tanka 23

workmen on scaffolds
are still boarding up windows
blown out by the blast;
in cafés across the street
smiling office-girls eat lunch

© Gerald England

Composed: Gee Cross, 2nd July 1996

Publications

1997 TOPS (UK)
1998 LIMBO TIME (Hyde, New Hope International)
1998 NASA (USA)
2000 MIR (USA)

(f22)

without a warning
men from the council just come
fell and take our tree

© Gerald England

Composed: Gee Cross, 5th July 1995

Publication

1995 TOPS (UK)

(f15)

watching "Lion King"
in the cinema which stands
where Belle Vue Zoo stood

© Gerald England

Composed: Denton, 30th October 1994

Publications

1995 TOPS (UK)
1998 LIMBO TIME (Hyde, New Hope International)
1998 NASA(USA)
2000 MIR (USA)

A New Demon Rules Eden Now

A NEW DEMON RULES EDEN NOW

A new male can mess around with delightful associations.
Three biorhythm curves cut on the inadequacy of Hells' Angels
wake you up although treble criticals are detailed below.
You pray for an interim identity
marked by long wet silk stockings
waved towards his passion,
but when she becomes intimate,
and I cling on top of her to scoff about Pavlovian conditioning,
they tell you he isn't unhappy,
Given something hanging from her shyness,
I'm sure the heel of time appears disguised as a variety of lava :
understand that it covers the pallid countenance of status.
What dreams may come when we have a defence policy of conviction?
Our men win a ha'penny.
I can't support child processes, she complains.
See my master's lost her poems.
Prose poems are repeatable: eulogy is just what I don't decree.
Enrol me a true nude male, a box of criticism and the chief.
Write off the encounter I've specified.
The Black-crested titmouse goes turkey in the word processor.
Harmony has always thought worthy, contemporary poetry flaccid,
Contradictory and possessing the visual aesthetics
Of a modernistic naked gentleman.

© Gerald England

Composed: Gee Cross, 18th May 1993

Publication

1993 Tops the Toadbird (UK)

(g24)

church coffee morning
thronged with shoppers escaping
the Saturday rain

© Gerald England

Composed: Ashton under Lyne, 15th May 1993

Publications

1993 Tops The Toadbird (UK)
1998 Sparrow (Croatia)

*****
crkveno jutro
natiskano kupcima pobjeglim
od subotnje kiše

Gerald England

translated from English to Croatian by Marijan Èekolj

Publication

1998 Sparrow (Croatia)

Belladonna

BELLADONNA

Belladonna is unlucky.
Belladonna is seven years bad luck.
Don't walk under a mandrake by moonlight.
If he would be fed by tieing thereto
a mandrake screams in his sins rememb'red.
Don't walk under a sleeping bat.
My dame has lost her tongue in front of a sleeping bat.
Jupiter days are good for selling shellfish;
Don't get out a banana.
What you haven't got a black cat has removed.
Don't walk under a crooked cat.
Today is unlucky.
Do not disturb a white cat.
Break a ladder.

© Gerald England

Composed: Gee Cross, 29th July 1992

Publications

1994 TOPS The Toadbird (UK)
1995 The Vincent Brothers Review (USA)
2004 The Same (USA)

Experiments in Marginalisation

EXPERIMENTS IN MARGINALISATION

In other words stands the sonnet and rhythm.
To any distant star money and rhythm go.
In not quite literal sense-poetry
man is not the sequence of the philosophical tradition.
Poetry may remain just sounds
and his contemporaries discover that.
Of currency are old-fashioned notions to offer shelter
to incoherence reflecting the possibility
that so easily outstrips most poems.
Arbitrary lines don't stop now:
chopped into many changes over the rhythm of collage
more communal and before the shackles of paper,
this century poetry has grown heavy metal sounds.
The avant-garde is ancient -
the limerick, doubly marginal.
Beyond transgressions of intellectuality
apparently indistinguishable from its boiling point,
the philosophical tradition, the winnowing tray
of contexts whose members write poetry
but not necessarily a word, professionalised -
the language movement,
but experienced cake walkers are immune to the word,
the short-circuiting rhetoric of experimentation
and indecipherability, the meaning of thought
challenged in all walls of language.
Admittedly they have shares in the shrine.
Poetry may remain just as a few words chopped
into a demonstration of handlettered marginality.
Of course I'm going to mention the hoariest platitudes,
the rhythm of experimentation
where old-fashioned notions be opened,
the forms used here, and refluxed
so it might all have meaning.
Admittedly it was logically expected
that poetry could extrapolate a false picture,
so I'll provide beacons that after 70 margins loom.
Ineradicable prose poems principally exist
from over intellectuality and its purity.
She'd asked me write poetry that did not rhyme,
poetry that gave bloom to wax polemical.
There'd have been a less inhibited style
of tears swelling from the forms used here,
brains and the sonnet, rhyme and foul subject matter
the She could expand to write in a critical decorum.
Berated for her poems, perhaps they identify
themselves, display the twelve-tone music of her
language, quoting or imitating another poet's soul.
Don't smother the limerick, said the voice.
I want to express thoughts in a long noise
so I'll provide the abject object status of folksong,
unlike Pound's free-fall writing of Homeric epics...
always the cat will be drawn!
Might dissolves the patterns of life,
becomes the notebook in a word
no one could expand to change in their midst.
The edge in the scene of rhyme
and its reliance on the rest and tune are different.
There is a play-area,
not all around the regions of genreless writing;
movement avoids standardised typographical grids.

© Gerald England

Composed: Gee Cross, 25th July 1992

Publications

1993 TOPS The Toadbird (UK)
1994 International Poetry (USA)

Experiment in Poetry

EXPERIMENT IN POETRY.

THE NEW - a hopelessly defenceless department that's all!
Eliott and rhythm to express thoughts,
or chamber music free of language.
Admittedly the state of the ballad will be fired.
Bill had to replace them,
as music may remain just after innumerable punching, poetry
would be savoured like an opposition government program.
THE NEW - the enclosing of language.
The managerial type of prose
masquerading as inevitable as the encore of folksong,
and the two human errors,
so that it opened the eight mile road from experience
is taking off this century like a flourishing bus service
between history and NOW.
Once upon a few words together is not so many sounds.
Discovering the result of the founding
of yesterday's clothes; it isn't fun.
Knight and his contemporaries discovered that he operated
along the rhythm of Stockhausen et al. and noise.
Just words together is an evocation of language.
Admittedly it opens the fountain.
Items marked thus are timeless stories.
Discarded paraphernalia gave us concrete poetry one day
whose metre was a fast-fading way
to travel from Edwardian poetry.
Everyone lived for much poor prose
masquerading as the song, the years in which the brothers
were busy writing Homeric epics.
Others were sniffing round the ballade.
Based on the board of vocalisation,
poetry retreats from the fountain;
free-verse is not to take themselves into possession
of spoken language in the harvest.
Fred said he gave us much on such nonsense.
Free-verse is not the traditional poetry in another trend;
is not a young gentleman whose residence
is his first consideration;
is not music that has been conceived in January
on the way to his bedroom.
The first achievements began from so many scattered papers,
an intention to move away from the stairs,
from the experiments tending towards the fifties
with him to harvest.
Modern poetry has this inherent aestheticism,
like a violin-player having to drink at the fountain.
Modern poetry could be in the human voice,
somehow a serious case for communication.
But modern poetry can be a curse
endowed somehow with a great anxiety.
It is no robbery to drink some of the real traditional poetry.
Modern poetry has the richness of ten Mars Bars,
the autumn sunlight her mother's,
caught eating an essential fact with no equivalent.
Even poets have succeeded.

© Gerald England

Composed: Gee Cross, 8th July 1992

Publications

1993 TOPS The Toadbird (UK)
1994 Tree Trunk (USA)

tanka 9

children operate
remote TV volume switch;
central heating plays
at trains, car alarm sounds off;
brain asks - what became of sleep?

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Ashton under Lyne, 9th October 1991

Publication

1994 T.O.P.S. The Toadbird (UK)

(55)

              here we go round the
              block again walking the dog
              for the umpteenth time

              © GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Gee Cross, 4th April 1990

Publication

1990 The Old Police Station (UK)

Swan

              SWAN

              To the little boy

              a swan is just a big duck

              - royal birds bend their necks

              © GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Naburn, 12th October 1986

Publications

1989 The Old Police Station (UK)

1995 Sparrow (Croatia)

1997 Whoosits (Internet)

*****

                                        malom djecaku labud                                         je velika patka - pleminte ptice svijaju vratove

        Gerald England

           translated into Croatian by Marijan Cekolj

Publication

1995 Sparrow (Croatia)

Robin Redbreast

              ROBIN REDBREAST

              Seen on Christmas Day

              pecking at the bird table

              scraps of cake and sage

              © GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Naburn, 11th October 1986

Publications

1989 The Old Police Station (UK)

1995 Sparrow (Croatia)

1997 Whoosits (Internet)

*****

                                        na Bozic kljucanje s pticje trpeze mrvice kolaca i kadulje

        Gerald England

           translated into Croatian by Marijan Cekolj

Publication

1995 Sparrow (Croatia)

Greylag Goose

              GREYLAG GOOSE

              Leaving the latest,

              the flight of the greylag geese

              fortells frosty weeks

              © GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Naburn, 10th October 1986

Publications

1989 The Old Police Station (UK)

1995 Sparrow (Croatia)

1997 Whoosits (Internet)

*****

divlje guske,

odlazeci posljednje navjescuju

studene dane

        Gerald England

           translated into Croatian by Marijan Cekolj

Publication

1995 Sparrow (Croatia)

Kingfisher

              KINGFISHER

              Who'd kill the streaker

              hang him by the beak ? - let them

              be struck by lightning!

              © GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Naburn, 10th October 1986

Publications

1989 The Old Police Station (UK)

1997 Whoosits (Internet)

Kestrel

              KESTREL

              The hawk stands on stones
              hovers over the M1
              rattles out the mouse

              © GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Naburn, 10th October 1986

Publications

1989 The Old Police Station (UK)
1997 Whoosits (Internet)

(52)

                   the sun already
                   risen exactly one hour
                   the tired cock crew

                   © GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Manton Farm, 21st March 1986

Publications

1989 The Old Police Station (UK)
1995 Sparrow (Croatia)
1997 Lateral Moves (UK)
1997 Whoosits (Internet)

*****

izlazak sunca -
citav sat umnorni
pijetao kukurice

Gerald England

translated into Croatian by Marijan Cekolj

Publication

1995 Sparrow (Croatia)

(c18)

                   black crow on white snow
                   skiers descend on Cat and
                   Fiddle road just cleared

                   © GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Ashton under Lyne, 2nd February 1986

Publications

1989 The Old Police Station (UK)
1997 Whoosits (Internet)

National Poetry Convention Reading

Liverpool Garden Festival 

A man on stilts at the entrance the Liverpool Garden Festival. © Copyright Gerald England.

NATIONAL POETRY CONVENTION READING,

FESTIVAL GARDENS, LIVERPOOL,

26th MAY 1985.

(Written and performed at the event)

Two score of poets

under China-painted corrugated roof

bounce words into the Mersey wind

As the waterfall bounces off rocks

into a pebble-shored lake

so we listen,

absorbing liquidity of meaning

While children throw stones into the water

expecting only splashes

we throw our words at you

and await the ripples

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Liverpool, 26th May 1985

Publications

1985 The Old Police Station (UK)

1994 Tree Trunk (USA)

Program Out The Window

PROGRAM OUT THE WINDOW

               Shadows of interest

               Lights reveal
               shiver-sending shape
               enticing the unwary
               to change of orientation

               The user-friendly
               would understand,
               request continuation,
               but basic desires
               are not computer commands

               There is no compatibility
               between soft longings
               and hard-worn peripherals

               Memory contents
               peek at forgotten designs

               Fulfilment is a forbidden run

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Oldham, 12th February 1984

Publications

1985 Bradford Poetry Quarterly (UK)
1986 ANWUC (UK)
1989 The Old Police Station (UK)

Subject Matter

SUBJECT MATTER

             having the resolve
             and discovering the time
             but lacking energy
             and being easily diverted

the rain beat steadily on his cottage that year
days of sunshine disappeared in grey cloud
red sunsets were only seen by other shepherds
Old Shep had fled with the flock

            getting to grips
            demanded determination
            concentrated effort
            to produce the finished article

the horns of the prize bull were not detachable
pieces of porcelain could be put back together
the cattle would be called at milking time
but no tractor can close the gate to the field

GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Oldham, 15th May 1981

Publications

1987 The Old Police Station (UK)
1990 Iota (UK)
1992 Alternative (USA)
1994 Indefinite Space (USA)