Margaret & Malcom

MARGARET & MALCOLM

When Margaret first met Malcolm
she baked him a pie
of magpies she had caught
with her chattering.

After the honeymoon
she took him to Big Sur
where the snaking highway leaps
across canyons on towering bridges.

They made love beneath the redwood
the music of their movements
arousing the faerie spirits
who cheered at their union.

On her shoulders she carries
two black dogs with faces like cats'
their long tails locking
with the plaits of her hair.

Someone gave her two axolotls
salamanders from Mexico
but one of them died
before the vet could arrive.

Malcolm fell on the cliffs
trapping his leg in a fissure
drowning slowly as the waves
swept over him at the incoming tide.

Margaret cried
till her tears
turned her jewels
into feathers.

© Gerald England

Composed: Gee Cross, 5th August 1994

Publications

1996 Swagmag (UK)
1998 The Bohemian Forest (Internet)

Microcosm 20

MICROCOSM 20

Purged in soft flesh like the expert tease, she leapt back served under a shadow.
If a nut is drawn into each field of reinforced cohesion
And by it a tone with her cunt, they may declare a huge bird cowed
Skinny men rode bicycles not conflicting with traffic rolling whirlpools.
A slow train to Turkey keeps your beautiful mother asleep with an anthropologist.

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Gee Cross, 3rd November 1993

Publication

1998 The Bohemian Forest (Internet)

Lydia in Lesbos

LYDIA IN LESBOS

The white upturned wondering eyes in time to rot.
Hieroglyphics and arrows of sinners?
What's in heaven, but the air?
Her eye discourses - I've attempted to bed
and think I am floating slowly shoreward -
surely it is the media?
Thus it seemed like an entire realm of fire,
knowing if living is providing a passive reality.
Remove clothes from strange ladies in ancient Greece;
many were laid.
I hope you enjoyed them as some
more popular sport than fishing off Chios.
It is all but no more than birth to their movement.
I've tried persuasion.
She can be seen scurrying
in the company of one young woman who returns to live.
Joy was for another.

© Gerald England

Composed: Gee Cross, 11th July 1992

Publications

1994 Oasis (UK)
1998 The Bohemian Forest (Internet)
2003 Chanticleer Magazine (UK)

Me and the other Gerald

ME AND THE OTHER GERALD

Yeah, yeah, I know what I said

I don't write poems about poetry

I don't write long rambling

discourses on all and sundry

but hell when it happened

something had to give or else

or else or else or else or else.

Karl Heiss started it -

sent me a copy of HIPPO

and there I am listed as contributor

but I'm not - Gerald Locklin is

and there are his biog. notes

under my name - it won't do will it?

And the same day

I get sent a review tape from SLIPSTREAM

and it's Locklin rambling on

the way he does about the minutiae of his life

how he fucks his students

and makes poems out of non-events

sure he raises a laugh or two

and some of it isn't that bad at all

Well I stuck the tape in the car-cassette player

and listened to Locklin as I went to work

I stopped at Mrs Jones'

she tells me how her washing-machine

won't do what she wants it to

asks me what my wife would do

I know what my wife would do

but I'm not going to tell that to Mrs Jones.

Back in the car Locklin is laughing at himself

Mr Iqbal wants to find out if the maturity value

of his endowment that comes up next year

will be enough to pay the dowry

for his daughter still back in Pakistan.

Locklin is talking shit about Donald Duck.

Miss Prendergast says she can't pay me this week

the Social haven't sent her her giro

and she's had to buy little Gareth new shoes.

As she bends to pick the baby's dummy off the floor

I'm treated to a clear view of her floppy breasts

and she smiles at me.

Does she want me to screw her in lieu of payment?

Well I've fifty more calls to get through today

Locklin is wondering if he can afford another divorce

He thinks he's living life, hey

Let him try selling insurance in Oldham

The tape ends.

By the time I've finished my round

I've got through two more tapes

but these are "Dolly Parton's Greatest Hits"

and "Brass Band Favourites"!

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Bardsley, 14th April 1990

Publications

1991 The Plastic Tower (USA)

1992 STEALING KISSES (Hyde, New Hope International)

1995 Boggers All (UK)

1998 The Bohemian Forest (Internet)

Making Love In The Early Morning

MAKING LOVE IN THE EARLY MORNING

Orgasm approaching
Rumbles of distant traffic
Screech of brakes
where the two roads meet
at the "Cock & Crown"
Patter of elephants on the landing
Sheets quickly hoisted
Movement locked in a still embrace
"Daddy, it's time to get up! Mummy!"
"Thank you, son!"
As innocence departs downstairs
daddy is already up - mummy.

© Gerald England

Composed: Ashton under Lyne, 1st October 1987

Publications

1988 Agog (London, UK)
1990 The Affiliate (Canada)
1998 The Bohemian Forest (Internet)