A READER WRITES

Because I value my readers, both of you, here's a link to Barbara Hamby's Ode to American English on her website, with the "graphical integrity" (i.e. indents and italics) intact. Also much other poetic goodness, as well as links to places where you can actually buy her books. Which would be a nice thing to do -- contemporary poets that don't suck arse need all the encouragement (and royalty money) they can get.

But if any tech-savy reader could tell me how to indent lines without breaking everything, I'd be most thankful.

THE HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA REVEALED

8.30am: Bad coffee. Cold toast.

8.45am: Ceremonial distribution of toaster ovens.

8.47am: Nap.

10.00am: Morning tea. Least said, soonest mended.

10.05am: Spend morning watching bad 80's music videos on your lap top, tweet them all until you fall asleep.

12.30pm: Lunch. (Vegetarian option courtesy of vindictive carnivores).

12.45pm: Gone shopping. Tweet every tedious purchase.

3.45pm: Afternoon tea. (The coffee nobody drank at 8.30 is still undrinkable. Tweet how crap you feel nobody noticed your absence.)

4.00pm: Read the newspaper. Muse on the existential void that is your life -- tweet it.

5.00pm: Piss off to the pub. Rise and repeat.

ODE TO AMERICAN ENGLISH

I was missing English one day, American, really,
with its pill-popping Hungarian goulash of everything
from Anglo-Saxon to Zulu, because British English
is not the same, if the paperback dictionary
I bought at Brentano's on the Avenue de l'Opera
is any indication, too cultured by half. Oh, the English
know their dahlias, but what about doowop, donuts,
Dick Tracy, Tricky Dick? With their elegant Oxfordian
accents, how could they understand my yearning for the hotrod,
hotdog, hot flash vocabulary of the U. S. of A.,
the fragmented fandango of Dagwood's everyday flattening
of Mr. Beasley on the sidewalk, fetuses floating
on billboards, drive-by monster hip-hop stereos shaking
the windows of my dining room like a 7.5 earthquake,
Ebonics, Spanglish, "you know" used as comma and period,
the inability of 90% of the population to get the present perfect:
I have went, I have saw, I have tooken Jesus into my heart,
the battle cry of the Bible Belt, but no one uses
the King James anymore, only plain-speak versions,
in which Jesus, raising Lazarus from the dead, says,
"Dude, wake up," and the L-man bolts up like a B-movie
mummy, "Whoa, I was toasted." Yes, ma'am,
I miss the mongrel plentitude of American English, its fall-guy,
rat-terrier, dog-pound neologisms, the bomb of it all,
the rushing River Jordan backwoods mutability of it, the low-rider,
boom-box cruise of it, from New Joisey to Ha-wah-ya
with its sly dog, malasada-scarfing beach blanket lingo
to the ubiquitous Valley Girl's like-like stuttering,
shopaholic rant. I miss its quotidian beauty, its querulous
back-biting righteous indignation, its preening rotgut
flag-waving cowardice. Suffering Succotash, sputters
Sylvester the Cat; sine die, say the pork-bellied legislators
of the swamps and plains. I miss all those guys, their Tweety-bird
resilience, their Doris Day optimism, the candid unguent
of utter unhappiness on every channel, the midnight televangelist
euphoric stew, the junk mail, voice mail vernacular.
On every boulevard and rue I miss the Tarzan cry of Johnny
Weismueller, Johnny Cash, Johnny B. Goode,
and all the smart-talking, gum-snapping hard-girl dialogue,
finger-popping x-rated street talk, sports babble,
Cheetoes, Cheerios, chili dog diatribes. Yeah, I miss them all,
sitting here on my sidewalk throne sipping champagne
verses lined up like hearses, metaphors juking, nouns zipping
in my head like Corvettes on Dexadrine, French verbs
slitting my throat, yearning for James Dean to jump my curb.

Barbara Hamby

ALL PURPOSE POEM FOR STATE OCCASIONS

The nation rejoices or mourns
As this happy or sombre day dawns.
Our eyes will be wet
As we sit round the set,
Neglecting our flowerbeds and lawns.

As Her Majesty rides past the crowd
They’ll be silent or cheer very loud
But whatever they do
It’s undoubtedly true
That they’ll feel patriotic and proud.

In Dundee and Penzance and Ealing
We’re imbued with appropriate feeling:
We’re British and loyal
And love every royal
And tonight we shall drink till we’re reeling.

Wendy Cope

"BRIGHT STAR, WOULD I WERE STEADFAST AS THOU ART"

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art —
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors --
No -- yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever-- or else swoon to death.

John Keats

from THE DREAM SONGS, 14

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no

Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles,


who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.


John Berryman

THE TUDOR STYLE

Katherine Howard practising
Graceful poses for the block
Ordering the block to her cell
Like trying on a hat.

Violence and style together
Violence in style the creed
That took them from bowls or tennis
To be served up like meat.

Would Henry get to hear of
The way Katherine Howard walked
How she disposed her neck, her skirts?
Unlikely: he was violently out

Late partying, to correspond
With equal violence of forgetfulness
Returning late down the river
After a day violently preoccupied

While all over the kingdom
Games until the summons
Were absorbingly violent, calmly
Violent, graciously violently going on.

Elizabeth Smither

TEMPORARY OUTAGE

Because the universe rolls like that, I start posting again and the Internet Gods decide I am no longer worthy of their devotion. Should dust the shrine more often, and abnormal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Promise.

BEING BORING

'May you live in interesting times.' Chinese curse

If you ask me 'What's new?', I have nothing to say
Except that the garden is growing.
I had a slight cold but it's better today.
I'm content with the way things are going.
Yes, he is the same as he usually is,
Still eating and sleeping and snoring.
I get on with my work. He gets on with his.
I know this is all very boring.

There was drama enough in my turbulent past:
Tears and passion - I've used up a tankful.
No news is good news, and long may it last.
If nothing much happens, I'm thankful.
A happier cabbage you never did see,
My vegetable spirits are soaring.
If you're after excitement, steer well clear of me.
I want to go on being boring.

I don't go to parties. Well, what are they for,
If you don't need to find a new lover?
You drink and you listen and drink a bit more
And you take the next day to recover.
Someone to stay home with was all my desire
And, now that I've found a safe mooring,
I've just one ambition in life: I aspire
To go on and on being boring.

Wendy Cope