My Vestigial Tale, Compassion

My vestigial tale, Compassion,
Didn't do me any good.

Far from being an atavistic flourish,
It was neither use nor ornament:

It just got in the way.





There are problems in these times
But, ooh, none of them are mine
Oh, baby, I’m beginning to see the light

                                        Beginning to see the light The Velvet Underground



 



                                                      I will go and join the Eloi, and curl up nice and warm.

 

 

Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies; good night, good night.

Exit

I had not thought death had undone so many...

Ann Clwyd and the dehumanising tendency in neo-liberal NHS/UK Public Service Management

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/12/05/ann-clwyd-battery-hen-nhs-hospital-wales-_n_2242345.html?view=print

White towers slo-mo to ground zero. Mouthfuls of grey dust. Eyes blink: becoming accustomed to the dark.

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.

‘But its kinda fun here’, say the Eloi. ‘We are light; pure energy: we are Stardust. Don’t disturb our day, we’re miles away. And after all, we’re only sleeping.’

But old men die in hospitals, unnoticed, and the Eloi walk the wards. Dainty children huddle behind their monitors. ‘Careful. Ooh, my nails’. Pink and perfect. Safe behind their hi-tec, wrapped up nice and warm in scene of crime, forensic onesies.

Black and huge. Yahoo bands make noise and beds at night, while the soft white Eloi sleep.

'How the sick and old clutter our office with their tubes, phlegm, and crumpled pyjamas.'

There is nothing . Only art...

The boy who is nothing sees Lennon’s white plimsolls walk beside the blue sea.

In Subway, alone, he looks down at a rainbow sandwich and brown tea. At the table by the window sits George Clooney. Or is it Cary Grant?  He turns and grins. Oh, brother - it’s George. The boy who is nobody turns away.

Greybeard at the next table looks over: a warm smile, soft, wet lips. White glass beads run down grizzled Ginsberg locks: the Maharishi sips his tea from a paper cup. Beside him, a Devotee sits hunched: middle-aged, silver specs, balding, tiny plait - all there is between inner light and banking; offers a glimpse of Guantanamo orange beneath his sodden parka; lays down his head; fingers beads inside an orange bag. Silent prayers. 

‘Ask me any question you like’.

‘Do you know God?’

There is a black cowled figure behind you.  Ferry across a jet black river. Orange eye of the jaguar behind big green leaves. Rustling, and there is a glistening brown thigh.

‘What lies on the other side?'

‘There is nothing. This is art.'

‘Oh, Jesus.’ Bows his head. Hunches. Rubs his eyes. There is nothing. Only art. And drum and bass on my radio. And do I dare, do I dare: dye my hair ruby red; and click my heels, and think of Ma?

Notes for Reviews

Music Reviews

Hasp: 1970s gentle folk/prog-rock combo celebrate 40 years in the business with the new digital release of the seminal 1974 concept album, 'Fairy warblers in high waist trousers'. 

If you enjoy Hasp, you may also enjoy Cusp, Lisp, and Wasp.

Also watch out for 'Clues for Trousers: New Romantic Survivors' on My Imaginary Records.


Light Entertainment

Behind the Curtains with Humphrey Burton

BBC4's Behind the Curtains with Humphrey Burton returns with more celebrity revelations from the world of shadows, wierdness, and self-effacement. 

'More occult tales in comfortable slacks...' 

Love Songs...

                                                                     

                                                                        For Hattie

How my heart with passion quakes...



Oh, how my heart with passion quakes
For my beloved Hattie Jacques.
Haunted by her lips, her eyes,
Her starched white apron over thighs,
Which thunder through my ward of sighs
As Matron cross my dreams she flies.

Whilst invigilating exams, sometime in the 90s




Imagist poem (after Ezra Pound)

Like the sparrow
Whose meagre shape
Failed to contain
A startled soul,
You, also, slipped from my hands.

Different mood, about the same time

War is over...

                                           Learning to sing the Song of Myself...






We've got to fight these f***ing people...

'We're living in extreme times and if you listened to modern rock music you wouldn't know that, ' says Gillespie. ' I just think it's odd there's no protest, resistance or critique of what's going down. It's like people are tranquilised. All the rights people had fought for - people like trade unionists, anarchists, artists - are being clawed back by extremists. These people [in charge] aren't rational thinkers. Someone like Boris Johnson hides behind that bumbling public schoolboy image but he's a sinister right-wing c*** trying to bring in anti-strike legislation....we've got to fight these f***ing people!'

Bobby Gillespie, Primal Scream 'forthright frontman', talking to Tim Jonze in G2 15.03.13

People just get tired, Bobby...



 

 
 


'I once wrote these lines in a little poem (just went to look for it in a collection of yellowing papers - my writing scrapbook) - a long time ago when I taught in High School:

'Children's voices, 'Help me, help me!'/ Spirits, demons prowl my sleep/Dead men whisper dead words over/Hell hounds crying from the deep'.



'Blimey. Must have been going under then...'
'I am keen to swim in shallower waters these days. I decided some time ago:

                             
'I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;/Am an attendant lord, one that will do/ To swell a progress, start a scene or two...''
Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock. TS Eliot (1917)

'I remember during a long, jolly chat about British situation comedies, after a rather seriously political and philosophical research group meeting, Claire, a fellow student of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), leaned over, laughing, and confided, 'You know, Pete, you have hidden shallows...'

She's right, of course: I learnt to play the scholar, intellectual under-labourer, committed political activist, and even managed to convince myself I had become a 'man of gravitas'.

But I am very HAPPY now to splash around in the shallows...'

from an email I sent earlier this evening

I have heard the mermaids singing...

I grow old … I grow old …   I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Marina (Aqua Marina) I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock from PRUFROCK and Other observations (1917)                                  from  http://www.fresh2o.org/   We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown   Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

I could have been somebody...

Star
 

I could do with the money
I'm so wiped out with things as they are
I'd send my photograph to my honey -

And I'd c'mon like a regular superstar

I could fall asleep at night as a rock & roll star
I could fall in love all right as a rock & roll star 


(from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. David Bowie)

 

 

 

Or, perhaps, an easy-listening crooner...

 

                                                                            

https://soundcloud.com/petekeogh?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=twitter&utm_content=http://soundcloud.com/petekeogh

horoscopes

Warm Flute

you are the kind of person who can’t resist snuggling

Affectionate Warm Flautist, you are the kind of person who can’t resist snuggling up to old ladies in bus shelters, and fastening interesting zips to their ruddy, mildly surprised, but warmly appreciative faces, or occasionally wallpapering strangers’ bathrooms when they are away. You are beginning to develop stylish, temporary crushes on side-show dwarves in thread-bare trousers, and should always keep some moist sand under your bed, in your bank account, or in the neat, pleated pockets of your great-aunt’s cardigan. Beware the second Sunday of the Month, especially if the policeman in your sock drawer begins to cosy up to your lucky cutlery.

 

Ape Twin

 

inseparable from your brother

Ape twin, inseparable from your brother, your sister, your husband, wife, or lover, seemingly joined at the hip, you have trouble standing upright in crowded rooms, often approaching strangers in hotel lobbies, giggling incontinently, and encouraging them to apply for overdrafts, or exchange puppies for bits of rolled up newspaper. You struggle to find yourself – especially when, on your hands and knees, at parties, you look for loose change behind sofas or inside fitted wardrobes. Embarrassed by fire, straining to reach high shelves, you often forget the words to conversations, and just hum the tune, or become suddenly preoccupied with receipts, sandwiches, or the library cards of dead people.

 

Comfortable Trouser

                                                         you just hate being nasty

You are sympathetic, sweet and kind. You just hate being nasty to anyone, though you do have a tendency to build sandcastles in post-office doorways, to prevent easy access for pensioners. At other times, you are so keen to be nice that you kidnap needy people, march them onto waiting coaches, and drive them to Skegness for ice-creams, kiss-me-quick hats, and bracing walks in borrowed cardigans. If you don’t get instant rewards for your charitable works, becoming anxious, you tap dance and whistle show tunes outside police stations, manically folding damp toilet paper into startling replicas of Mahatma Gandhi. Try being genuinely, honestly, nasty once in a while. Or, at least, try to eat less and wear warmer clothes. You’ll be a nicer - if not taller - person for it.

sports for dummies and other poems

                                                         Sports for Dummies

 

Tell us how you broke the world high jump record

 

 

So, Graham - 

If you would -

In your own words –

Tell us how you broke the world high jump record.

 

Well – I – erm –

Ran as fast as I could -

 

Yes?

 

Towards the bar -

 

Yes?

 

And – when I was almost up to it -

About a step from it -

 

Yes?

 

I jumped up

As high as I could.

 

Thanks Graham -

That was great.

 

                                                             

                           

                                 For the Incompetents

 

 

Ginsberg good looks no longer de rigueur

 

 

We are the incompetents:

Plimsolls sadly spare;

Grisly in granny-spun hair;

Ginsberg good looks

No longer de rigueur.

 

We who saw her standing there:

Discarded among coffee cups;

Lounging in corduroy;

Forlorn butt-ends of former days,

Making a spectacle of ourselves.

 

Timothy Leary’s dead-beats.

 

Imagine us

Without our ono specs:

Moles emerging from four thousand holes.

 

Our furrowed faces for you to slap;

Nicotine knuckles for you to rap.

 

Give your dog a boney-moroney Tony,

To keep your cupboard from being bare.

 

Spare a penny for an old guy.

ziggy's boots...

Ziggy's boots crush the matchstick men...

we couldn't get off on all that revolution stuff - what a drag - too many snags...

asinum dei videre possum...

Ooh, asinum dei videre possum..
 

 

Hee haw...

 

overheard passing ann summers

No, Mr Saville, we don't do them in children's sizes...

bob grant fanclub...

Where have all the bus conductors gone? Gone (upstairs), but not forgotten...