| POETRY NOTICEBOARD |
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- - Steve Walker talks about his poems, June 2003
- - check out previous published collections
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The Mouse People
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The Mouse People demand similarity.
I failed the interview
- said something outrageous
without knowing.
In the hills with Renegades
it is no better.
I can't see how they failed to get in.
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The Museum of Pickled Clowns
Zob's knees bent in the narrow jar.
A bubble takes a year to pass across his smile.
His old son comes and mutters drolleries.
Floods sink the city. Folk come in rowboats.
With an antique coin you can hear Zob's laughter.
An outing for the mad ends in an incident.
Closure makes a mystery of the whereabouts of clowns.
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Two Explorers
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The range is not quite infinite.
I have stood upon every summit
Alone or with Herr Gottlieb.
He always claimed infinity was there
If you came down a particular mountain
By a certain route
And hit the valley in just the right way.
An endless range.
The answer to everything.
Today I descend to the little yellow chapel
Alone.
I have seen everything and more than him.
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A Comment on His Return from the Children's Crusade, 1212 A.D.
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Be alone.
Everything we do together is mad.
Find somewhere.
Forget.
I have followed a painted cart.
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The Egg and Spoon Race
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In tartan slippers
rawly shaved
one hundred humorous men.
A hurried tread softly
tinking silver
speckled brown
a blur of slipping tartan
green and legs and green
to faraway girls and lemonade
striped pavilions under the blue
on a day they'll remember in dungeons.
A click like joking dolphins
but stumm where an unjust thumb
takes its serious fellow to the line
to fizziest girls
medallions
an all-powerful future
as the others lie cracked, bleeding
on the shapeless pathless green.
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Medieval Breton Simpletons
Four Breton simpletons meeting at a crossroads
pretend complexity, borrow pebbles.
Each run by unfraternal vagaries
they make no unruly club
sharing only this legend:
A princess attracted to a congenital lack of grace
takes a simpleton home to wash and pet
feeds him brawn and peas from a wealth of spoons.
When his socially inappropriate behaviour
brings on a collapse of love
he is released into a bearable simplicity
a lifelong tour of duckponds
cadged food, hayrick nights.
Four truncated spirits stuck in joy then fear
making life from a few thoughts
each claims to be the legend’s true subject
and hears no disbelief sounded.
Turning back from the great event of their meeting
four ways over old steps
while pies bake and wars land
they are safe from love and rescue.
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The Storehouse of Blackbird Pies
Built into the side of a mountain
- a storehouse of blackbird pies.
The freshest are near the doors.
In trays of 4 & 20.
Go deeper for the stale.
But the tunnel keeps on going.
A blackbird in flight all its life
would not reach the oldest pies.
The pie makers have given up asking
- why do we so ceaselessly piemake?
An intolerable state of mind!
They walk home to Blackbird Cottages.
Lead normal lives of cares and woe.
Ignore kiddies when they ask
- why so many pies and none yet eaten?
The bird catchers, whistling over emptied hills,
meet collectors of all kinds, vagabond priests,
crazy girls who dive into their nets.
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The Red Wagon
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Lame enough to start with.
He chases the red wagon.
Through the Indian summer.
Up the ancient lane.
He goes chasing the red wagon.
Towards the sunk away sunball.
Too dry to swear.
Tripsore, hobbledrop.
A pursuit over hard ruts.
Across maddened wasp days.
Dressed for a wedding.
He keeps on chasing.
Chasing, chasing the red wagon.
Blames those nitty children.
At the bouncing round back window.
Tongues. Fingers. Potto eyes.
He chases and chases.
Chases the red wagon.
The children grow old at the window.
Sleepyheaded old.
Snowflakes and horse hummers.
Broken watch and alone in the dark.
Past empty churches.
He chases the red wagon.
He chases. He chases.
He chases the red wagon.
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The Philosophy of Stampede
A man with a simple solution to the world's problems
was having a picnic
dotting the i's of his great forthcoming work
when a buffalo stampede
came from nowhere.
When he came around
a year later
they gave him his notebook
to help him remember himself.
It did nothing for him.
The buffaloes
using monuments for backscratchers
thought daily about their philosophy of stampede.
Each buffalo alone to itself.
Nothing was ever discussed.
No presentations, votes.
Never a scheme to be implemented.
To every buffalo always in the same instant
an idea came fully dotted from nowhere
and was done.
There was a stampede once
the time when they ran over the picnic
when one buffalo didn't run.
He was left far behind and never rejoined.
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Caruso
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The Ghost of Caruso was forbidden to sing
in what they called Heaven.
So he broke all the rules:
walked over the mountains as himself
singing all he knew.
But the pleasure was not enough.
La Scala was down there through the haze.
His round face was not unrecognised in the streets.
But on the steps they were waiting
and he never sang again.
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The Octopus Collects Bottles
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To squeeze inside is a fine sensation.
Greater peace than the deep alone.
Massed on the ocean floor.
Long necked green. Stumpy flat white.
His colours shift as he wiggles in.
Oh, bottles!
Once more it is achieved.
Wound up.
Suckered in.
Now away to find more.
How his cellar grows!
Soft head bottled up.
The collector thinks about bottles.
*
Of the few perhapses and what ifs
possible in a cephalopodian life:
what if another takes up the passion?
Then there is no longer isolation.
Instead a great drowned wrangle.
Only so many bottles in the sea.
All their messages irrelevant.
To fly over broken glass is truly wild.
His colours jagged, changing.
An emotional bottle-thief who carries eight.
The other drunkard he will never see.
Oh, bottles!
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Cora
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We looked all day for the crow.
My grandmother's favourite crow.
Older than her and blind.
The cat is innocent. The shrubbery bare.
I climbed oaks till sunset.
I heard its caw in my very centre
- a dark place I have filled with feathers.
Fascination with my new pillow
keeps me awake tonight.
I'm sure it has ideas of its own
of crows and oaks and all today
and waits for the fun of my nightmares.
But I will never rest on you, soft new pillow.
Better to rip you open.
I'll see how deep in your fluff
crow's wings are hidden.
Tomorrow, the search called off
I shall not be who I should be.
No one will ever trust me again.
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He Found Out
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I found out.
My guru was dying in the mountains
with no phone.
I had to tell him.
I drove through the night.
He had to know that I had found out.
But when I got there
he was up and about.
He had joined the Government.
He could not be told.
In the years since I found out
I have avoided everyone.
There is no way of telling them.
They cannot take it in.
In a field across the water
small men are inflating a balloon.
They will drop more leaflets across the land
to be a mess in the trees
for my dogs to wear as hats.
Re-reading one as it floats in my rain barrel
I have only one concern:
that I shall forget what I found out
that I shall see myself giving a speech
handsome and seductive in the Market Square.
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Explosion in a Firework Factory
Hunan Province, China
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Every living thing for miles
turned its version of a head.
Every window
a whizzy-whizzy-whooshing window.
Bedsore boys sat up out of comas
toothy and obsessed.
Blindmen faced the right way.
All was made clear to local thinkers
nit-wits even
but gone with the colours
uncatchable by other flames
leaving many an everafterwards discomfort
pulling up often before inconsequential things.
A hundred years later
a bootblack in some unknowable city
having his eyes pressed shut just too early
will dwell on one of the few events
every rocket falling.
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They Can Do Anything
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3 clockwork men go swimming.
"We can do anything!" they say.
Thisaway, thataway, tickaway, tockaway.
Doing everything and anything.
Couldn't be happier.
They have their own aeroplane.
Restored it themselves.
Take turns flying.
While t'others ride the wings.
Quite true. They can do anything.
Beauty queens adore them.
Though the sex is peculiar.
"Must your friends stand there grinning?"
"I need them, my dear. To keep winding me up."
And they do. He hammers on for hours.
Anything within limits? No, anything.
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A vast estate. 100 Jaguars.
Clockwork toys that never fail to amuse.
2 great pals each. A perfect life.
They don't even age.
One writes novels. T'others paint.
When one is broken at their annual joust
t’others tinker him back to life.
He’s not the same at all. Not even himself.
But showing a new chum how they can do anything
makes more fierce enjoyers of t'others.
Surrounded by clocks, laughing at the rain.
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Small Red Animals
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A thousand doors are locked in the empty hotel.
In all but one room exists a small red animal
- thoughtless, never scuttles, mirror gazes.
Ghosts of bickering couples
move silent down the corridors
but cannot pass through the walls
so never rest.
Outside, a level lawn goes on forever.
The grass hardly grows.
A ball rolls.
Eventually, a horde of crimson gnu
will come trampling on an eternal round.
Their stragglers mill always in the foyer
safe without lions, resting till next time.
In one stuck elevator: a small red animal.
In the others: nothing.
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A Day Out at the Sausage Eating Contest
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When the champion arrives swung from a helicopter
lesser gluttons tuck in their shirttails.
When the cooks are overdizzied with sizzle
fatso still drums MORE! MORE! MORE!
When the starlet's smile accepts bashful's offer of a bite.....
lean judges - fat rulebook - disqualified!
When the ex-champ lies sleeping in that sandpit
droves forget the contest and stand at its rim.
When the push sends starers flopping
they fizz into piggybelly and demand hands for rescue.
"I dreampt I wazza crocodile," he yawns.
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1000 Picnics
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1000 picnics are laid under the trees.
But the food in the hampers is pretend food.
6000 picnickers sit under the trees.
They pretend to eat.
All the conversation was learned by rote
during lunch hours and late nights
- 150 close-typed pages.
1000 different but not dissimmilar chats
churned out, played through.
The 2384 who change parties
keep to their old dialogue
- confusions easily assimilated.
Missing persons create lengthy pauses.
The girl who was asked to come naked
mumbles her lines.
13 sleep under the trees that night
wrapped in checkered cloth.
781 will never forget their speeches.
The official photographs of the event
are anxiously studied by all.
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Sweet-Toothed Picnickers
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Police crawling up the sides of a hillock
to arrest sweet-toothed picnickers
become lost
are strangled by wild roses.
More come and more.
All are lost, strangled by wild roses.
Not one policeman survives the operation.
Back home, civilians are recruited, made police.
The vague, broken. Even crooks, layabouts.
There is overtime at the truncheon factory.
Until they too get the call.
Each worker carefully chooses a truncheon.
Plods grimly through the curly gates.
All are lost on the hillock
strangled by wild roses.
Ants carrying crumbs to their cities
as the picnickers at last descend
fat and sugary on their secret path
swinging light-hearted baskets
to a surprising freedom
where they think about murdering each other
but never do
in the parks, empty streets
with views of the hillock.
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A Man Wakes Up in a Morgue
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Dogs swapping barks across a valley
enter my dream, make thoughts, wake me.
I am in a morgue.
The top table.
Fingers broken. Rings gone.
All my piano teachers are here
gutted in a row.
On the strips of flypaper
only one of the flies struggles.
How do I know in this unknown place
that in windmills outside
posh brutes fill in their colouring books
awaiting orders?
I shall sneak past them
for a new beginning.
Unpredictable music
or better none.
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The She-Bear Awakes
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Rediscovering the world
in a coat too big
the she-bear's checklist
when waking from hibernation
includes everything she values and fears.
The old-fashioned dream
of ripping up a picnic
proves a genuine relic
in a glade of daffodils:
a sin that changed everything
which she almost remembers
along with the taste of people and buns.
Will there be no more bright new days?
After long sleeps
short sleeps
must it always be the same?
If because of her act
all the valley towns are abandoned
and no picknickers come again
there will be an increase of bears
counting fish and bee hives
more full-height meetings on pathways
as absent folklore fades with its men.
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Helter-Skelter
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I am becoming flesh.
My kiosk also.
It owns me
that puny hut.
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Helter-Skelter
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No possibility of change seemed possible.
Then all houses were demolished
and in their place everywhere built
helter-skelters.
We played our slides until exhausted
with happiness, waved to new days
from balconys of turret rooms
grinning at the curving drop.
No change was pondered now
in our level-headed candy-striped
mushroomy world of helter and skelter.
- But a longer slide? - A grander tower?
- Higher and higher we built them.
Pencil thin bum-blistering rides that swooned their riders.
Great squatting bulbs whose silver spirals
shone the eyes shut in sunlight and moon.
Spectacular arks that took months to paint
a whole overwhelmed childhood to peel.
In the criss-cross pepper-pot shadows
my antique original stands crowded, pathetic.
No change seems possible to this bored slider.
In the pennant flying from our summit
is a picture of a helter-skelter
and in the picture's pennant
another
and in its another.
Sometimes a landing is ruined by crows.
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Graves of the Pioneers
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Strangers march from all directions
to the graves of the pioneers.
Snaggled crosses in a square of stones.
Ghosts flit
but have lost their curiosity
though their thoughts do churn.
Too late, complains one visitor
to apprehend an appreciation of other lives.
Identity must be redefined, the strangers agree.
They traipse away in all directions
travelling light to eternal life.
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The Men Who Sawed the Church in Half
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The men who sawed the church in half
were not the men who carried away
the free top half to a living town.
Their part was just to saw that day
to saw and saw
yelling to each other
through windows emptied of glass
with one eye each
on the steeple that shuddered
as they cut.
Those others who took one half away
were not the friends
of the men who sawed
who were left behind
to saw trees if they liked
for they allowed them the saw
the great long two handled saw
the one they sawed the church with.
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The men who sawed the church in half
worshipped the saw
their great long two handled saw
which sang as they stroked it
never hymns but always
a smart cruel twang
on the mountain where it sawed trees
alone with its men
who sawed the church in half with it
and talked of no other day
who held high the saw
in the stump of a church
and cried hurrahs till they died.
In the living town on the plains
the freed top half of the church they sawed
bolted down to a concrete base
coloured windows nailed in its holes
stood on a corner for 60 years
its ten dead steps counting feet
till one fine morning everyone alike
awoke at last
unbelieving
unbelievers
and laughed and laughed
going on a rampage
never so pleased
wild picnics in the mountains
where the wind stroked the rusty saw
the great lost two handled saw
the saw that cut the church in half
a sound that only beasts could hear
smart cruel wandering beasts.
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A Picnic with Imaginary Girls
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He lays out a picnic for his class of imaginary girls
- buxom 16s his favourites
but elegant 19s he talks to more.
Today his voice makes happy chatter.
His own faked falsetto replies.
A release of insights into his great subject -
HIMSELF.
But he listens with a distant different mind.
Soon beetles and shrews mount his angel cakes.
September wasps rage in his mother's jam.
He is naked, stung, overexcited
when the hunters shoot him.
They were all fianced to better men
he whispered
but they chose to picnic with him.
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The Mapmaker
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His World Atlas is at last complete.
He has written the names of all our places.
Pondered the spaces, seas, conquests.
He was born in this house.
Spent all his nights here.
Now, perhaps, is the time for a journey.
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Poetry Noticeboard
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1000 Picnics is my first collection since I Am Against The Mouse People in 1984. But that isn't because I stopped writing poetry. Quite the opposite.
Despite all the other work exhibited on this site, poetry remains my central activity. Between 1966 and 1986 I published hundreds of poems in magazines as well as booklets and collections. Then I decided to stop publishing poetry altogether. Why? Because my plays were then being produced, I was getting into TV and radio, with all the associated commercial and critical pressures. I didn't want my poetry to suffer from those same pressures. I needed it to remain entirely itself, private and isolated. Now is the best possible time to emerge from my burrow and roar.
Most of the poems were written in either the Alps or the Rockies during the last years of the 20th century. New poems from my new home in the Pyrenees and our new century will be added any day now.
Audio files of the 1000 Picnics poems will be available here soon. Highly theatrcial poetry readings, with me playing dozens of characters, were a big feature in my career in the 80s, but again I stopped these after my Mouse People tour in 86. I'm putting together a new show now, news of which will appear on the website soon.
Here's where the future meets the past. Check out A Coastal Town, reproduced here with the original drawings. This was my first poetry publication back in 1978. Comparing that with the poems on this page gives many clues to the journey I have been on since.
Enjoy your next picnic, but don't feed the bears.
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click these links to find previous published collections on Amazon.co.uk:
I Am Against The Mouse People
Housebreakers
