“Never trust a poet.” That’s what Daddy said to me
when I was knock-kneed in the factory
and knocked up on the floor
while the whiff of something more
drowned in Brut and milky tea.
Lord Tennyson was late again
and half a league behind me
so he missed the mouth of hell
I described so bloody well
after waiting in the mill for him to find me
And the body odour hugged me, brotherly
with a slightly leering passage to the right
where the rotten gods had laced their boots up tight
and sabres bared, they left
to assault the barren cleft
while the mothers waved their banners in the lee
Trust a poet’s patterns while he traces them in air
for wayward thumbs to print in stammered ink
and bloodied girls to think
there’s an exit from the pink
to erase the flash of muddy underwear
But disillusion issues cold
from waters barely flowing
where currents travel there and back
but in between their charge is slack
and lives drift by, delightfully unknowing
when I was knock-kneed in the factory
and knocked up on the floor
while the whiff of something more
drowned in Brut and milky tea.
Lord Tennyson was late again
and half a league behind me
so he missed the mouth of hell
I described so bloody well
after waiting in the mill for him to find me
And the body odour hugged me, brotherly
with a slightly leering passage to the right
where the rotten gods had laced their boots up tight
and sabres bared, they left
to assault the barren cleft
while the mothers waved their banners in the lee
Trust a poet’s patterns while he traces them in air
for wayward thumbs to print in stammered ink
and bloodied girls to think
there’s an exit from the pink
to erase the flash of muddy underwear
But disillusion issues cold
from waters barely flowing
where currents travel there and back
but in between their charge is slack
and lives drift by, delightfully unknowing
It could be worse