The Rest Is Just Poetry... Pretty Words For An Ugly Day...
[Revised 6th January 2012]
© Chris Port, 2011
These poems are oral, not literary. This is partly because they are not ‘good’ poems (whatever that might mean) but mostly because they are mere word sketches for dramatic songs or scenes. They are written with emphasis on the sound, the meanings created by rhythms and the rhymes in themselves. I actually prefer the artificial term ‘ideoms’ - ideas whose sense means something different from what the words literally imply.
The ‘ideoms’ are presented in alphabetical order for no good reason other than that there isn’t any other good order to place them in at the moment. On the grounds that I am a ‘lyricist physicist’, they have also now been updated to include song lyrics (mainly from the ‘revenge musical’ Marty Gull)
- A Man Should Always Be of Use...
- And Today We Have Teaching of Drones
- Anthem for Doomed Boys
- Art Will Help You Shuffle
- The Backstabber In The Mirror
- Bad Cooper
- Bad News Muse: The Dancer and the Poet
- The Ballad of Tippi Marsh
- The Beaten Heart
- Birdsong
- Butterflies Dream...
- Cinders Dream
- Darlingrad
- Darwin’s Nightmare
- Dead and Circuses
- Dog Beer Afternoon
- Donkey Marty
- Don’t Lie To Me Cavatina
- Education’s Pointless
- The Eternal Bachelor
- Foolish Teacher!
- Going With The Wind...
- The Grim Pill's Progress
- Hate Destroys Everything
- A Hate So Pure
- Hey Gove (A Peaceful Song For The Summer)
- The House of the Architects
- How To Stifle A Writer
- I Don’t Know How To Teach Her
- An Idle Teacher Foresees His Death
- Illusory Stuff
- Interview With A Mad Woman
- Judy Garland
- Katie The Devil
- Kill A Bureaucrat
- Laughing At Death (In A Pub Mirror)
- Leaves
- Let Bleeding Dogs Die
- The Lizard of Moss
- Lost On The Way From The Long Thin Room
- Love Ain’t Blind
- Love Is Horror
- Lovers in the Grain...
- Madness
- Marty Gull
- Measuring the Dark...
- The Men Who Stand By Roads
- Motionless in Poetry
- Never Mind
- New Year Revolution
- Nietzche’s Horse
- Not Sonnet 18 Anymore
- OBL - The Mystery Death
- Oedipus Wrecked
- The Old Southside
- Oh What Became of You?
- Old Swiggers of Two Thousand and Ten
- Onward, Politicians
- Over A Chip Shop
- Pensions Aren't Forever
- Planet of the Men
- Poetica Latina Terribilis
- Premonition
- Rupert the Shark
- Saint Patrick's Day Limerick
- See You Next Tuesday
- Send In The Spies
- Should A Man Marry His Best Friend?
- Showtime For Nazis
- Snapping Threads
- Some Notes on Schrödinger’s Cat
- The Sonnet of the Middle Class Marriage
- Stars In Their Eyes
- Sunrise Haikus
- Superman versus the Uberbabes
- The Teacher’s Song
- Thank Music For Silly Girls!
- The Third Déjà vu
- There’s No Business Like Big Business
- Tickling the Puma
- Tubular Hell
- A Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mice
- The Universe and Other Problems
- The Unteachable Star!
- Vagrant Magritte
- Walking the Dog
- Well Start A Rumour
- What Few Words You Would Say
- The Wind Calls My Name
- Wintertime (The Coffin Tree Sighs)
- Words That Pass In The Night
- You've Got To Kick A Teacher Or Two
* * * * * * * * * *
A Man Should Always Be of Use...
© Chris Port, 2011
Each day I eat a hearty last meal.
It’s tinned soup,
but I eat it heartily.
Then I drink a hearty cup of coffee
Thames brown from yesterday’s dregs,
piecing together a ciggie from fag ends.
The day slacks ahead
like a limp elastic band.
I stretch out the cramp.
A bankrupt system is a terrible thing.
Your creditors took your principles.
I threw mine bricks.
A man can exist on soup and dregs.
But what kind of man
stuffs his face with lies?
Old friend, you were fair
when the weather was fine.
Why judge me so poor now?
You pass me in a shop doorway.
I look you in the eye.
You look down.
It’s only the stench of piss
and irritation. But still.
You couldn’t look me in the eye.
The pretence of fumbling
as your fingers filter coin sizes
embarrasses me.
When my teeth fall out,
I’ll throw them to you instead.
I don’t need them to chew soup.
I’m no elephant, but if they can make
ashtrays out of human ears,
lampshades out of skin,
brothels out of children,
surely you can find a place
for my little ivories?
Perhaps you could string them together
into a kitsch necklace?
A man should always be of use...
* * * * * * * * * *
And Today We Have Teaching of Drones
(with apologies to Henry Reed)
© Chris Port, 2009
I love to listen… Problem is…
The silences…
Their dead skin hangs in the air…
Glistening…
Pollen teases a nasal hair-
trigger but there is no sneeze…
Instead of release, something bigger…
I’m aware…
On the edge of no breeze…
there’s a thin dry rasp…
A mad bee sawing
at sun, wood and glass…
A garden in the glare
but it’s view is pitiless…
The open bay window
beyond its wits…
I kill it.
A drone (my own) parched monotone
searches the wallflowers…
I dream of moist honey…
The filling of a pail… the lighting of a fire…
shrivels into blisters on the windowsill…
Oh you have been used… money emptied by the bucket
over damped twig minds that refuse to spark…
Fuck it.
How I long for that first soft bruise of dark
to punch their sunlit faces…
* * * * * * * * * *
Anthem for Doomed Boys
(with apologies to Wilfred Owen)
© Chris Port, 2010
What classroom tells of these who have no future?
- Only the pointless orbit of the sun
Only the joyless poet’s turgid torture
Can flatten out their wasted horizons.
No jobs to see now for them; no cars nor fuel
Nor any choice of transport save the prisons
The dull, cemented prisons of failing schools
And sirens wailing for them like mad fun.
What manhood must be sold to feed a bride?
Not in the eyes of girls, but in their son
Shall stare a lonely father forgotten.
The anger of boys’ hands shall be their pride;
Their power a wireflex round lowered head,
And each grey dawn an empty space in bed.
* * * * * * * * * *
Art Will Help You Shuffle
© Chris Port, 2011
(Loosely written to the tune of ‘Mack the Knife
in the arse-rolling original German http://www.youtube.com/watch?playnext=1&index=0&feature=PlayList&v=HTaO_j8fK_g&list=PLC349699BE4647CC7)
Was there ever
a true lover
under cover
in the sack?
Two white spoons lie
in the moonlight
with a fork spike
in your back.
Like the workmate
who’s your soul mate
in the rat race
pulls your leg,
pins a target
on your jacket,
taps your shoulder
like an egg.
Do you think a
small pink finger
can outnumber
all your friends?
Do you count in
all your gold rings
after shaking
buttered hands?
It’s been rumoured
you have tumours
and your rooms are
a disgrace.
Do you rise late
as the arctic,
step in barefoot
curry plates?
Do char ladies
enter Hades?
Are there vacuum
cleaner gods?
Pray that art will
help you shuffle
like a faithful
coiled dog.
* * * * * * * * * *
The Backstabber In The Mirror
© Chris Port 2011
How that poor bear must have loved her
as he died without a sound;
saw his killer in the mirror,
still he never turned around.
* * * * * * * * * *
Bad Cooper
© Chris Port, 2011
(To the tune of Goldfinger by John Barry
Could you refuse this dog your food?
Bad Cooper
He’s the dog
The dog with the map of scent
For crap pavements
Such a glad pooch-a
Beckons you
To scoop up his puppy poo
Then grins at you
Ten wet turds he will pour from his rear
But his eyes aren’t surprised at your fear
For an awkward wag craps where there’s no bin
It’s the walk of bag with shit in
Bad Cooper
He’s the dog
The dog with the map of scent
For crap pavements
Such a glad pooch-a
Beckons you
To scoop up his puppy poo
Then grins at you
Ten wet turds he will pour from his rear
But his eyes aren’t surprised at your fear
For an awkward wag craps where there’s no bin
It’s the walk of bag with shit in
Bad Cooper
Stupid boy
Beware of his tongue that licks
It licks at sick
Beware of his tongue that licks
It licks at sick
Ten wet turds he will pour from his rear
But his eyes aren’t surprised at your fear
For an awkward wag craps where there’s no bin
It’s the walk of bag with shit in
Bad Cooper
But his eyes aren’t surprised at your fear
For an awkward wag craps where there’s no bin
It’s the walk of bag with shit in
Bad Cooper
Stupid boy
Beware of his tongue that licks
It licks at sick
Beware of his tongue that licks
It licks at sick
He loves doing poo
Doing poo
He does poo
He loves your food too
Your food too
He loves poo!
* * * * * * * * * *
Bad News Muse: The Dancer and the Poet
© Chris Port, 2010
She danced a taut muscle and sang a tight chord
and glanced like a blow. The poet looked bored.
“Why don’t you see my beauty?” she implored.
“You should look at me instead of that floor.
Your head lost in words and hurting with thought.
Come dance with me now. Let go of that scorn.”
He stared like a cat, then grinned like a dog.
Bright-eyed as a mouse, unkissed as a frog.
Some dance with the body. Some with the mind.
She seizes a moment. He sees all time.
* * * * * * * * * *
The Ballad of Tippi Marsh
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
Originally drafted to the tune of Mack the Knife by Kurt Weill
from The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht
Every actress
gets that black dress
but the mattress
finds a stain.
Could she care less?
Let the stars bless.
All good starlets
hide a shame.
Tippi Marsh spent
all that talent
on a spotlight
on herself.
How it haunts her
in the twilight.
Twenty-five and
on the shelf.
Little Tippi
loved the circus
and she juggled
school and night.
Here a pole dance.
There a small chance.
Then she’s smuggled
out of sight.
Someone’s crying
in a bedsit.
We hear footsteps
up the stair.
Now she’s lying
in a torn dress
on a mattress,
urine-bare.
You remember
summer’s star role?
In Chicago
you had sass.
Now December
and the cars blow,
past the window,
yellow gas.
Take that black dress,
take that mattress,
block the cracks less
gas escape.
Turn the white taps
on your white face.
Let the stars bless
your escape.
When they found her
in that bedsit
she was naked
with no note.
Let me find her
in her childhood.
Let me find her
while there’s hope.
Let me find her
in her childhood.
Let me find her
while there's hope.
while there's hope.
* * * * * * * * * *
The Beaten Heart
(from GSOH - Good Sense Of Humour)
© Chris Port, Central School of Speech and Drama, 1999
Put a wrap on that beaten heart;
your swollen tiny fist
just pounds against her smug shut laugh;
all women fight like this.
"I don't feel the same way”
she calmly shrugs,
as if she ever loved;
like a smiling knife, she twists your words,
with a surgeon’s skill, she cuts.
So; pull a smile with a tightening thread
and shut that gaping vein;
let’s turn that razor wit to get
her precise, unblinking pain.
And when that slash of lipstick cries
“Why do you do this to me?”,
just show it that beaten heart and sigh
“I died - and this isn’t me”.
* * * * * * * * * *
Birdsong
© Chris Port, 2010
We men pray when she sings…
some rhymes, that birds have reason.
Feather-brained moron!
Women say many things.
Sometimes they even mean them.
But never for long…
* * * * * * * * * *
Butterflies Dream...
© Chris Port, 2010
(Loosely based on Zhuangzi/Chuang Tzu’s ‘Butterfly Dream’
- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuangzi#The_butterfly_dream and http://www.the-philosopher.co.uk/butter.htm)
My sudden life, an accident.
Momentary, a breath of light.
And then I die, a certainty.
I'll flutter in eternity.
To question why the atoms flit
is pointless. ‘I’ do not exist.
The senses lie (and that’s the truth)
for when we die we dream of youth.
Am I the boy I seemed I was?
Butterflies dream like sunlit ghosts.
* * * * * * * * * *
Cinders Dream
© Chris Port, 2010
(Loosely written to the tune of Mack the Knife
in the arse-rolling original German http://www.youtube.com/watch?playnext=1&index=0&feature=PlayList&v=HTaO_j8fK_g&list=PLC349699BE4647CC7)
When it’s wintry
Little Tippi
sings as evening
closes shop.
Rows of TVs
lip-synch as she
sinks to both knees
and blow jobs.
Oh poor Cinders,
whores and sinners,
how the wind cuts
dreamlessly
through the skin, such
a cold thin touch
You’re old lovers.
Shamelessly.
* * * * * * * * * *
Darlingrad
(see Stalingrad)
© Chris Port, 2010
Encircle her with compliments;
shell her with affections;
tunnel by moonlight
to the rubble of her heart.
Watch the walls of her mind collapse.
But when you break in
it’s a war of the rats…
and a long starvation…
Love has expanse…
* * * * * * * * * *
Darwin’s Nightmare
© Chris Port, 2010
Last night I dreamt my fur grew back,
coarse and black as Hessian sack.
I cut the rat hairs one by one
but Hydra-like the monsters sprung.
An ape. An ape. A man gives in;
his razor wit just strips off skin.
Today, a railway piled with hair
and spectacles, and teeth, and air...
* * * * * * * * * *
Dead and Circuses
© Chris Port, 10th July 2011
Power always backs down from the spotlight
Sacks that wriggle must drown in the moonlight
Oh they’ll send in the stars
How the audience gasp
And giggle at those clowns in a flour fight
* * * * * * * * * *
Dog Beer Afternoon
© Chris Port, 26th June 2011
(Loosely based on lack of money,
watching the tantalising climax to Ice Cold In Alex
A golden sun froths
at the glass like beer
while dog tongue pockets
lick dust from the air...
* * * * * * * * * *
Donkey Marty
(from Marty Gull)
© Chris Port, 2010
"You're such a donkey, Don Quixote,
asinine you plod and dream.
I'd rather stroke a Don Juan's goatee"
"Dulcinea, have you seen
the sunrise burst with love and tilt
the earth? Oh fool I've been.
That tatty stubborn mule who carried,
uncomplaining, all your dreams."
* * * * * * * * * *
Don’t Lie To Me Cavatina
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk.
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
Originally drafted to the tune of Don’t Cry For Me Argentina
by Andrew Lloyd Webber from the musical Evita http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2shR99NnwCA)
Death won’t be easy
I’ll feel some pain
When I try to explain what you’ve done
That men still need to love
Every man is a son
Oh please believe me
All I can be
Is a boy I once knew
Although life’s a Catch Twenty-Two
Perhaps that will add up for you
I had to let in that pain
I couldn’t change
Couldn’t waste all my life lost in days
Gazing in at your sorrow
Staying out in the rain
So I’ve gone insane
Walking around dying slowly of cold
But the world was so beautiful
It hurt me and gave me my soul
Don't lie to me cavatina
Though truth is I think beyond you
Though truth is I think beyond you
All through life’s madness
Her sad inconstance
You broke your promise
I spoke my conscience
And as for women and as for men
I always embraced them arm’s length
Though I dreamed of a world
Where passion is kind
Those are delusions
They are the confusions
That crash into bone
The question is crushed in the rain
Why love dies in pain and alone?
Don’t lie to me cavatina
Though truth is I think beyond you
All through life’s madness
All through life’s madness
Her sad inconstance
You broke your promise
I spoke my conscience
Have I loved enough?
Have I loved enough?
There’s so much more I should have tried to give this world
But please do not follow
My hollow example
It’s enough that you know
* * * * * * * * * *
Education’s Pointless
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk.
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
Originally drafted to the tune of Suicide Is Painless
by Johnny Mandel, from the film/TV series M*A*S*H
It’s five a.m. A dog that barks
At a glow of metal sparks
A train that rattles slowly past
And open eyes that see the dark-
[Simultaneous] -ness/-Yes education’s pointless
Its waiting for the jobless
And we have nothing left to teach them now
The management have games to play
Mortgages and holidays
Their pay rise with our lives we pay
And every day is endless grey-
[Simultaneous] -ness/-Yes education’s pointless
Its waiting for the jobless
And we have nothing left to teach them now
The budget and the balance sheet
The broken men who know they’re beat
The management that lie and cheat
Deceiving us with oh such sweet-
[Simultaneous] -ness/-Yes education’s pointless
Its waiting for the jobless
And we have nothing left to teach them now
The man who stands up for what’s right
Is on his own and serve him right
He might as well lay down and die
At five a.m. what sign of bright-
[Simultaneous] –ness?/-Yes education’s pointless
Its waiting for the jobless
And we have nothing left to teach them now...
And Marty’s nothing left to live for now...
* * * * * * * * * *
The Eternal Bachelor
© Chris Port, 2010
Women ask for far too much
and offer far too little.
After all, what’s in a touch?
What’s in a kiss but spittle?
But in her mind what will I find?
Is she, like me, a cripple?
And if we bind two souls in pain
will slipknots make us whole again?
Yes, and yes. The slightest touch
of love repressed must frighten us.
* * * * * * * * * *
Foolish Teacher!
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk.
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
Originally drafted to the tune of Big Spender
by Cy Coleman, from the musical Sweet Charity
The moment you walked in the school
I could tell you were a
fool with a weakness
a mental illness
So trusting, oh so kind
The bullies were lining up
to thrust the knife from behind
So let me get right to the crutch
I don’t drop a dork
in shit like other sluts
Foolish teacher!
Teach this little girl ‘bout stuff
Wouldn't you like to do mus-ic-als?
Hows about a new muse, muse?
I could sing you a good tune
Let me sing you a good tune
I could sing you a good tune
Let me sing you a good tune
The moment you walked in the class
I could see you were a man on a mission
with something missing
So wounded, so depressed
Say wouldn’t it be a laugh to see
that mind in a mess
So let me get right to the heart
I just love your art and all that other stuff
Foolish teacher!
Foolish teacher!
Foolish teacher!
Teach this little girl 'bout love...
Teach this little girl 'bout love...
* * * * * * * * * *
Going With The Wind...
© Chris Port, February 2011
You licked a finger and went with the wind
but History’s breath was drawing you in
too quick to linger, and now there’s no breeze.
The face of the world is about to sneeze.
* * * * * * * * * *
The Grim Pill's Progress
© Chris Port, 27th June 2011
© Chris Port, 27th June 2011
It never stops:
no journey’s end,
for when the road’s a cunt
I’ll tear up rocks
behind and mend
the broken earth in front.
It’s good to walk
with thoughts for friends
and silence like a shout
until the talk
of dusty men
comes up the track with doubt…
* * * * * * * * * *
Hate Destroys Everything
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk.
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
Originally drafted to the tune of Love Changes Everything
by Andrew Lloyd Webber, from the musical Aspects of Love
Hate
Hate destroys everything
Men and starlets
Hearts and lives
Hate
Hate destroys everything
Nothing lives but
Still we try
Hate
Can make the winter burn
Or a day
Dream of a nocturne
Yes hate
Hate destroys everything
Now I despise
All I loved
This boy’s eyes are
Dark as deep ice
Joys disgust
Hate
Hate destroys everything
Songs are hollow
Stupid lies
Hate
Hate destroys everything
Wrongs that follow
Cupid’s sighs
Hate
Will burn your houses down
Your whorehouse
Was built on poor ground
Yes, Hate
Hate destroys everything
Lust that glories
In mistrust
This boy’s eyes are
Black as murder
Whores disgust
Out
Into the night we go
Tasting bitter
Wasted years
Hate
Pain and insanity
All our passions
Lash our tears
Hate
Fills up an empty soul
All those fools
Whose hearts are broken
Yes, Hate,
Hate destroys everyone
When you listen
It’s pure sound
Hate will never
Never fade or
Let you down
(See also Hate Destroys Everything article about Anders Behring Breivik at http://martygull.blogspot.com/2011/07/chris-port-blog-306-hate-destroys.html)
* * * * * * * * * *
A Hate So Pure
© Chris Port, 2010
A hate so pure it’s like being in love.
It dreams of your death as a slow first kiss.
A parting of flesh, a wet open laugh.
It screams for your breath, a demon in bliss.
* * * * * * * * * *
Hey Gove (A Peaceful Song For The Summer)
© Chris Port, 7th July 2011
(To the tune of Hey Jude by John Lennon and Paul McCartney
Hey Gove, don’t go insane
Take a pension to pay a banker
We’re starving like dead men out in the rain
So you can fart around like wankers
Hey Gove, don’t cross the road
We would hate you to get run over
The living are stepping over the dead
As you begin to move them closer
And every time you steal the milk, Hey Gove, your guilt
Is spilling its guts over our torture
For well you know that it’s a shit who pays the rich
By making our schools a whole lot poorer
Na na na, na na, na na na na
Hey Gove, don’t trust your seat
You have flushed us right down the shitter
September and school is out in the street
In the sick heat with pints of bitter
So lap it up and drink it down, Hey Gove, you clown
We’re waiting for Schama to perform to
And don’t you think that it’s the calm before the storm
That’s laying its hand upon your shoulder?
Na na na, na na, na na na na, yeah
Hey Gove, don’t take it bad
Take your pension and live in clover
The living are stepping over the dead
As we begin to move much closer
Closer, closer, closer, closer, closer, oh!
Na na na, na-na na na
Na-na na na, hey Gove
Na na na, na-na na na
Na-na na na, hey Gove
Na na na, na-na na na
Na-na na na, hey Gove
Na na na, na-na na na
Na-na na na, hey Gove
Na na na, na-na na na
Na-na na na, hey Gove
Na na na, na-na na na
Na-na na na, hey Gove
Na-na na na, hey Gove
Na na na, na-na na na
Na-na na na, hey Gove
Na na na, na-na na na
Na-na na na, hey Gove
Na na na, na-na na na
Na-na na na, hey Gove
Na na na, na-na na na
Na-na na na, hey Gove
Na na na, na-na na na
Na-na na na, hey Gove
* * * * * * * * * *
The House of the Architects
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk.
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
Originally drafted to the tune of The House of the Rising Sun
as performed by The Animals
There is a house in Old Southside
I’m told they’re Architects
And it’s planned the ruin of many a man’s life
And God alone protects
My sponsor was a banker
He screwed and sued and climbed
My mentor thanks his clients’ wives
Down in Old Southside
Now the temple of the Architect
Is a brothel built of gold
And the richer that a man can get
Is a gilt upon its soul
Oh Adam tell the serpent
I am in his bow tie nest
Bit by my conscience I must repent
In the House of the Architects
Oh the dullness of the dinner dance
My drunken head hits the bed
My aching skull, my sinner’s chance
When Marty Gull is dead
There is a house in Old Southside
I’m told they’re Architects
And it’s planned the ruin of many a man’s life
And God alone protects
* * * * * * * * * *
How To Stifle A Writer
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk.
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
Originally drafted to the tune of How To Handle A Woman by Frederic Loewe
From the musical Camelot
“How to stifle a writer?”
“Just one way” said the frightened fools
“The way used by ev’ry shyster
Since the crooks took over the schools.”
“Do I sermon him?” I teased the preacher
“Do I listen or argue or think?
Do I dare to learn from a teacher?”
Said they, smirking: “No, just blink.
How to stifle a writer?
Mark his card, for his life is sin:
The way to stifle a writer
Is to crush him...simply crush him...
Merely crush him...crush him...crush him.”
Is to crush him...simply crush him...
Merely crush him...crush him...crush him.”
* * * * * * * * * *
I Don’t Know How To Teach Her
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk.
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
Originally drafted to the tune of I Don’t Know How To Love Him
by Andrew Lloyd Webber from the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar
I don’t know how to teach her
What to find, how to reach her
She’s a fool, yes she’s a fool
But she’s young and bright, like the sun at night
Her mind is pure moonlight
I don’t know how to capture
The moonbeam of her rapture
She’s a girl, she’s just a girl
And I’ve taught so many girls before
Oh it’s a wicked world
She’s just one more
Should I tutor her?
In the star’s future?
Should I father her?
Let me care for her?
I never thought I’d fall for her
Oh Cordelia
Don’t you think it’s comi-tragic?
She is blind to all life’s magic
She’s the dream who could have been
So wise, so kind, those eyes would find
Tears of beauty oh
She fears me so
I never saw that Judas kiss
On those sulking lips
Yet if she found her promise
I could die, I’d be smiling
I could have hope, just give her hope
But suspicion, and ambition
She doesn’t want to know
She fears me so
Her moonlight glow
Is ice and snow
* * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * *
An Idle Teacher Foresees His Death
(with apologies to W.B. Yeats)
© Chris Port, 2010
I know that I shall meet my mate
Somewhere among the rowdy pubs;
Those that I teach I do not hate,
Those that I reach I sometimes love;
My college is a county school,
My college kids the county’s fools,
No policy could bring them rule
Or leave them happier than a drool.
Nor law, nor duty bade me teach,
Nor public pay, nor swearing mums,
A lowly impulse need to preach
Drove to this tedium in the slums;
I balanced bills, brought all to cost,
Careers to come seemed strange to think
How strange to think careers now lost
In balance with this fag, this drink.
* * * * * * * * * *
Illusory Stuff
© Chris Port, June 2011
“Go away God” said the atheist gruff.
“What place for you or ‘universal love’?”
“None” revealed God, “I’m illusory stuff.
Existence is real... But is it enough?”
* * * * * * * * * *
Interview With A Mad Woman
© Chris Port, 2010
(Loosely based on an extract from the film Book of Days by Meredith Monk
Madness is someone asking the time
and thinking, “It’s now, you fool”;
and filling in forms and wondering why
a person doesn’t just ask you;
remembering when, at age nine or ten,
the woods smelled of mushrooms and magic;
and getting home late, with your clothes in a state,
to the tidy, sensibly tragic.
When I was just one, and pushed in a chair,
you burbled in alien tongues, and stared;
now I’m curled up there, uncurious,
having seen your world - it’s ludicrous.
* * * * * * * * * *
Judy Garland
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk.
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
Originally drafted to the tune of Memory
by Andrew Lloyd Webber from the musical Cats
Southside
See the shit on the pavement
And a girl who is dancing
Down a yellow brick road
Judy Garland
I dare to wear your slippers today
Let the wizard understand
Schooldays
Here’s a poem from Marty
Has the man lost his marbles?
He can’t get my new style
Criticizing
The wizard grieves, can’t get me at all
And the Head begins to smile
Music
Musicals are romantic
No more poor ugly duckling
I am beautiful now
You remember
my clothes were bought from charity shops
Let the music drown that out
Every teacher
seems to reach a
point of mental breakdown
Scorn and rumour
Exhausted humour
And soon he’ll wear that thorn crown
Stardom
Let me be Judy Garland
Let me be a great dancer
Let me learn how to sing
When the chance calls
A girl will throw a man to the wolves
And my new life will begin
Burnt out men in smoky cars
Who failed to smell the coffee
You talk of art I couldn’t give a toss for
I couldn’t give a toffee
Teach me
But you can’t ever reach me
You are lost in a memory
Of a world that is gone
If you teach me
You’ll understand what tragedy is
Look my life is just a song
* * * * * * * * * *
Katie The Devil
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk.
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull)
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull)
She’s queen of the hill
A demon of hell, she
Kills with political
Animal skill
All summoned by her
Fall suddenly ill
Katie the, Katie the Devil
Her tight summer dress
Is quite some disguise
The sum of her legs is
The bum and the thighs
Yes men’s estimate
The size of Brazil
Does not thrill Katie the Devil
I once thought her sweet
Perhaps saccharine
But her coffee is neat
Nitroglycerine
When men are dead beat
She’s still on the scene
For daddy’s love this daughter’s keen
This bold succubus
In inhuman form
So cold and righteous the
Reptilian norm
For women who lust
For power, men chill
Katie the, Katie the Devil
* * * * * * * * * *
“Kill A Bureaucrat”
© Chris Port, 14th November 2011
(To the tune of “Death Is Not The End”)
For “Laura” at the Crisis Loans ‘Help’ Call Centre
(with apologies to Bob Dylan)
Love Marty x
When you’re mad and when you’re hungry
And you’re living like a rat
Just remember to kill a bureaucrat
And all those slaps of workmates
Were daggers in your back
Just remember to kill a bureaucrat
Bureaucrat, bureaucrat
Just remember to kill a bureaucrat
When you’re staring at the bloodstains
On a humming railway track
Just remember to kill a bureaucrat
And all your screams are silent
And your eyes are wet dreams of black
Just remember to kill a bureaucrat
Bureaucrat, bureaucrat
Just remember to kill a bureaucrat
When the strange crowds eat their burgers
And daylight stinks of fat
Just remember to kill a bureaucrat
And the women they look right through you
Like a cold wind though a crack
Just remember to kill a bureaucrat
Bureaucrat, bureaucrat
Just remember to kill a bureaucrat
Oh, the wind of hate is blowing
Where the sunlight never goes
And the concrete of reality
It keeps you on your toes
When net curtains glow like fire
And you envy a pet cat
Just remember to kill a bureaucrat
If you had a pen you’d push
It slowly through her eye and snap
Just remember to kill a bureaucrat
Bureaucrat, bureaucrat
Just remember to kill a bureaucrat
Bureaucrat, bureaucrat
Just remember to kill a bureaucrat
* * * * * * * * * *
Laughing At Death (In A Pub Mirror)
© Chris Port, 2010
Once that joker death is there
no laugh can shake him off.
In every pub he has my chair,
my little smoker’s cough.
His mirrored skull, lips’ girlish purse,
boy eyes, coin black, rub-blind
stare from some collapsed universe.
A voice calls “Time”. It’s mine.
* * * * * * * * * *
Leaves
© Chris Port, 1st August 2011
I forgot I was leaving.
As I stop and say hello,
our hands shake.
The trees are incandescent,
as though God has dabbed each leaf
in fire paint.
Shivering red and yellow,
the blue air smells of presents,
gold and late.
I thought I heard a branch break.
But looking back, what odd sounds
the heart makes…
© Chris Port, 1st August 2011
I forgot I was leaving.
As I stop and say hello,
our hands shake.
The trees are incandescent,
as though God has dabbed each leaf
in fire paint.
Shivering red and yellow,
the blue air smells of presents,
gold and late.
I thought I heard a branch break.
But looking back, what odd sounds
the heart makes…
* * * * * * * * * *
Let Bleeding Dogs Die
(from Marty Gull)
© Chris Port, 2010
We struck you for speaking your mind, my son.
A sign of the times. An education.
You smiled, forgave and turned a bare cheek.
An impudent slave burns mild and meek.
We crowned your shaved head, for you gave us cause.
Punch drunk down you went, then up on all fours.
Enraged at your arse, we kicked that as well.
You said you saw stars. You said you’re in hell.
Well now that you are have the courtesy
To crawl away far and die quietly.
* * * * * * * * * *
The Lizard of Moss
© Chris Port, 2010
I must not be saved
I trust in my loss
Always I am changed
At wonderful cost
There is no Wizard
There is no Great Oz
There in the graveyard
The Lizard of Moss
Basks on a headstone
As old as the gods
* * * * * * * * * *
Lost On The Way From The Long Thin Room
(for Sadie and Russ)
© Chris Port, 2010
The fifth time the car
passed Sam’s pizzeria
without laughing gas
- damn hysteria
* * * * * * * * * *
Love Ain’t Blind
© Chris Port, 2009
Love ain’t blind
He just walks that way
Out of his mind
And in to your way
An unkind hand
Would push him away
But hold him, hold him
Every day.
* * * * * * * * * *
Love Is Horror
© Chris Port, 2011
(Song and dance for Tippi
from the revenge musical Marty Gull
Originally drafted to the film theme music
Cannibal Holocaust by Riz Ortolani
Love is horror
But I hold her
In the hollow
Of my shoulder
Hopeless if a
Cup of kindness
Lifts up to my lips
(I am cursed if the
Thirst of a
Monster
Works me with a kiss...)
* * * * * * * * * *
Lovers in the Grain...
© Chris Port, 2010
Paper stone scissor
Mountain wind and rain
Ice snow and fissure
Slowly thaw again
Grass springs to summer
Lovers in the grain
Fall age and winter
Paper bone and pain
* * * * * * * * * *
Madness
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk.
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
Originally drafted to the tune of Memory
by Andrew Lloyd Webber from the musical Cats
Red light
See the girls by the roadside
And our Judy who’s so tired
Of the world at her feet
It’s the car ride
Around the block, a twenty quid note
But the kids home need to eat
Madness
Monsters loose in the graveyard
Recognizing the ill-starred
Sing the songs of their class
Like the schoolyard
The littered street coughs spit at my feet
And the moon baboons his arse
Martyrs
Know that hopes are disastrous
Like a slow motion car crash
Oh God blow out those stars
In the darkness I seem to see the truth in the trash
Left in black bags outside bars
Daytime schoolgirl
Plays the call girl
Calls my name, I look down
Smiling shyly
I’m crying quietly
And now I’m in a strange town
Heartless
Men must harden their hearts, yes
Even pardon the starlets
Who are drawn into porn
When the mind falls
I find I fight my conscience all night
‘Til my cold soul greets the dawn
Ochred eyes in pokey dives
The wild child bride Egyptians
Who sip Black Russians with lips so bee stung
I think of Ingrid Bergman
Kiss me
There’s nobody to miss me
I don’t fit any memory
There’s nobody to miss me
I don’t fit any memory
But I think I was young
If you kiss me
You’ll never know but madness is love
Look my life is nearly done
* * * * * * * * * *
Marty Gull
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk.
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
Originally drafted to the tune of Crimond / The Lord’s My Shepherd
by Jessie Seymour Irvine
Oh spare a thought for Marty Gull.
His fault was he cared too well.
Her hair’s ardent lull
on hardened skull
- the quiet charms of hell.
And spare a quid. Poor Tippi Marsh.
She never did come to much.
The light from the stars,
so bright and so harsh
- the sharp of a heart, untouched.
Now spare the time but not the rod.
The staff are hard to find.
The sun’s follow spot,
the violet of god
will tan each man’s behind.
A soul must be restored again.
A hole in the rain will fill
with tears and with sun,
‘til all fears are done,
until then, until, until…
* * * * * * * * * *
Measuring the Dark...
© Chris Port, 2011
When all mysteries are explained away
men will still lie awake in winding sheets,
- mere ghostly shapes in the fabric of space -
measuring the dark with their small heart beats.
measuring the dark with their small heart beats.
Master of fears, hearing nothing singing,
do not ask “Who is this who is coming?”
* * * * * * * * * *
The Men Who Stand By Roads
© Chris Port, 2010
That man who stands on
the edge watching cars
steps out to land on
his head or his heart
* * * * * * * * * *
Motionless in Poetry
(with apologies to William Blake)
© Chris Port, 2011
Foxes, foxes, f**k and fight
In the chicken scraps of night...
* * * * * * * * * *
Never Mind
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull)
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull)
Never mind
Never mind
Whoever said life was kind?
A beer down the pub
Will soon cheer you up
A pint with a mate and a plate full of grub
Never mind
Never mind
The deaf, the dumb and the blind
Who litter the street
With bitter defeat
Will soon disappear when there’s nothing to eat
Never mind
Never mind
To look for love is to find
That girl from next door
Fourteen and cock-sure
For twenty quid now is an old knackered whore
Never mind
Never mind
The government rob you blind
Though men hate their job
A foreign sweatshop
Will soon undercut if you don’t shut your gob
Never mind
Never mind
What cancer’s ever benign?
That eats at the soul
And leaves a black hole
We had a fat chance now we’re down to the bone
Never mind
Never mind
The rope that hangs you is kind
When all hope is gone
A good cockney song
A knot at me throat and the choke won’t take long
Never mind
Never mind
Our corpses you’ll never find
Each man tops himself
For sake of his health
Of course some insurance ensures future wealth
Never mind
Never mind
In far-off climes you will find
There’s no happiness
But this is the next
Best thing that there is. Never mind!
* * * * * * * * * *
New Year Revolution
© Chris Port, Christmas 2010
Dark at five, her heart survives the Christmas crush.
Lark song lonely in a bone tree
in the city rush
and me, reindeer socks in the trenchfoot slush,
missing home with every bus.
As I pass a bauble window
with its mannequin family
I have to blink in the Amsterdam glow.
Why do gaudy things wink at me?
New Year Revolution
(Time’s already changed)
Revolution
The curtain-twitchers turn their face
New Year Revolution
(Time’s already changed)
Revolution
They’re certain it’s a passing phase
Look in my eye.
Tell me if I lie.
I watch the shoppers scurry home.
Rats hoarding bags board
Titanic waving Oyster cards and
so the ice upon the Dome
seems to smirk in the moonlight.
And this meal ticket that I look at,
that I worked my whole life for,
is as sick as that cattle-truck ride
they charged the poor Jews for.
New Year Revolution
(Time’s already changed)
Revolution
Air smells like ice, streets are white as bone.
New Year Revolution
(Time’s already changed)
Revolution
Beneath the snow,
a Paris spring, the paving stones.
Look in my eye.
Tell me if I lie.
Homeless and hungry, I’m strangely warm
Dying is easy, it’s the calm before the storm
New Year Revolution
(Time’s already changed)
Revolution
Concrete doorways that stink of piss
New Year Revolution
(Time’s already changed)
Revolution
Cut deep, for pity’s sake don’t miss or see my face
Look in my eye.
Tell me if I lie.
* * * * * * * * * *
Nietzche’s Horse
© Chris Port, 2011
Shame on you, coward: I’m Nietzsche’s horse, beat;
beggars will spit in your face in the street.
* * * * * * * * * *
Not Sonnet 18 Anymore
(with apologies to William Shakespeare)
© Chris Port, 2011
Shall I compare thee to a winter’s night?
Thou art more bitter and in extremis:
North wind grit sweeps the littered streets of light,
And winter’s teeth hath all too sharp a kiss:
Sometime long cold a godless star can wink,
An omen of youth’s rash infection hot.
And every fish to fish foul paste will stink,
With dance and disease sweating yeast and rot.
Now thy nocturnal winter shall not thaw,
Nor gain the wisdom of the age that creeps,
Nor can breast boast now flat chest as a floor
When that mocking bird time cuts fine crow’s feet.
So long as men can laugh or you can dream
So long lives rage, these words will be your scream.
* * * * * * * * * *
OBL - The Mystery Death
(with apologies to T.S. Eliot)
© Chris Port, 2nd May 2011
OBL’s a mystery death: a Pakistani Paw
He was the mahdi terrorist who deified a war
The embarrassment of politics, the CIA’s despair
For when they breached an ally’s walls
– their enemy was there!
– their enemy was there!
* * * * * * * * * *
Oedipus Wrecked
© Chris Port, 2010
What is horror but a locked door ajar?
A childish sneak into a parent’s room.
A slow rearrange of the mirror’s art
and your mother creaking in purple gloom.
Who would think a birth-cord could be so strong?
Or the slipper-thin gap beneath her toes
or gobstopper eyes and liquorice tongue
or aniseed piss, a pinch on the nose…
Make all detectives of their undoing,
maybe the hangman, hooding your own drop.
Call the defective God who’s been gluing
babies together and tell him to stop.
Now you can’t handle the world isn’t nice,
Put out the candle - then put out your eyes.
* * * * * * * * * *
The Old Southside
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk.
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
Originally drafted to the tune of America
by Leonard Bernstein from the musical West Side Story
Southside High Street
Oh concrete ruin
Flowing with puddles of urine
Always the council tax owing
Always the Polish accents growing
And the weather blowing
And the mothers swearing
And the muggers staring
I like a pint in the daytime
Smoking a joint in school playtime!
I like to be in the old Southside
Taking a pee in the old Southside
Plenty to see in the old Southside
If you’re like me in the old Southside!
I ride around like I’m Don Juan
I know an ass you can ride on
School girls are white in the surburb
Make sure you crawl by the right kerb!
Music is loud in the old Southside
Few strippers proud in the old Southside
Trippers and cloud in the old Southside
Immigrants crowd in the old Southside!
Lots of dark faces are seen now
Less of the white race about town
How can you tell the right goodie?
He’s the one wearing a hoodie!
Life’s a bit shit in the old Southside
On benefit in the old Southside
No working fit in the old Southside
On walking sticks in the old Southside!
Here is religion without creed
Rolling a rizla with strong weed
Looking at the plasma TV
Like you’re hooked up to an IV!
We all belong in the old Southside
Singing a song in the old Southside
Something is wrong in the old Southside
BNP strong in the old Southside!
I think I'll go back to Poland
Nothing for me, this is no land
Fit for a hero who fought for
Fit for a hero who fought for
The RAF in the last war!
* * * * * * * * * *
Oh What Became of You?
© Chris Port, 2010
(Song loosely based on the tune of Puff the Magic Dragon by Peter Yarrow
One foggy summer morning
turning blue in June
we were walking as the sun
burned off a misty moon.
Wet grass sparkled, you were
dark foot in the dew,
fresh as life, my precious wife.
Oh what became of you?
We crowned the icy pavements,
slippery as tongues,
broke bottles in our pockets meant
to bring down governments.
It's winter and I'm weary.
I'm written paper thin.
Your yellow snow eyes teary look
like Winston Smith and gin.
Puff the magic mushroom
lives in a wood,
and hunted down a horror clown
who grinned because he could.
Puff the magic mushroom,
spores in a breeze,
and deep indoors, these carpet shores,
your room roars like the sea.
* * * * * * * * * *
Old Swiggers of Two Thousand and Ten
(for Sadie and Cooper)
© Chris Port, 2010
Oh empty bowl.
Oh disconsolate nose
Oh sorrowful home.
Wet Battersea blows.
* * * * * * * * * *
Onward, Politicians
© Chris Port, 18th July 2011
(Song to the tune of Onward, Christian Soldiers
- original music by Arthur S. Sullivan, original lyrics by Sabine Baring-Gould
Onward, politicians, waving like a flag
With your jobs and pensions safely in the bag
See the mogul Murdoch, legal as the shark
Bleeding in the water, murder in the dark
Onward, politicians, waving like a flag
With your jobs and pensions safely in the bag
At first sign of trouble, advertising flees
Go then Rupert Murdoch, go down on your knees
Law’s foundation trembles at the spread of rot
Cleanse the nation’s temples on this curséd spot
Onward, politicians, waving like a flag
With your jobs and pensions safely in the bag
Like stampeding arseholes saving their own arse
Sacred cows are running into abattoirs
Parties are divided, factious are the tribes
Pieces of the action, buying peace with bribes
Onward, politicians, waving like a flag
With your jobs and pensions safely in the bag
Newspapers may perish, nations rise and fall
But the corporations always make the call
Parliaments will always vote for their money
Men just float tiny boats on their lawless sea
Onward, politicians, waving like a flag
With your jobs and pensions safely in the bag
Listen then you Gleesters to your happy songs
Little sips of Lethe, drowning out all wrongs
Money pulls the drawstrings of your puppet grins
Whores of Orwell singing, hanging your washing
Onward, politicians, waving like a flag
With your jobs and pensions safely in the bag
* * * * * * * * * *
Over A Chip Shop
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk.
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
Originally drafted to the tune of Over The Rainbow by Harold Arlen
from the musical The Wizard of Oz
Somewhere in a red lit room
Up dark stairs
There’s a girl that I once knew
Selling her thin white wares.
Somewhere in a red lit room
Ceilings stare
And the wet nicotine walls won’t
Look away or care.
Someday she’ll steal a dealer’s car
And drive out where the streetlights are
Behind her.
Where pills are dropped the rainbow stops
The ambulance and traffic cops
That’s where you’ll find her.
Somewhere over a chip shop
Young girls sleep
Men walk out of a chip shop
Why then, oh why can’t she?
If happy little children be
Outside the chip shop
Why, oh why, can’t she?
* * * * * * * * * *
Pensions Aren't Forever
© Chris Port, 2010
© Chris Port, 2010
(Song to the tune of Diamonds Are Forever by John Barry
Pensions aren’t forever
They are spent before you get there
Men do far less time for murder
In your heart attack bed
As you wake up half dead
Work harder!
Pensions aren’t forever
Unlike Twilight’s endless INSET
Touching, stroking, a cigarette
Oh there’s beer in bars
But your weary carcass
Is stuck here!
I don’t need rest
For what good will rest do me?
Pensions are illusory
For when life’s gone
You’re working on!
Pensions aren’t forever
Running round like headless chickens
The same ground as Charles Dickens
Kids are battery hens
Pecking eyes out with pens
And boredom!
I don’t need rest
For what good will rest do me?
Pensions are illusory
For when life’s gone
You’re working on!
Pensions aren’t forever, forever, forever.
Pensions aren’t forever, forever, forever.
Forever, not ever!
Pensions aren’t forever, forever, forever.
Forever, not ever!
* * * * * * * * * *
Planet of the Men
© Chris Port, 2010
(A gender reversed reworking of the opening to Planet of the Apes, 1968 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB74Wxp8BWw)
This speed of light is a thought-slowing thing.
You women who birthed us are dead and dust.
I need in the night of a star-glow hymn
some church to believe in, not religious.
I leave the twenty-first with no regrets.
Like the pillow note: “It was only sex”.
The cat and the flat and the boob job debts,
I leave to the fridge with my test-tube eggs.
Deep freeze & sweet dreams you belle de jour girls,
such full impact lashes, such moistured elves.
No love to inhale those renaissance curls?
Perhaps it’s enough girls gaze at themselves.
Somewhere out there stares an alien sun.
There must be something better than woman...
* * * * * * * * * *
Poetica Latina Terribilis
© Chris Port, 2011
Sua fodit fames
sepulcrum humilis.
Martyrium est centunculus
in ore vulpis.
~ Marty Gull
[He dug his own hunger
a shallow grave.
Martyrdom is rags
in the mouth of a jackal.]
Ego et glácies, male lunae occurrit.
Cor conatur evacuare aqua contra operationem mare.
Tragoedia? Suus tantum aqua.
~ Marty Gull
[Ego and ice, ill met by moonlight.
Oh the heart is a pump working against an ocean.
Tragedy? It’s just water.]
O Cor homine figentes.
Mare est salsa aqua.
Lacrimis ne.
~ Marty Gull
[Oh, heart of a man in danger of drowning.
The water of the sea is salty.
Not with tears.]
* * * * * * * * * *
Premonition
© Chris Port, 2010
Depression isn't burying your head in the sand...
I saw him once
at a distance.
I saw nothing
in his clothing
or face to sense
his sad offence.
He disturbed me
intangibly.
The flickering
of a crow’s wing
across the sun
is quickly done.
But a sudden
fear is summoned.
There’s an aura
around horror
and our futures
must obscure us.
When I saw him
I saw nothing.
A man planning
his own hanging?
What can you say?
Are you OK?
Time must move on.
I trust I’m wrong.
But with the damned
I never am.
* * * * * * * * * *
Rupert the Shark
© Chris Port, 8th July 2011
(Song to the tune of Rupert the Bear by Len Beadle and Ron Roker
There’s a little shark
And he’s swimming through the dark
Looking up at you
People in the park
Petrol loves a little spark
He’s your Fu Manchu
There’s a billion Chinese to be sold
TV Stars from Hong Kong
Start with Wendi and her government
Might sing along
Oh, Rupert, Rupert Murdoch
Everyone buy his news
Rupert, Rupert Murdoch
Governments play along
or you will just lose
There is Becca Brooks
Little Jamie Murdoch too
And they’ve made their bones
They are Rupert's hacks
And they're listening to you
So I’d lock your phones
There's a mega deal not far from here
And they call it News Corp!
Where you'll meet a little emperor
Or start a war…
Oh, Rupert, Rupert Murdoch
Everyone buy his news
Rupert, Rupert Murdoch
Governments play along
or you will just lose
Oh, Rupert, Rupert Murdoch
Everyone buy his news
Rupert, Rupert Murdoch
Governments play along
or you will just lose
Rupert, bloody Rupert
Rupert…
* * * * * * * * * *
Saint Patrick's Day Limerick
© Chris Port, March 2011
For boffy Sarah...
There was a young woman from Essex
Who blew off her froth with her s’s
Men started to cry
With smart in their eye
For women and guinness make messes
* * * * * * * * * *
See You Next Tuesday
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk.
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
Originally drafted to the tune of I Don’t Like Mondays by Bob Geldof
The mercury tilt of life can switch
To guilt with just one sob
And no teacher ever showed her up before
She’s going to make that pig lose his job
And Marty never understood her
He always said she was good and kind
And he can see no evil
‘Cause there is no evil
What evil lurks within a girl’s mind?
When they say
See you next Tuesday
When they say
See you next Tuesday
When they say
See you next Tuesday
Well who can say
What those words mean?
The fair sex has the complex disease
Its a species we victimise
And men are bad and cruel
And the art adds fuel
And her heart burns the harder Marty tries
Sweet Tippi
She will always be
But a peach you bruise
Leaches bitter juice
And we can see no evil
‘Cause there is no evil
Each evil’s just confused.
When they say
See you next Tuesday
When they say
See you next Tuesday
When they say
See you next Tuesday
Well who can say
What those words mean?
Conversation’s gone from the classroom now
She wants to burst into song and pout
Her ears are burning and soon he’ll be learning
And the lesson for men is never shout
Because the bullshit’s bitter
And the bitches titter
With the gossip and the lips and eyes
And he can see no evil
‘Cause there is no evil
What evil do you need to die?
And the mercury tilt of life can switch
To guilt with just one sob
And no teacher ever showed her up before
She’s going to make him lose his job
And Marty never understood her
He always said she was good and kind
And he can see no evil
‘Cause there is no evil
What evil lurks within a girl’s mind?
When they say
See you next Tuesday
When they say
See you next Tuesday
When they say
See you next, see you next
When they say
See you next Tuesday
When they say See you next
See you next
When they say See you next Tuesday
When they say
See you next Tuesday
Well who can say
What those words mean?
* * * * * * * * * *
Send In The Spies
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk.
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
Originally drafted to the tune of Send In The Clowns by Stephen Sondheim
From the musical A Little Night Music
Isn’t he odd?
Doesn’t he stare?
Bug him with small hateful eyes
Subtle software
Send in the spies
Isn’t he strange?
It’s been approved
Whether it’s truth or it’s lies
I need some proof
Send in the spies
Just when it’s stopped, start it again
Sleeping and waking ‘til shaking will make him insane
Taking down statements again of his pain and despair
Find me a stain
Something is there
Recourse to laws
Of course diktat
Revenge is sweet sauce on remorse
Sorry ‘bout that
But where are my spies?
Quick send in the spies
Let’s set him some traps
Isn’t he odd?
Has he no fear?
Losing his friends and his mind
And his career?
And where are my spies?
There have to be spies
- Headmaster we're here
- Headmaster we're here
* * * * * * * * * *
Should A Man Marry His Best Friend?
© Chris Port, 2010
Why can’t a woman be more like a dog?
Dogs have ten tits! (though they’re not very big).
They’re friendly, brave (though they slobber when snogged)
but if you don’t shave, dogs don’t give a fig.
Dogs love it when you leave one dirty sock
on the bedroom floor. It’s called ‘Hide-and-seek’.
Okay, they eat sick then drink from the bog
then tongue their arse then lick you on the cheek…
But you’ve gagged on girls with smellier breath
- hairier legs, less intelligent eyes…
No dog nags their spouse to physical death
- those quizzical brows never criticize…
The kids will look ugly, I fear that’s true…
but at least they won’t smear their faces with poo.
* * * * * * * * * *
Showtime For Nazis
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk.
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
Originally drafted to the tune of Springtime For Hitler by Mel Brooks
From the film The Producers
Oh my god we’re up a river
Lost without a paddle
Have you seen Deliver-ance?
We need a bow and arrow
Men are in a rage
On minimum wage
The mystery of history
Is we turn back the page
Until it’s...
Showtime for nazis and musicals
No time for darkies and gays
English before were mixing race
Wishing now for more living space
Showtime for nazis and musicals
No time for theatre and art
Showtime for nazis and musicals
Come on, Britain
Forget them and laugh!
Forget them and laugh!
I was raped in Notting Hill
but got a date with the Old Bill!
Theatre’s boring. Art? We’re snoring.
Theatre’s boring. Art? We’re snoring.
Sing a song and set us roaring!
Showtime for nazis and musicals
Budgets are cutting our throats
Pain is the same for rich and poor
If you believe vain troubadours
Showtime for nazis and musicals
Borders are closing their doors
Showtime for nazis and musicals
Soon we'll be going...
You know we'll be going....
You know we'll be going to war!
* * * * * * * * * *
You know we'll be going....
You know we'll be going to war!
* * * * * * * * * *
Snapping Threads
© Chris Port, 2010
This morse code of rain
dots and dashes on the window pane
while a sheltering birdsong
beeps dismally.
It's tomorrow.
But you, my love, asleep
are sweetly blind
to each braille-drop that blows.
I follow a crocodile tear
with my finger
down the cold cheek of glass
and wish that I could cry
but I am dry
and tears won't flow.
Looking into this derelict night
with a guard dog’s eyes
I will watch over and protect you
- against what?
I do not know.
Mercury threads of rain
are snapping on the pavements
and each fragile moment is
forever lost.
Have you, my love, awake
ever stared the night away
with the photos and the ghosts?
I will outlast this rain
outside if I must
until there are no more tears
for the thread-snapped past.
A cockerel dog is coughing
in the grainy hangover gray.
Let me sleep beside you
and protect us against the rains yet to come.
* * * * * * * * * *
Some Notes on Schrödinger’s Cat
© Chris Port, 2010
Ψ (Schrödinger’s wave function)
is a naughty pawprint of a problem.
Consider the humble electron.
Consider where it is,
where it is going and how fast.
What would you say?
Well, first you must measure.
Let’s shine some light on the problem.
This electron is really terribly small
and easily upset.
Let’s be really clever and subtle
(perhaps the devious might say).
But you cannot use
an infinitely small
amount of light.
If there were
an infinite number
of wavelengths
then stars would radiate
infinite heat
in a snap.
So… sorry ladies.
Energy comes in
discrete packets
called quanta.
You must use at least
one photon of light.
Use a high-frequency one
- a sharper one, if you like.
That will tell you more accurately
where the electron is.
But (unfortunately)
it will disturb the electron’s progress
in ways that you cannot predict.
Not much use
if you need to know
where it is going
and how fast.
Alright then.
Use a low-frequency photon
- a softer one, if you like.
That will affect it less.
But (unfortunately),
being soft and vague,
it will not tell you very much
about where the electron is.
Not much use then.
You’re fucked
by a built-in
balancing act
of the universe.
The more we try
to measure something
the more we affect it
in ways that we
cannot predict.
So… all that we really measure
is our own interference.
All possibilities
co-exist
in a wave function
til someone shines
some light on the problem
and makes a measurement.
Then, they collapse
and create one result
which you call
‘reality’.
Listen carefully and think
you fiddler of electrons
- the act of measurement
creates the result.
So why do some people ‘think’
that their so-called ‘intuition’
(their ‘soft’ and ‘subtle’ measurement)
is anything other
than self-fulfilling prophecy?
All they measure
is themselves.
You cannot observe someone
without affecting them
in ways that you
cannot predict.
So think about your opinion
before creating someone else’s result.
It is not the insufferable arrogance
or the smug stupidity
which claws at the throat
like vomit.
It is the destruction of limitless possibilities
for petty certainties
that lack all conviction.
Naughty cat.
Get back in the box.
Take this with you
- a small radioactive mass
with a probable rate of decay
of one electron per hour
and a Geiger counter
rigged to a phial
of sarin gas.
Consider the humble electron.
Will it decay
or won’t it?
Will it trigger the gas
or not?
Remember.
The act of measurement
creates the result.
Both possibilities
co-exist
in a wave function
til someone makes
the measurement.
Are you alive
or dead
or somehow both
at the same time?
I’ll leave you alone for a while
to think
- then, very softly and subtly,
I’ll open the box
and we shall see Ψ
* * * * * * * * * *
The Sonnet of the Middle Class Marriage
(from UnHappy End)
© Chris Port, Central School of Speech and Drama, 2000
Dear Audience! Cynics! Now we approach
A point where Romantics must lesson take;
For to put it bluntly, Love is a poke
In your one good eye for Marriage’s sake!
For whom but a blind man would marry for love?
Let his sight be cleared by our hard-edged tale!
A Middle-Class Marriage is not enough
To stay together when the Contract’s failed!
Now: a man’s judged not by colour of skin,
Nor even his content of character,
But the size of his Wallet! That’s the thing
Which in the end will always attract her!
Love has thorns and Poverty pales her!
Marry! Man is sworn then born to Failure!
His marriage in ruins,
betrayed by his wife,
these failures put you in
a bad mood for life.
A love-rat successful
at home in his bed,
his failure more stressful,
it gnawed in his head.
He hurt so he shot her
but who is to blame?
Is a man born to failure?
Who set up this game?
His guilt breaks the silence!
“I’ve murdered my son!”
For failure breeds violence.
And that is the lesson.
So now we reach our un-happy ending.
Rich and poor can now embrace.
Once the cash is not a problem
Happy endings can take place!
* * * * * * * * * *
Stars In Their Eyes
© Chris Port, 2011
Oh the stars are flints
and her doll eyes spark
and her doll eyes spark
like glass: she has
the pity of the shark.
the pity of the shark.
* * * * * * * * * *
Sunrise Haikus
© Chris Port, 2011
English Sunrise
Let the minds of men
awaken; let the sunrise burst
and love tilt the earth
Malayan Sunrise
Let the human mind
develop, let the rising sun explode
and love the earth slopes
Vietnamese Sunrise
Let the minds of men
wake up, let it sun
and love the earth tilt
Nietzschean Haiku
The light bulb is dead
I stamp on that glass flower
and see in the dark
The light bulb is dead
I stamp on that glass flower
and see in the dark
* * * * * * * * * *
Superman versus the Uberbabes
© Chris Port, 2000
No doubt all you fools are familiar
with that ‘Man of Steel’ they call Superman
clad in cape and pants, so much sillier
than the real Ubermensch Hitler planned.
You are cowardly, weak, so you appeal
for comic-book heroes to save the day.
The stench of a rat makes blonde women squeal.
Yes it takes strong men to take it away.
Ridiculous? Yes. But so’s any world
that places its faith in ‘Super Powers’.
This Garden of Evil in serpent sleep curled
grows for my larder, sweet poison flowers.
How will it begin? Once upon a time.
How will it end? With the greatest of crimes...
News from the noughties! New war on terror!
Banks say property’s never an error!
News from the Nineties! News on the hour!
Simpsons on nightly! Spicy girl power!
News from the Eighties! News on the hour!
Falklands retaken! Yuppies get louder!
News from the Seventies! News on the hour!
Punk spews up Labour! Thatcher to power!
News from the Sixties! News on the hour!
Peace, love and hippies! War and flower power!
News from the Fifties! News on the hour!
Rock’n’roll Elvis! Old Eisenhower!
News from the Forties! Victory in Europe!
Demob the forces! Baby boom hope!
* * * * * * * * * *
The Teacher’s Song
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk.
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
Originally drafted to the tune of The Cannon Song by Kurt Weill
from The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht
Marty’s a dreamer and Tippi’s a dream
But Hevel is hard as pavement
When the frost stars gleam it’s a wintry scene
Reality demands engagement
The teacher’s prudent
To treat each student
Identically it seems
Never a human being
Or every moon he’s seeing
Children ground to sausage
Soap fat out of bodies
Sane men going mad for sleep but fearful of dreams
Marty often dreamed by the moon’s soft light
But Tippi dreamed more of stardom
And the gossips schemed of a future bright
Playing one off against the other one
The teacher’s prudent
To treat each student
Identically it seems
Never a human being
Or every moon he’s seeing
Children ground to sausage
Soap fat out of bodies
Sane men going mad for sleep but fearful of dreams
A quick kind heart is a poor man’s gold
But Tippi was tricked by silver
Lascivious tongues licking ears foretold
Futures only devils deliver
The teacher’s prudent
To treat each student
Identically it seems
Never a human being
Or every moon he’s seeing
Children ground to sausage
Soap fat out of bodies
Sane men going mad for sleep but fearful of dreams
Marty died for love but Tippi’s still here
Someone saw her in the high street
With an MP3 tinny in her ear
And the music was sickly sweet
The teacher’s prudent
To treat each student
Identically it seems
Never a human being
Or every moon he’s seeing
Children ground to sausage
Soap fat out of bodies
Sane men going mad for sleep but fearful of dreams
* * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * *
Thank Music For Silly Girls!
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk.
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
Originally drafted to the tune of Thank Heaven For Little Girls
by Frederic Loewe from the musical Gigi
Each time I teach a Lolita, oh Nabokov, oh Kubrick
I can’t resist artistic lust, you license me, thank music
For silly girls
For silly flirts wet dreaming that they’re stars
Thank music for silly girls
It gets their scheming skirts in backs of cars
Those little buds so pushed up in black lace bras
Today I’ll cup and kiss and promise we’re true lovers
Thank music for silly girls
Thank costumed musicals, Chicago oh, her ego blooms
Without style how would paedophiles groom?
Thank music
Thank music
Thank music for silly girls!
Thank music for silly girls!
* * * * * * * * * *
The Third Déjà vu
(with apologies to William Butler Yeats)
[and fond thanks to Cooper, the worst gun dog and best fun in the world]
© Chris Port, 2011
Walking and walking on the narrowing beach
The gun dog flips an ear, the gun winds screech;
Castle walls slip; a moat has overflowed;
Mere entropy is howling at the stones,
The soapsud tide is foul, and every turd
A crowning glory, annointed underfoot;
The mad have heard the future, while the herd
Are full of it, pocket bells jingling.
Surely Apocalypse Now was a film;
Surely this third déjà vu is a film.
This third déjà vu. Quicker than retina
The mind’s afterglow of some childhood lava lamp
floats in my eye: long ago in a silent car
A boy white as milk like a cub weaned from the darkness,
A window gaze reflective as the moon,
Is shifting his cramped thighs, while all about him
Sit shadows of the adults like Hitchcock’s crows.
The rainblows beat the panes; but now he knows
That twenty empty years of questioning stares
Were just their nightmares, stoning him awake.
And what salt breeze, cut to the bone at last,
Now pushes his back towards the answer?
* * * * * * * * * *
There’s No Business Like Big Business
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk.
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
Originally drafted to the tune of There’s No Business Like Show Business
by Irving Berlin from the musical Annie Get Your Gun
The bankrupts, the breakups, the cockups, the courts
The bailiffmen who bash your door at dawn
The children, the women, the lawyers, the torts
Your cardboard life in boxes on the lawn
The hostel and the alkies with no hope
The light bulb bare and cord flex for a rope
There’s no business like big business
Like no justice I know
Everything about it is just stealing
Everything a contract will allow
Nowhere could you see that crappy ceiling
When you aren’t feeling that tortured brow
There’s no dastards like bank bastards
They bet ‘til we were broke
Yesterday your assets all were Triple A
That night they sank in the U S A
Now it seems that China’s going to have its say
Democracy’s a joke!
The countries, the corpses, the famines, the floods,
The little wars that drag on in the sun
The headlines, the heartaches, the backstabs, the blood
The liquid capital that just won’t run
The hoping when the postman is your chum
The coping when the job offers won’t come
There’s no business like big business
If banks tell you it’s so
Sweatshops in the Third World make a killing
Saving on their labour costs with kids
Cholera won’t stop their coffers filling
With a quite thrilling amount of quid
There’s no wankers like rich bankers
They smile when you are low
Even with a country that is torn by war
They’ll charge them interest and keep them poor
Genocide it seems is now within the law
Let’s go on with the show!
Let’s go on with the show!
* * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * *
Tickling the Puma
© Chris Port, 2011
[For Peter]
There once was a woman called Uma
Who giggled and tickled a puma
Her friends were in fits
But Uma’s in bits
For pumas have no sense of humour
* * * * * * * * * *
Tubular Hell
© Chris Port
Central School of Speech and Drama, 1999
In tubular hell,
well buried underground,
where the hot winds
of infection howl,
the crowd fumes
like the blanket of a wet dog.
Then, blasted to your nostrils
by a handkerchief going off,
with cocaine snorts of mucus
comes the one for whom you must
move your bag.
Make room for the hag,
that hot water boiler,
squeezing her oily heat
against you.
Wet pressure, a curse
of rat-sweaty fur,
she sneezes and coughs
in tissue blowing-offs
and you sullenly watch
as that aerosol mist of snot
glistens to your breath
in hairspray drops.
Horribly familiar
neighbourly microbes
settle down
to raise families
up your nose.
Now is your weekend
to bed and unwell
from catching the ‘flu train
through tubular hell.
* * * * * * * * * *
A Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mice
© Chris Port, 2010
(Published in Support Atheism http://www.supportatheism.com/2011/atheism/gulls-guano-2/)
Smile, and say "Cheese".
Food for thought
The mouse reared up
The mouse reared up
before the cat
and raised a steady paw,
and said
“Before we come to that
we first must come to Law.”
“Before my Maker
I am pleased
to have God-given right
to liberty,
a little cheese,
and certainly my life.”
The cat was rapt,
her nose was wet,
her eyes suppressed a cough;
then quite expectedly
she bent
and bit his head clean off.
And as she sat
upon the mat
digesting food for thought,
she mused
“The only truth is that
rich words are for the poor.”
* * * * * * * * * *
The Universe and Other Problems
© Chris Port, 2010
A universe from nothing – how?
You cannot have a nothing now.
For the quantum is uncertain.
Nature always abhors vacuum.
Time's arrow takes flight in both ways.
I interfere with hindsight's gaze.
That zero state had but to wait
For me here now to then create.
The principle is anthropic.
So find the chink in my logic.
* * * * * * * * * *
The Unteachable Star!
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
Originally drafted to the tune of The Impossible Dream by Mitch Leigh
From the musical Man of La Mancha
To teach the impregnable mind
To fight the tyrannical Head
To bear an unbearable airhead
To run like a slave ‘til you’re dead
To mark this unreadable crap
To smoke a quick fag in your car
To try when your eyes are too bleary
To teach the unteachable class
This is my test, to swallow my pride
To put up with bitches, to put up with spite
To get them to write, when they can’t even spell
To be willing to sit through an evening of parents and hell!
And I know if I’ll only get through this depression of mine
That my life will have meant something more
Than just killing the time
And the girl will be better for this
That one man bored with bullies and tarts
Still burned with delusion and passion
To teach the unteachable... staaaar!
* * * * * * * * * *
Vagrant Magritte
© Chris Port, 2011
(Loosely written to the tune of ‘Mack the Knife
in the arse-rolling original German http://www.youtube.com/watch?playnext=1&index=0&feature=PlayList&v=HTaO_j8fK_g&list=PLC349699BE4647CC7)
In the June heat
Vagrant Magritte
paints the pavements
an odd fish
like a moon who’s
lost his planet
and just orbits
an abyss.
Lunatics live
in the crevice
where a minute
stops a day
under bridges
sunless faces
like crevasses
drop away.
It takes talent
and bank balance
to keep spinning
all your plates
and you’ll wobble
like a bottle
if you step in
someone’s face
Do not weep, dear
men just sleep here
and your rash tears
wake his thirst
but there’s no beer
without cash, dear
so there’s no beer
for the cursed.
On his birthday
men did once say
hip hip hooray
long ago
as he listens
to the distance
for a song he
used to know.
* * * * * * * * * *
Walking the Dog
© Chris Port, 2010
Tweezers of sunlight examine the frost.
That peaceful explosion of glass where it’s trod.
When the green is white and your steaming dog pours
his hot kettle, grinning on the mud.
When a mint blue sky slaps youth into cheeks.
When cold scratches the itching blood.
Then God it’s good to be alive
and Heaven when you’re young.
The trees raw black, a charcoal sketch,
the anatomy of your lungs.
And indoors, englassed, in warm whiskies of light
a sun-windowed cat ignores,
with that pinch of her eyes,
the bright hardships outside,
under-roof and aloof from all chores.
* * * * * * * * * *
Well Start A Rumour
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk.
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
Originally drafted to the tune of Well, Did You Evah!
by Cole Porter from the musical High Society
Have you heard?
It’s round the bars
Marty Gull has had Tippi Marsh
Well start a rumour
What a hell Marty this is!
Have you heard?
That Marty Gull
Says he doesn’t like musicals
Well start a rumour
What a hell Marty this is!
What price is art?
What lies we start?
What nice upset?
What apple cart?
Well start a rumour
What a hell Marty this is!
Have you heard?
That Marty fool
Thought a card wouldn’t break a rule
Well start a rumour
What a hell Marty this is!
Trip him up
Artistic clown
Life’s a bitch when a man is down
Well start a rumour
What a hell Marty this is!
What a hypocrite, bitter-sweet, viper-pit
This tragic-rich, comic life is!
* * * * * * * * * *
What Few Words You Would Say
© Chris Port, 2010
All those intentions we mislay,
and all that time we never find,
and then too late.
And if you could pawn the pocketed day
for one more moment in that lost life,
what few words you would say.
A cloud hurries by:
one of those moonlight white rabbits,
one eye on his pocket watch,
always late
- and then is gone.
And today
(being Christmas morning)
unwrapping the gift of still having time,
you turn to that puzzled smile
and, with sudden inexplicable tears,
say “I love you”.
And they
(although quite familiar with you for years)
are still pleasantly surprised.
* * * * * * * * * *
The Wind Calls My Name
© Chris Port, 2011
Tonight it seems to me
that the wind calls my name.
Slyly. Rattlesnake trees
make small stones bump the panes.
Damp leaves hiss with ghostly
disgust. I am ashamed.
Let eaves be uneasy.
Why must I be afraid?
* * * * * * * * * *
Wintertime (The Coffin Tree Sighs)
© Chris Port, 25th November 2011
(with apologies to George Gershwin, and everyone else)
Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong
“The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: by means of it one gets through many a bad night.” (Friedrich Nietzsche)
Wintertime
And the living are sleeping
Wind is blowing
And the coffin tree sighs
You let it in
And the spirits are creeping
So hush whiskey dreamer
Life goes by
One pearly morning
A girl will find you swinging
Then they’ll pack your things
And they’ll never ask why
It’s Christmas morning
A man next door is coughing
And bringing you news of other life* * * * * * * * * *
Words That Pass In The Night
© Chris Port, 2010
Words that pass in the night.
Those messages of stars and light.
Missing each other by lives.
* * * * * * * * * *
You’ve Got To Kick A Teacher Or Two
© Chris Port, 2010, martygull.co.uk.
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
(Song from the revenge musical Marty Gull
Originally drafted to the tune of You’ve Got To Pick A Pocket Or Two
by Lionel Bart from the musical Oliver!
You see, Marty...
In this school, one thing counts
My will rules, paramount
Men who get on don’t ask questions
You’ve got to kick a teacher or two
You’ve got to kick a teacher or two, Head
You’ve got to kick a teacher or two
Tantamount to testing you
You’ve got to kick a teacher or two
Why must I break your will?
Butterfly on a wheel
Better he go than my ego
Better break a teacher or two
You’ve got to break a teacher or two, Head
You’ve got to break a teacher or two
Why should I break butterflies?
Better break a teacher or two
Has this man lost all fear?
Do you want your career?
Moral quarreling with your king?
I have to rule a teacher or two
You’ve got to rule a teacher or two, Head
You’ve got to rule a teacher or two
Marty Gull’s a moral fool
Quarreling with his king
When he’s hurt, tired of life
Twist his words like a knife
No-one is good misunderstood
You’ve got to hurt a teacher or two
You’ve got to hurt a teacher or two, Head
You’ve got to hurt a teacher or two
Kill two birds with stony words
You’ve got to hurt a teacher or two
When a girl goes off track
Threaten her with the rack
The crack is clear, attack with fear
Get in and trap a teacher or two
You’ve got to trap a teacher or two, Head
You’ve got to trap a teacher or two
Break his mind upon the rack
Get in and trap a teacher or two
When you get a warning
A budget is dawning
Staffing costs less with death by stress
You’ve got to kill a teacher or two
You’ve got to kill a teacher or two, Head
You’ve got to kill a teacher or two
Every teacher should be warned
You’ve got to kill a teacher or two
* * * * * * * * * *
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