Peterborough

well you better get ready now,
you better fix your eyes and cheeks
and set your faces against the rain
and remember Mozambique
coz they can see you, riding in your sun hat
so fine, like a torn down echo or a curtain
or a telephone. let's not get stuck
on what you are like,
just get ready and don't scream.
It's happening tonight, they're in town
All the lions, listen to the lions
All the dancing horses
(bring on the dancing horses)
Send in the clowns. No, don't bother.
They're crap. This is not the land of make believe
This is June in Peterborough.
We've got things to do
and passports to get and
there is not a single public loo
in the whole damned place.

The Great Great Yarmouth Cash Cow (GGYCC)

Rise up! You have hands.
In them lies your own fate.
We can re-build this place.
Together, we can make something,
bigger than ourselves.
Something to preserve your history,
your culture, your art and your invention,
Something that will feed you in fallow times
and quench your thirst. Something that will
draw you together and make you strong.
Something that will be there forever
Something that will bring the wealthy back and
make you Great again: Like a new Herring.
Something for everyone:

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give unto you
The Great Great Yarmouth Cash Cow.

Amongst us, it will live - always there
Never resting. It will have no home of its own
but shall belong to all of us.

It will be made on it's very last legs first
and its last legs shall be it's last forever.
It's legs will be preserved. Maybe the salted timbers of the sea
or the beams of some long gone civic hall, or Nelson's
oaky rafters themselves. Whatever they be, the first shall
be the last and never will they be made new.

So rare and precious
will be it's legs, that it shall have only three.
It's limp will be the talk of the town.
People will come from far and wide to see it list
and they will feel Nostalgic.
In their great Nostalgia, shall they feed pennies unto the cow.
For pennies are one thing the cow can eat...

The great cash cow shall bestow gifts upon us all -
so long as it is fed. But pennies shall not be enough
To keep us in our Great Abundance, the Cash Cow shall need more
than just pennies from the hands of a traveller's child.

Unto the Cash Cow, we must also make our sacrifices. So I say unto you this:
It will eat from the sins of our own overproduction.
Upon the very waste of our conveniences shall it dine and unto it, by littering,
shall we fill our streets with food (Not the seafront though)
And Lo! From our own waste shall be born the milk of human kindness
and of this milk shall we drink. So long as we are profligate, shall we have milk.

Yet shall ye worry. Yet shall ye cry: "But from where shall we get the cash to build it?"
Fear Ye not.
This Cash Cow shall be built by the memory of great deeds
This Cash Cow shall be modern in all ways and most of all -
In it's great love of those old times, when Great Labours brought Great Wealth,
It shall be a New Testament to the Old: The Great Great Yarmouth Cash Cow
Shall bring forth and be born upon a miracle and the miracle shall be this:

Thou shalt not work. Put back thy hands into thine own pockets.
Put up your hoods over your heads and be still. Be still and list,
Like the Great Cash Cow upon its three Great legs, limp.
Limp under the weight of the memory of His Greatness.
By the Great Mouth Of Yare shall ye limp and
out of that Mouth shall pour forth gifts and ye shall be happy and content.
So long as ye shall follow Him and limp, shall ye yet be free.

By His Great Providence shall ye be set free and shall ye prosper
So long as ye shall follow him and limp.

For unto thee will also come a great Raft.
Upon this raft shall be Measures and by these Measures
Shall thy freedom also be borne

And ye shall be happy.

Being Cooked For

Living on your own
is paradise until somebody
makes your tea.

Flying redundant Chinese planes is fine
and so are fish and chips: Beer after
the landing is - optional

Are there no rhythms that can
motivate a single reader to care?
and did you even start with

half a thing that mattered?

Some things are ok microwaved
but don't be fooled - even they
are drowning things.

Old Folks Perform

So, we all arrived and were treated to a free drink and invited to pay whatever we wanted.

Then, after some chat and another drink we all sat in the bar where there's a new stage for performers and this woman comes on carrying a box, which when she puts it down, turns out to have a baby in it. She's wearing a sort of Leotard and doesn't look like your average mum - especially when she starts dancing round the stage with this baby under her arm... Then she puts it down and actually, it did hit it's head a little bit and this older guy in the audience looked at me - like I was in charge or something - ? But he looked a bit worried - and so was I to be honest. But the baby was OK, and we all laughed and then the lady did some more dancing, then put the baby in a chair, because no-one wanted to baby - sit and then got a big red wine and some chocolate cake from the bar and said it was 'me time'. We all just watched. Then, she danced a bit more, then she gave the baby away - to it's dad and then she came back, danced some more and then she took her clothes off and ran away. Then came back with the baby - fully dressed and ready to take the applause. It was nice.

Then:

In the big room, there were seats going up on, like, a scaffold thing and a last was sitting down on - well there wasn't a stage - but she seemed like she'd be in charge coz she wasn't in the audience and she had a rose on her shoulder. We sat down nd waited for it to begin, but it didn't. Well, we did notice that there was another audience facing us on a screen and they were quite old and the lady in charge told us it was some people in an old folks home. She said the name of it and then she started to read out something about what the performance might have been like if it had been and then we all passed giant plastic chess sets around and ate popcorn and waved at each other and all the old people looked really happy and that was the end.

The lady asked us all to re-tell the story of what happened so I wrote this.

Rubber Johnnies

They have a special talent

to bring a shiny hue to anything

the dullest ring is made

to seem like new..

it cannot be rubbed off or worn

or criticised. Every mark on every work

is perfect and un-circumcised.

There is no need for cleanliness, or

Maintenance or planning,

There are sometimes ‘Operators’

when perfection requires manning.

But, in it’s essence, they produce

the Goods - the real McCoys

The (insert an object of your chagrin here) will not send men

to jobs best done by boys…

Conflation Is The New

Because you said that, you are not to be anymore.
If you hadn't said that, there might be ways to prove you thought it.

As it is, your utterance is all the evidence we need and you will be expelled
- if not hanged - without prejudice. Let this be a lesson to all.

Those who might be tempted to agree with you - in thought or in deed. You are wrong.
All of you. If there was an 'us' we would be right, but we are above right and wrong.

We decide for you. When you have that responsibility, you will understand.
Until then, you should not speak.

Tits

There are Tits on my nut sack

and the Liquidamber Styraciflua hardwood cutting
is now a tree. Two wood-pigeons live in it year after year...

Can they tell a foreign field from an Ice Cold Beer?

I've been put straight so many times. Conceit is now a plague.
Some other address might work: Natural History, tree-veined gold...

The ability to ignore everything about another - person, argument
feelings, questions and just take a position of pre-eminence?

That wasn't a question - you fool.

Cut from a standard and planted as part of a small corner of social housing,
It has achieved more in it's short life already than it's parents.

That is why I now have Tits. They have been slowly growing for years.
Now they are here, I will teach them to speak.

the social media comments novel?

Ken Livingstone’s Hitler Comments Echo Into the U.S. Presidential Election

FORWARD.COM

Like · Reply · 1 May at 05:18

Liam Murphy Interesting. Transvaal and Orange Free State might, in part, be the comparison the author seeks tho no such hypothetical place can really exist. Sanctions did the trick there. I think the stark elephant in room fact here is that no black race, tribe or nation has ever had a country created for them. They've only had white enclaves of other countries created inside them... Black people (along with most white people) have always existed as 'foreign nationals'.. The Jewish people have not existed as a nation since the 3rd Century until 1948. The logic is flawed in the same way most criticisms of 'anti-semitism' are if they conflate criticisms of a nation state with racial hatred. No comparable 'black' state has ever moved so swiftly and resoundingly from oppressed to oppressor. There just is no comparison - and that's why arguments like this one don't really progress the debate. The 'Neighbourhood Bully' tag is not one Israel can or should duck - and questions about it's right to exist are no different to questions about other county's rights to exist as pointed out by the author... but it's defence against (always 'leftist' criticisms -?) does not lie in accusations of racism but in defence of it's own policies (which are the only things missing from this sudden and widespread explosion of interest).

Liam Murphy ..and the suggestion that 'black people', like Jewish people, have a single racial identity... is that racist or just naive?

Like · Reply · 1 hr · Edited

have a look at Btselem and Breaking the Silence if you want to understand more about being Jewish, Israeli and pro peace. Read the novelist David Grossman. The problem is the occupation. happy to discuss in person but not on FB x