PARTY ANIMALS

PARTY ANIMALS

*

Once upon a time I sat down

at dawn to try and remember

every mad animal my work ever knew.

*

Well, in the beginning,

there was a cat playing a drum.

*

There were four

mice, then three.

*

A clock was only as fast as a cheetah.

*

There was a chameleon

that was hidden from view

through castles of foam!

*

Also: “he has spines all over him”

the poet wrote about a Hedgehog for all

Henry the Hedgehog

was attacked by

an adder but the

hedgehog won…

*

There was also talk

of a stalk that invited a fox

round for dinner and

put two well-cooked

meals in two long

vases so the stalk

could get the food

but not the fox!

*

There were even “gilly flowers.”

*

There was also a song

about the dog before:

and you might well

remember it for life too:

it’s the same as it used to be:

hopefully you didn’t get it from me!

*

Then I saw them: two weird specimens:

one the juggernaut whom I should hide,

or whose possibility of returning

I might be uniquely able to cancel.

*

The second was the

living spreadsheet:

“Grand-darth’s Ship”

as it was called, as if

I invented the thing.

*

It meant there was also plastic

grown in the scheme of evolution.

*

Then came the horrible

Hunter who was

a class-exercise

and an animal too…

beware his hollow,

hypnotising stare.

*

Cometh a friendly badger who

was allowed out of the pet shop at last.

*

Around this time, the fact that

a clock is only as fast as a cheetah

was also applied to the digital watch.

*

Then came the frog, swimming

wet words in the water of everlasting

life in a bucket in a clearing

in the centre of the woods…

*

The beast was next,

fast and frightening.

*

Don’t forget:

Dear Green Organisation,

We found a gannet with a broken wing

at a bonfire party on the beach.

We saved its life.

Please plant some trees for this effort.

John F B Tucker.

*

Last Autumn two biologists announced

they had cloned the DNA of a

forty-million-year-old, extinct

stingless bee found in amber.

*

By puberty, I think I decided

not only has bongles still got the stones,

but Barnes has scored a chicken.

*

Butterflies flutter

in the sideways

gravity of the

smile of light.

*

Break bird with the skin of snake.

*

I can see, said Prof. Feldman to me

how broken haloes fall from angels,

you see them on the floor.

*

My name is David Bonky,

I’m a knock-kneed hummingbird,

there’s a tear up my jacket.

*

In 1998, a salmon

escaped the ancient net.

*

A sprightly hypertext-

sniper on Piper At

The Gates of Dawn

accrued to the procession too.

*

The anguila eel is wet and named after

the devil for mysteriously appearing

in the puddles of towns on rainy days.

*

Literature is a vehicle,

unlike the death-box, television.

*

Piggy is a symbol

of Reason and dies.

*

Civilisation is a thin

veneer belied by dark,

arational forces – the

temptation of atavism.

*

A purple parrot perched

upon the shoulder of

the pirate squawked

“don’t tell Moronika.”

*

A green parrot was sent

to space through the conch…

*

A Lion Bar was driven

through the economy

in a car and a carfume

whooshed from the unicorn’s bottom…

*

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

To break on through

to the Other Side.

Why did the chicken

cross the road?

I am the Burger King.

I can eat anything.

Preferably a Double

Whopper with cheese,

bacon, fries and a Coke.

*

The rising kestrel finds

its boiling point is now

contained in the imperative:

“desperate for sex with a dream full of ladies.”

*

Paul is traditionally

eagle-eyed with the

cherry, for example.

*

Waves [squiggle]

crossed the FTSE [squiggle]

and the Helter-Skelter [squiggle]

crashed in the electric sea.

*

Natterjack sparrows

scream by the time of dawn.

*

Le little lapin

on le lawn,

trembling in

the dusky dawn

forlorn as fallen

autumn leaves

is the wave

that misbehaves.

*

The purlieu is the vexed edge

of the silver forest and beyond it

lies the sylvan frieze.

*

The image starts as an amber

scarab [like Jung’s symbol], scuttling

still on a hill of sand or a tumulus.

The image is of Egyptian mystery

and kings and masked gold

and pharaohs and jewels

in the night sky like stars

and the red, triangular sun of the Day.

*

Waving for the raven’s throne

only to break the Hollow Claw.

*

Maybe birds speak in a language

called gaga-zook-zook

and bongatee-bing-bong.

*

I shall not give a damn.

I shall not give a fish.

I shall not live an onion.

I shall contrive a dragonfly.

It will become an ostrich.

And ostriches are for eating

and friends are for meeting

and I am friends with the dragonfly.

*

Neil Curry says the woods

are traditionally a testing ground

not just in literature but

in life which is not

black and white but

kaleidoscopes of colour.

*

An A-E-I-O-U- bird

toots its hollow

horn out on the A595.

*

Down the beach sea-

birds scream from the

ragged rocks – is it their

love song or elegy?

*

Jerry

Springer’s

camera

crew

descended

like

vultures

to

eat

the

eyes

of

the

deadman.

*

There was an accident on the road today -

mum drove past a juggernaut and

said “it’s a bloody juggernaut.”

*

She says language is a creature

and imagination a muscle.

*

My pet dodo sleeps with her

heart in a jar by the bedside table.

*

I buy drugs off a guy

who’s lost the plot

forgotten the truth and the lie.

*

Ted Hughes saw a monster

in the river in childhood but

recognised it was himself.

*

I wrote a story about a man

who could see a black,

avaricious, anarchy

of menacing, dog-shit

sucking fucking flies in the

fridge at a house party

where no-one else

could see them.

*

Go to waste,

was the command,

from the end

of a branch.

*

How to fix a broken

yolk I do not know

maybe sit down

and have a smoke.

*

The bird in the wood,

it was definitely a horse.

*

I saw a rare bird,

I told my ex,

over the phone

and I had – a red

kite while climbing

up the rear side

of the fell.

*

When I fell up a tree

I was trading stories

with the chief of

the black bird spies.

*

Birds are now thought

to be what became of the dinosaurs.

*

I heard we grew out great

brains by eating meat and

needing to spread information

about farming, hunting, killing,

cooking and eating meat, developed language…

and I for one am glad it wasn’t

fungus instead of meat.

*

In poetry music not only

aids memorability but

precedes sense as an

agent of understanding

as in the Natural World.

*

My laptop password

is whitecrow, which

I deem neo-shamanic.

*

I have 4 motley

fridge-magnet letter

jungle birds now:

whitecrow, chardud,

beckstub, stillwalker.

*

Pen wine fate heaven fix

alive more free you gun

the scissor-bird sings

with innocuous vision.

*

Love can go veggie

for reasons of Disney.

*

Tit butter moat

brink notes sprinkle

outside open Darwin

window down.

*

The pulleys are not for bullies.

The birds are smuggling super-cars

to an Iranian over-lord

through Persia

and over the mnts.

Shush.

Listen.

Tin is their usual merchandise.

*

Then they stuck the end of ‘Bike’ in his head,

‘Bike’ in his hair, ‘Bike’ in his head.

*

The bird in the wood

was not the end of ‘Bike’

because soundwave recognition

qualifies a species.

*

They’re having trouble

papering over the cracks.

*

Once you see the shark mask replica

worn by a seagull, you see

the sun is the peachstone

of a black hole, sinking.

*

She asked: “do you remember looking

for the Golden Eagles up the fell?”

*

A bird pipes a bar of light

up a tree a jar goes down of sunset

late beams land drunken and hazy

and lazy soaking the beer garden

like day is a dream’s balcony

around mellow me.

*

It is not strictly true that

the effect of acid and

the effect of acid-rain

on an imaginary species

= the same, nothing

if there can be no more proof

of something being real

than saying it was imagined,

hence the effect of global

warming on the unicorn’s

like a postmodern id.

*

We crashed on a ship REC and we tried

the canons and they were still red hot.

We went into the cabin and we saw

a captain’s chest and twenty

fighting pirates and we looked out

and saw a whirlpool heading

straight towards us and since

we were under the sea the

whirlpool pulled on top of the water.

*

“I believe the brooch is in the jackdaw’s

nest in that tall tree,” he said, and he was right.

“I knew where to look because the bird left

marks on your dressing-table,” he explained.

*

I was the first one up followed by

the white pawns then the two queens

then the two kings then the blakc pawns

then the bishop then the rooks

and last of all the knits.

*

Wouldn’t it be pollen

if Barnes has scored a chicken

and spring is a red horse?

*

The sun is a hedgehog everywhere,

spilling its needles defensively.

*

The cannabee

comes from Rontaur.

*

Crows were messengers

to the Ancient Greek Gods.

*

I hear their primal coo or caw

or mating call or

wall of stones or

squawk or cry or

squaw or scream

at the Request Stop Station -

new jewellery for the sensual -

and think of her

and her soft, mangled jaw,

soft as prehistoric

dinosaur maw and

more and many more -

car, car, they

croon, car, car.

*

Circumference of adverts at the pristine

empty cricket green next to the mental hospital:

three larger seagulls bully a much

smaller bird for crumbs. I am

rooting for the smaller one, reading

Bukowski and the score stays nil nil.

*

Jim Morrison saw

winged serpents in

the desert on acid

whom we know is

never quite flaccid

and also flung from the sun.

*

<BEE> might still

ensue from @ in

the international

language alphabet.

*

When mother says don’t

put all your eggs in one basket

I think of the word V-A-E-I-O-U-L.

*

Crows can talk.

*

Crows dogs horses trees,

these are our friends, yes these.

*

Bees can count.

*

Jackdaws can speak.

*

Birds are now known

to be highly intelligent

like dogs and horses.

*

There are 3 types of

swallow in America.

*

The flamingo-anglepoise

has just been born.

*

She said: “life is shit.

My mother died.

I gave up religion.

Now when I see

a robin I know it’s

my mother come to visit me.”

*

A single lone black bird

sings atop a tree this

dark dawn then flies away.

*

I see a smaller brown one

dart and swerve below.

*

Inside my eggs quack

and S. O. S. in the pan.

*

I see 12 crows in the Combe field,

the museum field, the same field.

*

Multiple flocks of Jonathon

Livingstone Seagulls

sail out to sea.

*

Why should an aged bullet up

a telegraph pole spread its wings?

*

I do not hope

to tern again!

*

Barnes has scored a liquid noose

and it’s full of pussy juice.

*

Birds are for flying

not for special

perception

*

Floating in the quiet of a weightless dawn,

the buzzard is the crux

of the flux of Time.

*

You can't have your break

bird with the skin of snake and eat it.

*

You can take a horse to

water and drink the horse.

*

Don't forget if you

are getting a puppy

for Christmas, THINK

and wear a seatbelt.

*

We go a month of Mondays

and by the time we

arrive, several weird

species of insect

crawl out of severed

telephone cable.

*

When in Rome all roads

shit in the woods.

*

The bear is a catholic.

*

James Joyce also

saw new creatures.

*

The resident pheasant

to reach out for style

is called MC Hammer

for all his dandy attire.

*

Omnivorous frog eyes blink in the puddles

while mine own are drugged up and groggy

and I don't know why something so pellucid

can come across as being green and froggy...

*

Do not listen to the moth

says Dr. Calculator Ptom

on his word-chord piano.

*

I went to a music event with no mask

at a Sports and Social Club;

and at the back, as it got dark,

the footie pitch was hunted for grub

by twelve grey and elegant

herons, standing round, mooching

whom I saw fly when the band

began, stretch their wings

out to tremendous width and breadth,

gliding off, to the guitarist’s twangs,

atlas-wide wings, beating.

*

I’ve been redrafted, the lion at the heart

of Poem Records, upon their happiness…

*

Even that means to

an end the alphabet

could turn out Nelly the

Elephant’s suicide note…

*

Some breakfast containing

every snooker ball colour -

I only had three rashers

of bacon on their own! 

*

Barnes has scored a liquid horse

it got on to the writing course

and when at last its work was done

then it flew back to the sun

when it returned it was burned

the people asked what had been learned

and Barnes’ horse said why of course

it is to have more intercourse

*

The free-thinking sheep eat

grass in the Combe field,

the field we rent out

to a local farmer friend,

who moves them a

lot, with his dog Max.

*

O is the key of the

babbling unicorn.

*

Because a dying animal is faster than.

*

Outside the windows

cows doze like menhirs.

*

I hear the monastic puking

of the ancient sheep and

know I am home.

*

The buzzard is the reason

the colour of Cumbria is brown.

*

McTruth And Flies

would be a good

name for a book.

*

We should kill

the snake in the greenhouse.

*

Dog = pi times mc squared.

*

Baxter the dog sits next to me

on the bed, grown very used to me

feeding him sweet, sugary tea.

*

Flies fly in a zany,

computer game rhythm.

*

Tiny red spiders

dance to imaginary

drum n bass on my

window ledge and

until I look them up

online and find out

what they are I

think I have

discovered a

new species.

*

When I was a boy

I used to repeat the word

‘kangaroo’ in my head

until it went numb,

emptied itself of meaning,

hopped off to become

the mad, kangaroo king.

*

I realise given the supposition

of language’s origins

that in my animalistic

piece I can now say anything.

*

The dog is looking

out of the window.

*

The window

is made of glass.

*

The glass is pellucid.

*

It offers a frame

of perception

on the world.

*

You can see, for example,

the beck in the back garden.

*

This reminds me that when

the birds return in spring

it is like sensation returning

to the fingers after

an anaesthetic, but

that’s still quite obvious.

*

Less obvious is

the fact that the water

is brackish to taste.

*

Also out the window

I see the mist up the fell.

*

Trees are ponderously

swaying like coral.

*

When monkeys herald

the new dawn up a tree,

they are celebrating

light, exalting the senses,

singing of a love for life.

*

When birds pepper the new

day, they are warning

others off their branch.

*

Typos are still

dolphins

in the sea.

*

Smashed, I type,

my fingers have crashed,

and my mad, crashed

fingers have connected yet again.

*

Lego contains no

mono sodium glutamate,

nor ego, nor anything

bad for those

allergic to nuts,

or to strobe lights,

and nor would it

hurt to mention its

plastic form in a

piece on animals.

*

Will Self said

where Martin Amis

was more into

narrative devices, he

was more into

philosophy

and animals.

*

The Lords And The New Creatures

used to be my favourite book.

*

A fluke it was,

when I became

witness and now

look where we

worship and

beware.

*

There are no dark forces

conspiring against you in life.

*

Take out your Lords

and see in all

directions at once.

*

Beyond the mind’s eye

may lie the mind’s ear

I mean I can hear

Baxter the dog

barking at my supposedly

clinical and delusory voices.

*

How the wood

can come again

I do not know.

*

How I can terminate

that possibility

I do not know

but it seems like

it might be easier.

*

Blessed is the seal’s seed.

*

We still inherit dreams

of fighting wild packs

of animals from ancestors

who had to rehearse

for that real situation.

*

The idiot box

kills brain cells.

That may be why

I call it the death box.

My dad wanted to

put a pick axe

through the telly.

I haven’t watched

a droplet for

years and years.

*

To be worthy

would ruin my image,

to drink Coke

would flatter

the style of some.

*

There are bears inside the moon

who drink and think the same of you.

*

The summer moon wears

the ultra scan of every baby.

*

Next time,

bend ze knees,

said my dad, in

Classic, east European,

Popperian accent.

*

Well, I missed out a further

song about Ossie the dog, chasing

his own tail, only going

upstairs for a trail of

Maltesers, nice, round

and pale, a song from

The Road To Heaven

by Noj And The Mob.

*

And yet after all this

I may have found a way out -

fire, fire, fire!

*

Then again it is still a word.

*

I am soooooo square!

I feel like I should be

the neo-Darwin what with

my boyhood attestations,

and write of the logical

bond between narrative

and Naturalistic Observationism.

*

I’m not going to be long this time

I am only going to do one.

Everything else I have taken care of.

*

To start the discussion off

I will ask: did James Joyce,

who saw new creatures too,

writing Ulysses become

the reason Ted Hughes

saw a monster in the river?

*

Quite interesting indeed,

and not being able

to find a way out,

of meat, nor fungus,

hmn, I might just write

whatever comes into my head.

*

In Prep School I named

my Fantasy Cricket Team

the Fungus Faces, who sat

mid-table in the list on

geography wall, among

all the others like

the All Stars, the

Champions and the Best.

*

If you rewind to a younger age,

when I read Enid Blyton’s

adventure stories, the character

I wanted to be was Philip

who was the one that was

best with the animals,

who magnetised the puffins

on the top of the cliff.

*

If I said the light is dark

would I escape the meat?

*

That could mean

Toad of Toad Hall

down in his dank dungeon

is climbing up the wall

wearing ladies underwear

and asking and asking

where it all went wrong.

*

My dad used to say

skunk made me canine.

*

I used to feel more leonine

in my fur coat, soft, white shirt

and my black trousers.

*

My dog stands on my laptop -

miles more interesting

than this – and the resultant

text reads as follows:

#][P;IK

*

Wallace Fowlie said, in some of

the only sustained critical analysis

of Jim Morrison’s text that

the new creatures are metaphors,

alibis in disguise for the

law-hounded poet; but then

it went and happened, shit

got real – as Morrison

said “a creature [waited]

out the war,” - and that

meant the Cold War – after which

my dad immediately sold his

art smuggling business – at

the fall of the Berlin Wall -

meaning it was me that was witness-

and now Russia is at war again

I cannot help wonder if

I have some role to play – if

the war will stop and if

the new creatures

will arise another time.

*

The word ‘adimal’ could be

the sublimation of the animal

and the advert.

*

The word “Transphiloquisation”

could mean inter-racial love.

*

Entropy backwards could frame

the first unformulated spark of

appetency in Nothingness, preceding

Creation and its dance.

*

‘Emocracy’ could mean

‘rule by emotion.’

*

‘Agovernment’ could mean

the opposite of government.

*

Filence could mean

delicate speech.

*

I cannot tell you

if a bunch of

cave-paintings in words

is the same or not as a

distractionary

that contains

the metallurgical

origins of birds.

*

I’m just so bored but

I did wish for a further

concept poem – long

and containing some

underlying, unifying principle.

*

What is the concept

of my new poem

going to be now

that I have written it?

*

I guess its only concept

is to unlock the cages

of the inner zoo…

well that will do.

*

The cock crows,

the dawn has risen,

the dog is by my side,

I have eaten not one but two

open top sandwiches,

Dutch cheese and

Italian salami on

Hovis bread, toasted.

I have a cup of tea

with which to gulp

down the medication.

I also have a pouch of tobacco.

Maybe one day I will

run out of ideas and

have to make a new

concept poem all

about giving up smoking.

*

It turns from white to grey

so fast, contains a

million little me’s.

*

Then we see I renewed it,

as if I had a choice.

*

You see I might be taking

the harder path as a

matter of stance before

life, not ruling out their

rebirth, carrying a

burden alone, slowed

down but also enriched.

‘I am the heir to the foul air,’

says Ben, and it seems

like air from the great

subconscious to me.

*

James has taken the dog

up the fell, for a walk, to

expend some of the dog’s

energy and try and

get fit himself, but

it’s rude to write of the

living, all writing is

fiction, there is no

immutable truth, all

selfhood is mythology,

it is malleable is history,

so again I await Dr. Ptom

and the word-chord piano,

revolving at the edge of life.

*

If I were into art

I would be a Fauve, maybe even

dance the brush on

the paper to the music of

the Aphex Twin in

any colour I deem

fit to make the shape

of a beast of energy -

but seeing as I am but

a humble, minor poet,

I can but feel that

something’s gone wrong.

*

A shark’s fin sticks up

out of the choppy sea.

The News has got a screw loose.

These random access bytes

I love but not for love

or money will I

return to babyspeak,

gaga zook zook

and bongatee bing bong,

and did I tell you

of the time I escaped

from Monopoly Jail,

and made it to Scotland,

ah, it made my dad laugh,

and as soon as I cottoned on

that I was the witness

I was diagnosed, they

were the same instant,

so then you get people

saying it’s textbook delusion,

whereas what is textbook

is dimestore psychology,

for all there likely

wouldn’t be the wound

if these things didn’t

happen in atomic reality,

and That’s All Folks,

if you buy cheap

you buy twice.

*

James has fed the dog

and cooked and the food

is ready already.

John is the guy that

sits here eating it.

*

It is later, and we’re back

on the topic of food.

Lamb stew is now being

cooked and the sound

of newborn lambs

fills the air outside.

*

Our dog already died.

*

Jim Morrison’s book

The Lords And The New

You Know Who was about

laying down the law to the animals.

*