pale hands clad in black. No sound.
No footfall, shadow, cough or even sigh.
Wait in perplexity. Turn, and go back.
FEEDING ROSESNot that a poem marrying love and death
Comes to an end. When northmen first saw roses
They took the blooms for fire;And now, without a breathing-licence, are you
Really a citizen? That manumitting smile
Faded, last night, into the bedroom wall.When heart starts hammering, and breath comes hard,
Time called at last, all equal and all orphan,
Depart you must; every dead man's effectsTurned over to his heirs. Remembrance, terror,
Expectation of bliss? Final extinction.
Off you go, and this time, no survivor.You served your time. The ship of fools pays off.
Scattered hillside ashes are feeding roses.
The headlong, drowning seaman finds his mermaid.