There will be…laughter.

Some of my banners in the Red Lion Basement.

If you intend to come to the show at 3pm Saturday, 2nd feb (tomorrie)

bring a camera an flash a lot

I can’t stand all these places where they ban photos etc

Well I been writing all these poems

Each and every day

For myself poetry is a play with words, emotions, memories & ‘tuning’ ins.

here’s another one i wrote:

There will be…laughter.

(But not m/any seats at the reading today, it’s standing only, excep fer me of course, man o’ my age and all of that.)

It’s bin raining here all night long

But your pain will dissipate in that rain

I just awoke from another dream

Wherein a friend I knew

Back in 62

(1969 actually but two rhymes wit new!)*

A rugby player from York

Coming from Brunlea, (did you know that?)

I didn’t know where York’s shire was back then

They said it was acrosst the border

Where the heathen lay

And I didn’t kick a ball that shape anyway

I think his name was John

And he’d just been crouching down

When an egg shaped ball hit his back

You could see the mark of mud

I thought there will be blood

As I tried to explain

Why I hadn’t caught the wobberly ting on its long trajectory

He said he would give me a vasectomy

well he kicked it I pleaded

I couldn’t intercept its flight

And it looked like we were going to fight

Then we laughed amongst the serious

As I awoke I realised

I’ve laughed a lot in life

Despite the trouble and wife

But don’t you get delirious

Just because it rhymes

with serious

So you think they all should rhyme

Each and every time?

Whoever it was told you that

Must be some kind of prat

Talking of Take That

Their songs all rhymes

There’s no ecscaping that

But it doesn’t mean they’re any good

So mark my words if you can

Cos you’re never going to ghetto

Just one more cornetto

Outta me

Now don’t just stand there laughing

At my small enterprise

It’s not laughter I hanker

I just want the prize

For outsmarting that Yorkshire flanker

*reminds me of Zimmerman’s use of rhyme

26, 27, 28,29

‘Gonna make your face

Look just like mine’

He was mimicking Cassius Clay on one of his early albums

He went on to tell of an imaginary talk with JFK:

‘I said John

What do we need to make the country grow?

Brigit Bardot

Anita Ekberg

Country’ll grow’

Talking of poetsongsters, way way back in 1970 Neil Young’s After The Goldrush came out. I liked several tracks and his plaintive voice with simple arrangements. Below I am putting in a copy of his handwriting at the time, there’s hope for me yet! Mine looks positivelycalligraphic next to his, but I must admit him to be a better song-writer, singer, musician, performer, farmer, Canadian than I am. Tomorrow the words in this clip will play a part in my ‘talk’.

‘I dreamed I saw the silver spaceships in the yellow haze of the sun’, he sang, well I can see the ships but, no sun !

Talking of space, listen to this lovely song from my late friend Jackie Leven whose song ‘Inside This Clay Jug’ sparked off my Clay Pot projec

I once asked John Atkins, one of Colchester and Norwich’s famous literary sons, how can I learn the rules? How can I learn what is acceptable in writing poems? He told me, ‘Nowadays Pete, anything goes. Look at the beats in America. And then there’s concrete poems.’

There’s a lovely quote from Kahil Gibran on Red Lion site http://www.redlionbooks.co.uk/ this week:

‘Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.’ – Kahil Gibran, born on this day (6feb?) in 1883.

talking about prats in hats, don’t expec me to wear one like this today