Laid Bare

It’s been over a month since the end of Edinburgh’s Festival Fringe, and I’m still experiencing that ‘never again’ hangover feeling. This year was one of my most stressful festivals, but there were many worthwhile moments that leave me wondering if ‘never’ really means that.

One of my friends, who wrote and performed in her own play about homelessness, said to me after, “Why do we do this to ourselves?”

 

Good question!

Having produced, presented, and performed in two shows – one, a single-shot, the other, a 22-night run in a theatre, plus a bunch of one-off appearances – I was physically, financially and emotionally exhausted. 

As my friend put it, we “underestimate how vulnerable we make ourselves when producing our own work...in every single way.”

I’ve been performing for many years, mostly as a musician, and I’ve also had my own work – words, and music – performed. In the past six or so years I’ve focussed on performing my writing, which has been a very different experience. In the last year, I’ve pushed myself well out of my depth.

A year ago, one of my photographs (from my sequence called Walking on the Water) appeared in an exhibition in an abandoned train tunnel: possibly the most ‘public’ exposure my art has had, outwith the internet (which is a nebulous measure of publicity, especially since no-one reads this blog anyway.)

Then the full set of photos, with the accompanying poems, was hung in an exhibition in a local Gallery. Although I have often performed Walking on the Water, and have exhibited the pamphlet with the photos at many art fairs and festivals, having my work on the walls of a fine art exhibition was a different thing.

I felt denuded, seeing people peer at my pictures and poems while I stood buy, watching them pocket the pamphlet (ignoring the £5 sign,) pondering over what they thought of my ‘art.’

It was like being back at Music College, at the student composer concerts, where we had to answer a barrage of questions and criticism after having our pieces performed. It took a thick-skinned student to take the Pontius Pilate approach and say, “What I have written, I have written.”

Composers, like playwrights, have to ‘let go’ of their baby if someone else is to perform the work. But writers, once the page is printed, have to live with whatever the public make of their published piece.

Art that is ‘live’ exists in a very different way, as I discovered at this exhibition. There was a strong emphasis (especially on the opening and closing nights) on ‘performance’ art, and on the quiet afternoons, when I assisted as an invigilator, the life-drawing sessions had an aura of serenity that transcended the vulnerability that I supposed the models might have felt.

Or was I projecting my own anxieties?

I was particularly struck by the work of one artist. Among the various portraits was a painting of herself, nude, aged 23 years minus 8 hours 17 minutes, and pictures of her friends, family, lovers, flatmates, each of which had a scribbled note underneath describing her relationship with that person. Intensely personal to the point of voyeurism. Yet this artist seemed to have no foibles over making herself vulnerable though her art.

Her part in the life drawing sessions and performance elements demonstrated how she was prepared to – literally and physically – bare all. This might have been an exhibition, but she was no exhibitionist. With this artist’s name being a semi-precious stone, I was inspired to write a poem based on all she gave to the exhibition, which was called, Shapes That Shift Desire.

 

 

   Topaz

 

You bare your soul.

   In every portrait that you paint

I see your face –

   not a physical reflection

   but a subtle illustration

through which you bare your soul.

 

You bare your life.

   As you share your relationships

on scribbled scraps

   beneath each drawing –

more than just a simple caption

   but, revealing with the action

of a surgeon’s knife, you bare your life.

 

You bare your body.

   You portray yourself but hours

and minutes prior to your turning 23;

   balancing maturity with this naïve

depiction of what you are about to be –

   or are already, possibly –

for now, you bare your body.

 

You bare your all.

   Wholly, fully comfortable, at one;

contented with the skin you’re in.

Let others take the shapes that shift

   desire or lust, envy or temptation:

you are a precious celebration

   of the ever-changing gem

whose coloured light, ephemeral,

   is captured and reflected

when you bare your all.

 

You bare your soul, your life,

   your body, and your art

– your all –

   and in doing so, you bare your art,

your body, and your life:

   you bare your soul.

 

Less than a year later, preparing to perform Walking on the Water for one of the shows I was producing in the New Town, the influence of Topaz – and various other artists – came into focus. A friend of mine (I’ll refer to her as ‘Rachel’) who had contributed to my Charlotte & The Charlatan project in more ways than one had expressed a desire to perform in our production. But with a twist.

 

She wanted to sing her songs naked.

This request wasn’t about exhibitionism either. Besides being a great singer-songwriter (her songs are open, honest, and sometimes, painful expressions of vulnerability) ‘Rachel’ is also an artist who uses naked self-portraiture to express what it is to be human, with all its flaws. She has performed her songs un-clothed before, so this was nothing new (to her.)

Yet I needed more reason, in the context of our show, to have a nude performer. I figured how my Walking on the Water sequence is based on statues of a naked man: the Antony Gormley statues that once stood in the Water of Leith. In one of the poems, a woman comes to view one of the statues every day, and one day, does something extraordinary.

 

 

LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back

Guilty of dust, and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

If I lacked anything.

                                    (George Herbert)

 

5.  Love Forbad

(Figure V - LEFT)

 

 

I called her Dawn –

although her name was Maudlin.

Every day she greeted me; 

as the morning-star twinkled

she sprinkled the waters

with the ointment of her eyes.

The wind whipped through her skirts,

making havoc of her hair.

 

I fixed my stare to where she stood,

up on the walkway by the railings,

lone voyeur to her solitary stance. 

She ebbed towards the bridge,

climbed over, picked along the nettled bank.

 

In the corner of my eye I saw her

stripping silently, slip into the silken stream,

then behind my back, draw nearer to me.

I asked myself: what is this thing I lack? 

 

I could hear the plop of pebbles

as her tears dropped in the pool;

the first stone, then another,

until my feet were blessed with

the precious unction of her heart,

the perfume of her penitence.

 

Wrapping her pale arms around my chest,

I felt her thighs lash like willow-switches

up against my legs, she pressed her soft breasts

into my unyielding frame; her long hair flicked

and wiped away the moisture from my eyes.

 

Still blind, I asked myself again:

was this the thing for which the Seraphim

stood guard, hard against the garden gate?

She drew back, no longer full of dust and sin.

 

So I invited ‘Rachel’ to re-enact this scene theatrically during my performance of the sequence, and after that, to come back on stage and perform a set of songs as she was, au naturel, as a natural segue. She agreed. After getting the go-ahead from the theatre, we spent a considerable amount of time discussing, interpreting, and rehearsing in preparation for the piece.

Being a late-night show, advertised as ‘containing nudity,’ there was a rowdy element at the rear of the auditorium. The show began with our host singing a song that we figured would be an appropriately thoughtful. After he introduced my act, I walked barefoot through the audience reciting the epilogue, aware there was an ‘atmosphere.’

When I sang the first part of the psalm that weaves though the sequence, in Gregorian plainchant, the ‘lads’ at the back began to giggle like silly school boys. Though fully focused on my performance,  I saw the guy from the sound-desk go up to them and say, “shut up, or fuck off.”

Since they were there for only one thing, they chose the former option. But they didn’t realise they were, unwittingly, immersed in what was happening on stage. My poetry was all about them. During the sequence, the narrator tells how he is abandoned and mocked; how he has to accept that his ‘self’ is more important than the shadows and reflections that surround him.

 

The central poem is about how repentance, love, forgiveness, and self-acceptance set you free. As I introduced the character, ‘Dawn’ (although her name was Maudlin) ‘Rachel’ walked out of the wings and, with our eyes fixed, she moved downstage, across the audience, then walked up behind my backed and stripped. After embracing me from behind as I continued reciting the poem, she then drifted silently off stage.

I completed the sequence with the final poem, about the way that, despite all the shit, we are all part of creation and are loved. I delivered the lines, I heard my maker’s voice, and he was pleased, right at those people who, because they didn’t know what to expect, or how to deal with their discomfort, had giggled like children.

It was one of the most daring, edgy, and engaging performances of spoken word that I have ever participated in. I suspect that the rabble at the back, nor the stunned audience at the front, had seen anything like it. Whatever they thought, I only hope that it did, indeed, make them think.

When ‘Rachel’ then came on stage with a guitar slung across her naked body, she performed the most intimate song-set imaginable. Despite her self-deprecating humour, I couldn’t have staged this without her intensely serious participation. Nor without the influence of Topaz and all other artists who dare to bare their all.

But more persuasive than anything else was a short video by David Bowie. Click on this link, and think...

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fcrackmagazine%2Fvideos%2F1108069109246931%2F&show_text=0&width=560

 

Had I not seen this, I don’t think I would have dared to wade far deeper into the water than ever before. Walking on the Water may not be everyone’s sort of thing, but that doesn’t matter. I wrote it as much for myself as for those who see fit to judge and ridicule me, my work, and my life.

To return to my friend’s question, “Why do we do this to ourselves?” the answer, I think is this: Honesty. I have often cited “Art is a lie that helps us to understand the truth.” I could get into deeper waters by asking Pontius Pilate’s question, “What is Truth?” Instead, I’ll use his other famous line...

“What I have written, I have written.”

This is only a blog, but I must press the ‘publish’ button. Once the page is printed, you can make of it what you will.

 

 

Re: Cycling (Part Two)

Three years ago I had the pleasure of appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, to read my short-story about the love of two bicycles. As part of the 10-year celebration of running this ‘StoryShop’ slot for emerging writers, the Edinburgh City of Literature have resurrected some of the recorded highlights from the 2013 StoryShoppers. You can hear a brief clip from my story here…

 

And if you’d like to read the whole piece, printed in the form of a slam-poem, it is in Part One of this bicycle rant. But now, for Part Two, in which drivers of the BMW (one in particular) do not come off well.

 

When the agency, where I work from time to time, moved office from a convenient town-centre cycle-ride to a serious journey out to Davidson’s Mains, I was disappointed to find that the new premises lacked adequate cycle-storage. There was a car-park behind the buildings (which are shared with a few other firms) but at that point, no cycle-racks.

So I attached my bike to some railings at the back of buildings, in the car park, next to the back door of our company and another business, the accountant firm Haines Watts. The advantage being that my bicycle was well-hidden from the road, visible from my desk, and 3 seconds from the door. Sadly, it seemed this was unacceptable to someone in the accountancy firm.

A memo was passed around regarding cycle-parking; apparently we were not to attach bikes to these railings. My firm was told that, if they wanted to relinquish a parking space, they could put up a cycle-rack. They chose not to. A short while later, in a parking-space fit for half a smart-car, a cycle-rack appeared. Great, I thought: a sensible solution. However, when I saw this sign, I continued to use the railings by the back door.

This was followed by a series of notes sellotaped to my bike-frame, another tied to the railings, asking me (or anybody) not to place my bicycle 3 seconds away from the door to our own offices. Meanwhile, my company spoke with the charity centre nearby to see if we could use their bike-racks. They generously obliged.

But out of spite, annoyance, or bloody-mindedness, I persisted. Why should I have to walk an extra three minutes when there seemed, to me, no reason why I shouldn’t leave my bike in a safe, visible and convenient place? Eventually, the answer came.

 

 

And this was my reply:

Fraser Kerr, Senior Partner,

Haines Watts
Q Court, 3 Quality Street
Edinburgh EH4 5BP

Dear Mr Kerr,

Your note dated 26 November 2015, attached to my bicycle, was insulting and offensive. When the office of [company name] moved to Quality Street earlier this year, I chose to attach my bike to the railings where it was least vulnerable to attack and where I could see it from my desk. Bicycles are easy targets for vandals and thieves. Two weeks ago somebody stole the seat-post, saddle, mudguard and lights from my bike because it was in a vulnerable place. This cost me £50 in repair and replacements; not the sort of expense I expect to incur when I cycle to work. The ‘cycle-to-work’ scheme is at risk of being scrapped by the current Government, and it seems that you concur with its in-sensibility by reacting with such egregious comments about cyclists and their bikes.

Perhaps you hold quite a different view to me in terms of a company’s reputation for the practice of favouring cycling over other transport. I cannot see how your clients would feel that the presence of a bicycle, securely attached to a railing, would compromise their view of your professionalism, or imply that you were treating them poorly. Do your clients really state or insinuate that they “do not expect to have to pass bicycles chained to the railings?” I imagine that, if your clients knew of your petty behaviour in this matter, they would be less impressed with you than your opinion that the presence of a bicycle “detracts from the appearance of the entrance” to your office. Given that this is the rear entrance to your office, I hardly see this is the situation in any case.

You may feel that it has been rude of me to ignore your requests to “kindly refrain” from placing my bike on the railings. I, however, feel that your conduct has shown disrespect for your neighbouring offices. I regret that I didn’t have the opportunity to discuss this with you in person. However, attaching anonymous notes to bicycles rather than finding a courteous solution smacks not only of unprofessional conduct, but also, of student flatmate behaviour. Installing a cycle-rack (which has “sacrificed” but a half-sized parking space) and going to extra expense with signage forbidding users other than from your own company demonstrates a disrespect that goes beyond uncharitable.

I have learned that the company I work for has requested the use of cycle-parking facilities with the Sycamore Tree Centre, whose premises are adjacent to our offices, and that they have been happy to oblige. Given this centre is a charity, it makes your stance look even more parsimonious. It is neither your responsibility, nor my own company’s, to find me a safe place to put my bike. It is great that you have a designated space for your car. I pay council taxes so that I can travel by road and attach my bike in a public place. If your railings are not a public place, it would have been polite if you could have advised me of this sooner. As far as car-parking goes, the blue BMW that rests with the rear of the car protruding well-beyond the back of the parking space, causing difficulties for other users of the car-park, it seems that car-parking assistance would not go amiss.

It behoves me to point out that safe cycle-parking is not illegal, but criminal damage is. I have taken immense care to ensure that damage is caused neither to my bicycle nor to the railings. The three instances in which someone from your firm has taped notes to the frame of my bike have caused damage to the chrome paint. This is quite unacceptable. However, I would – without prejudice – like to invite you, in a gesture of goodwill, to allow me to use the cycle-rack you have installed. Having seen only one bicycle attached to this structure, it appears not to be over-subscribed. If you would like to engage in an adult, professional, more charitable conversation, I would be willing to respond.

If not, then I’m sure the various BUGs (Bicycle User Groups) such as Cycling Scotland, Sustrans, Spokes, and the City of Edinburgh Council’s Cycle Forum would be interested in this story. I will end my letter sincerely, even though you didn’t have the etiquette to sign off ‘faithfully’ to the person to whom this concerns. It is of no concern to the company for whom I work, and I would ask that you do not contact them regarding this issue. You are evidently interested in ‘National Strength,’ but not of ‘Local Matters.’ I hope you might demonstrate that your slogan has some integrity.

Yours sincerely,

JAS

It was easy to discover that the owner of the badly-parked BMW was the author of the letter. Far from having the courtesy to respond to my riposte, he further bad-mouthed me when, a while later, an unfortunate event resulted in the buildings being evacuated due to a fire alarm caused by a toaster in our office.

According to an undisclosed source, Mr Kerr, peeved at the loss of income caused by the fire alarm, said, “I bet it was that bloody cyclist.” Well, it transpired that the toaster had a charred piece of burned sultana from – allegedly – the fruit-bread I had brought in for my mid-morning snack. Sorry about that. But I’m not sorry for posting this two-part rant on people who disrespect cyclists.

It would be interesting to know what other bicycle-users and groups think of this. Perhaps there will be a revolution!

But, as we know, the revolution will not be motorised.

 

The European Onion

I’ve always wanted to rhyme ‘onion’ with ‘union.’ It looks like such a treat on the page, and sets up all sorts of fun… you get Student Onions, Christian Onions, and the Trade Onions Congress to play with. As a left-wing loony, I should know my onions; however, you won’t get me: I’m part of the Onion.

Joking apart, and puns aside, the events of the last few days have made me – and lots of people who share my political views, and many who don’t – very angry indeed. I have made a plea to all my Facebook friends, most of whom are artists, to utilise their creativity to tell truths about the current situation.

In other places, I’ve railed against people using poetry to bang right on about left-wing views, but I think at the moment, banging on is the only way: loud and strong. That said, I think that art, whether it be performance poetry or high literature, should be entertaining and uplifting in some way.

So, I have written a poem which I’ll perform at various venues in the coming weeks as we watch the aftermath of this disastrous referendum unfold. I hope there is humour and – despite the doggerel – a degree of craft in here.

It will come off better on stage than on the page, since I can apologise for the dreadful rhymes. But ‘onion’ with ‘union’ – come on, this is my once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! Then again, so was the recent referendum. Britain, you little idiots: you fucked it up. But first, from the writer of that awful poem, If…

 

I could not dig; I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?

Referendum-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum

 

In Scotland we had a simple choice

with which to exercise our voice
and participate in democracy
with pretty scant bureaucracy:
a positive ‘Yes,’ or apologetic ‘No’
to retain the so-called status quo.
Of course, there was some controversy
and the usual lack of transparency
that comes with political machinations
concerning divisions of the nations.
The ‘Yes’ was based on a game of chance
that played on public ignorance;
the ‘No’ was a flimsy ‘we’re better together,’
as predictable as Scottish weather.

And yet, with the European Union,

the game was a similar peeling of onion;
Each layer of ignorant bullshit revealed
more false information as it was unpeeled
and thrown into the melting pot to sweat
in the hope that everyone would forget
the promises made, or the lies, told
to lure in the bigots, racists or the old
folk (apparently they’re in the same boat –
but, fuck it, everyone needs a scapegoat!)

So we had the usual play on words

that in politics always sounds absurd
(okay, as a poet, I like a nice pun,
but at least it’s only good, clean fun)
On one side we had the ‘Vote Remain,’
as if everything would stay the same:
a sort-of "If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it"
was their reason for resisting an exit…
but we all know that’s not entirely true;
despite the gold stars on the flag of blue
there are many divisions within Europe
between right-wing greed and left-wing hope
(Yes, Hope and Europe rhyme on the page –
it looks better on paper than spoken on-stage)

As for the ‘other side’ – where do I start!
Being a wordsmith, I haven’t the heart
to call those idiots ‘the Brexiters,’
We’ll refer to them now on as 'Bullshitters.'
There was Boris the Bullshitter – what a buffoon
(don’t laugh – he might be Prime Minister soon)
who bandied his lies, damned lies and statistics
with abandon, using them as his shit-sticks
for stirring up bigotry, bullshit and hate:
don’t vote for this fuckwit – oh no! – too late.

There’s Farage, who defies the description

of Bullshitter; in fact, I’d like to question
if he’s actually a real human being:
but I can’t say the following without seeing
Cameron’s cock stuffed in Nigel’s face…
Farage is a racist pig! Ew. Regarding race,
Farage has made all that’s offensive
seem acceptable, and racism, normative;
he made the fake issue of migration
divide an already-intolerant nation.
Does he garnish his xenophobic sandwich
with derogatory names and offensive language?
No. No he doesn’t – he’s smarter than that:
he’s a Prime Bullshitter, and a fucking twat.

Then there’s the muppet-faced Michael Gove,

an Expert Bullshitter, who barely strove

to present information formed from fact;
his Bullshit was based on how to react
to the man-in-the pub, whose ‘expert’ opinion
was another layer of the Ignorance Onion
since the British electorate, easily swayed,
care little for how the facts are displayed.
It’s only when, the morning after,
they google the EU and find the disaster
that voting Brexit – er – I mean, Bullshit
has landed us all in. Ignorant fuckwits,
you could call them, and yet this story
is always the same for those who vote Tory.

How, then, shall we take this thing forwards?
I don’t think my ranting on with more words
is going to solve the mess we’re in –
but I’m just a poet, not a politician.
Yes: poets are prophets, visionaries, seers –
we’ve plied our rhymes for years and years.
You can’t accuse us of hypocrisy: ‘cant’ –
as Byron once said – is now stronger than ‘cunt.’
(Okay so his rhyme wasn’t a strong one…
at least he didn’t shoe-horn a rhyme with ‘onion.’)

So here, for those who don’t have a clue,

is a simple suggestion of what to do
when discovering that, in years to come,
all the lies that were peddled by Tory Scum
have sold your country down the river
with promises which they failed to deliver;
If the money turns out to be anything less
than the millions pledged to the NHS;
If your rights, your social security, sick pay,
maternity/paternity leave are taken away;
If you think Brussels was full of bureaucrats
but Britain is run by a bunch of fat cats;
If the referendum was, in truth, about greed,
leaving the disenfranchised in more need;

If immigration has actually gone up, not down;

If the markets have plummeted, and the pound
has no more value (or less) than the Euro;
If unemployment rockets, because we have no
expertise among our untrained workforce;
If, thanks to your vote for this messy divorce,.
our nation has split up, and of all its children
are caught in a bitter tug-of-love; if you, then,
at the next election, don’t know what to do:
vote the Bullshitters OUT – they lied to you.

While we’re at it, a couple more poems. First, I’d like to point out that asparagus is being farmed in Englandshire at this time of the year. At any other time, whether in or out of the EU, we don’t need to ship it from fucking PERU!

This is a Local Shop

 

Dear Tesco/Tesco Metro:

why on earth do you sell
asparagus shipped from Peru?

I’m fully aware – and so are you –

this stuff grows perfectly well
in the fields of Kent.

If you went there

to purchase your produce
it would not only reduce

your carbon footprint

but also, by dint
of boosting the country’s economy –

which is better for you and better for me,

and benefits everyone globally –
would bring down the prices on every shelf.

And, as we both know, every little does help.

So why sell Peruvian peas and asparagus?
It’s better for them and better for us

and certainly more beneficial to you

to sell broccoli, sugar-snaps, and mange-tout
that comes from the Garden of England.

Or better still, grown here in Scotland.

And second, a poem about greed. ‘Suilline,’ from ‘swine,’ pertains to pigs, – although this isn’t really about pigs, as you’ll see. It takes as a starter George Orwell’s Animal Farm. When the pigs learn that Farmer Jones is dead, they announce ‘the only good human is a dead human.’ This poem rather turns that notion on its head.

Suilline Greed

 

Let others say his heart is big –

I call it stupid of the pig.

 

                                                OGDEN NASH

 

Ogden Nash, if I’m not mistaken,

says that a pig supplies sausage and bacon;
to which he might well add pork and gammon:
the pig produces plenty of mammon.
This you will know – at least, if you’ve bred one –
To humans, the only good pig is a dead one.
That’s why the pig has a slot in its back:
a piggy-bank’s always kept in the black.

You don’t have to be Scully or Moulder

to work out that a piggy’s shoulder
doesn’t come naturally sausage-shaped,
or that gammon is salty before it is smoked.
The sort of pork people dislike the most
is the leftover carcass at a Hog-roast;
the pig, to the average British Shopper,
comes without snout or tail or trotter.

This is why bacon’s so popular,

because it’s imbued with faked flavour;
whether it’s streaky or collar or hock,
grilled or pan-fried, gammon or back,
people prefer meat in fillets or strips,
and very few meat-eaters come to grips
with the fact that they’re eating animal-flesh
if it’s cooked in a casserole or a pie-dish.

We like our pork seasoned on polystyrene,

and clinically packed in neat cellophane;
cured, marinated, ready-to-fry
or whack on the barbecue – it’s never dry –
or slap onto a pre-heated George Forman Grill:
half the fat, half the taste, and half the thrill.
Bacon crisps are as flavoursome
as the chemicals pumped up a chicken’s bum.

Food must be trendy or sexualised:

pork only sells if it’s been pulverised,
pulled to pieces, shredded or diced,
pre-masticated, minced, ready-sliced.
Sainburys, claim as a ‘local’ shop
are keeping their customers on the hop;
as are  Morisson’s, Waitrose, Aldi, and Lidl:
a ‘local’ con is a corporate fiddle.

To bring home the bacon (or the pork chop)

it doesn’t matter where you shop,
surely, as long as it’s British
and not from Parma, or even worse, Danish:
that’s like buying lamb from New Zealand –
we’ve thousands of lambkins here in Scotland.
We’ve Aberdeen Angus and fresh fish of course, 
and in Tesco Lasagne, a wee hint of horse.

The reason why dogs always get given bones is
to bribe loyalty, and keep up with the Jones’s;
but piggies happily off in their pokes will
be content with mud, scraps and swill.
The pig is of little good use on the farm
(but unlike the carthorse, he’ll come to no harm.)
He snorts and squeals, grunts and snuffles,
and does the odd stint of sniffing out truffles.

The pig will eat any old crap that you give ‘em

(the same, then again, could be said of the human.)
If gammon is pumped up with sugar and water
we don’t give a fig if we think it tastes better.
Boiled or roasted, barbecued, grilled,
it makes no difference how the pig’s killed
if it gives you escalopes, spare ribs, or pizzle:
for farmers, it’s quids-in; for piggies, a swizzle.

For sure, you’re rewarded with pork medallions,
or if your prefer, with pork chops or loins;
from its innards, liver and kidneys are drawn,
and then there’s the pig’s head, a.k.a., brawn.
To market this little piggie goes smiling: may well he;
he gives us his spare ribs, his back and his belly.
There isn’t an inch of the pig that gets wasted –
you can puke it out if you don’t like how it tasted.

And finally there is the poor pig’s heart –

now used in humans as a spare-part –
the ultimate in personification
exemplifies this greedy nation.
For the filthy pig has now come to pass
as an object of mirth to the privileged class.
The sow’s ear is now a silk-lined purse; 
its streaky benevolence, a suilline curse.

This poem’s not about pigs, but greed;

exploiting the lowly and those in need.
Subverting four legs good; two legs, bad
it’s a diatribe, demonstrating how badly
we treat the subservient, yet notoriety
seems to be glossed over in Big Society.
“Let others say his heart is big” – well said!
You’ll be fucking the whole pig, not just its head.

Finally, to reiterate my pledge made on Facebook, to fellow creators: Make Art.

It might not be worth much in economic terms – nor should it be. It might not reach a huge audience – but who cares as long as it tells the truth.

 

It’s only through creativity that we stand a chance of fixing our broken world.

Create “…in an age of mediocrity and shattered dreams, images of abounding, generous, exuberant beauty.” (Michael Tippet, 1974)