JOHNNY CASHBACK LIVE!

FRANK ALWAYS WORE NICE SOCKS

We parked on Washington Street and Fifth. I just went for the first available spot. The last two days of driving around in circles waiting for a free space had me all preemptive. I got out and got the baby out. She was sleeping and sweaty. It was 95 degrees and we were on the shady side of the day. Still here we were in Hoboken looking for the Elysian field of legend. It’s not true that you have to die first. It’s here, or at least a part of it is.

It seems to be recently that as I walk the streets pushing the baby about that we are open to suggestion, available for comment, suckers for advice. I don’t know whether it’s New York/New Jersey specifically but I don’t remember it happening to me before back in England.

Hey, mister, fix her neck! Or… Hey, mister, her hat is slipping! Hey, mister, you should cover her legs! Put something on her feet! Hey, your blanket is twisted!

They shout at me from across streets and from their windows, assuming I am a new father in need of assistance. I don’t ask for it, but I ask for it just by the way I walk I guess. It gets so that it makes me testy and I tell all these busy old women to fuck off under my breath, because it all comes from women of a certain age. They know best.

Then today as we cross Frank Sinatra Boulevard in search of some history I hear a smoky female voice berating me for something I can’t quite catch. I see her then on the opposite side of the street, all bent and knock-kneed, wearing yellow, she’s like a bruised banana. I check the baby quickly as we walk towards her and can see nothing wrong. Still the woman shouts something. The traffic drowns out her voice but I am getting near. She has a hand out, open palm upward, with one long finger like a hawthorn twig pointing at us. I avoid eye contact but am ready to snap at her with some choice cursing if she so much as dares to undermine my parenting. But what she says as we reach the kerb is, “And you’ve got nice socks on!”

I have got socks on it is true. They are not nice though. I don’t understand what she means. I could try to but it would be guesswork and I am busy searching for something else.

LULL

I know Ava Belle
I know Ava very well
I know Ava by her smell
Hell, I know Ava Belle

I know Ava Belle
I know Ava can you tell?
I know Ava and her spell
Hell, I know Ava Belle

I know Ava Belle
I know Ava, hear me yell
I know Ava's why I fell
Hell

I know Ava Belle

HALFBRED

I just listened to Peggy Lettermore. There’s so much I don’t understand about the Irish and their voice. Not the brogue they wear easily everywhere they tread. Not that Oirishness. No. Or the Gaelic either. That other language underneath.  There is something there that excludes. It may be a clan thing. It’s something I had always thought was a part of me - tradition, family, culture - and I read and wrote and sang and danced and cried and did my bit, not noticing, until my dad died, that it didn’t need me. And not only did it not need me but it was laughing. Of course in the 80’s and 90’s when all was going well we were tolerated. We got The Pogues. They made sense to me and my dad at the same time. There was a mutual understanding there. He escaped and I wanted to know why when I thought his place must be better than England. But he never told me anything. He never started or joined any Erin go bragh clubs. He wanted to run from all that religion, from those clans, and yet he got trapped in the land of his family’s former captors, and trapped by babies. 

FORGET THE MIDWIFE, CALL THE PLUMBER

MODERNPOSTMANISM REFLUX

Hunched and needy

Like baby gulls

We stalk the street

For sustenance

Stepping gingerly

Over

The once

Used

Herbal

Tea bags

And broken needles

That spill from brightening bins

In the dwindling dawns of August

 Once we dreamt

Of better days within this

Earthen purgatory

When we were brown and pretty

It was no job

To breathe more and less freely

But now we stalk the streets

Beneath the laughing mooning ball above

In between the raining drops

By the graffitoo shuttered shops

Into the maw

The muscled chops

Of

The Royal Nail

The lifers inside

So lifeless with pride

Good Morningly! grunt their acknowledge

Let out to their wives at eventide

They are always back here stirring their porridge

Will be two hours yet as a coffee-god’s pet

Before we can summon a smile

We keep weather-beaten heads down

In the back of Transits

On old copies of goals extra or extra goals

Or made up goals with moving posts

As the red valkyries descend

From the upstairs garage

Into the yard yawning with boredom

Like the back doors cold open wide

Waiting is time

And labour intensive

And work is last on the mind

A beardy they branded Jumanji walks by

And there’s Dazzer sungover again

And Grizzly Badams with his drizzly voice

And desiccated Ruth with a fag at her chin

And are they as desperate or do they prepare

And are they aware and of course do they care

About this all pervasive attitude

The constant twatting platitudes

For that’s all we hear

Somedays

Shaven headed voices

Spitting casual brutalities

From their fascicle

There in an element that never forgives

Closed ranks of a herd

But this pack is bird like

Right wing they are

For a working union

A bundle of sour white faces

Who defend their misguide

With persiflage turning

To vicious whispers

And insult camouflaged by

Supposed camaraderie

Banter they call it

The fuckers

Seriously

Forget diversity

They need dimension

Even Postman Pat had three

Which maybe hard to define

On a flatscreen tv

Although there was more depth in that episode

When he refused to deliver leaflets for the BNP

CHINCHES

CHINCHES

Coming out of the woodwork

It is a portent

Centipedes eating ants in the bed
This ark has rot
We should not have brought on the termites, Noah!

Get your

Shingle shots

Quick

Flu jabs

Anything to make it seem

That you are not giving in

Vote for the mayor

Or don’t

Vote for the other guy

Who won’t

Pucker up for

The apocalypse

 Ipswich

Of all places

Doesn’t feel the pinch

Because nothing goes on there

And on and on

And you can’t have an end

When nothing has begun

Nothing has begun again

Thank the flies of the lord

...And whatever they house

God cock that crows for some

For others, king crab louse

Thank the flies
That you live in Ipswich

Which is a metaphor

For any shitty urban sprawl

At least it has its uses

Thank someone somewhere for that

You can have it all

You see

Some of you

When the rest have gone