In Memoriam, Bill Pertwee

So Farewell then, Bill Pertwee,
Tonight, a light went out,
It's what you would've wanted.

In Memoriam, Paul Shane

So farewell then, Paul Shane,
Bye-de-bye.

The Slynky

Slynky, Slynky, burning bright,

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye,

Could untangle you now?

Jellybean Colossus

Oh, Jelly Bean colossus,

Landmark of our city,

Kids have picked away your technicolor coat

And now they've had to cordon you off.

I was disappointed to find you were not

A Jelly Bean colossus through and through,

Beneath your coat, you are just plastic,

And little scabs of glue

And you taste disgusting too.

And now there is a man,

Whose job it is,

To watch you all the live long day,

And shout at all the tiny people

Who try and take your Jelly Beans away.

I wonder what he thinks about,

Custodian of the Bull,

I wonder if he loves or hates you,

Or thinks of you at all.

It's interesting that each new morning,

Your coat has been repaired,

Because that means there is a person,

Who carries the unusual burden,

That once the shopping day is done,

And Birmingham has been abandoned

To the setting sun

Who, once the shopping centre's closed,

Sits down with Jelly Beans and glue,

And tends, and loves and cares for you,

And slowly sews a new bean coat,

To make you beautiful.

I wonder what he's getting paid.

Marty Brown

Marty Brown was a moth-eaten man,

With biros lost in his hair,

People said he was a professor of History,

Though no one was quite sure where

He specialised in the coinage of Louis the German,

A subject he had chosen
Because he was certain,

It was the most boring topic under the sun,

And people would leave him alone

At dinner parties and in taxi queues,

People would ask him, 'what do you do?'

He would tell them,

'The coinage of Louis the German'

And they would look down at their shoes.

But one day he met a moth-eaten man,

Who asked him, 'What do you do?'

And when Marty replied,

The man looked in his eyes,

And said 'Oh shit, I do too'

They stared at each other,

For an hour and a half,

Neither one saying a word,

And then tacitly agreed,

To go their own ways,

And tell no one of what they had learnt.

Box

Rene Magritte - Personal Values

On my 21st birthday, a box arrived at the door.

'What is it?', I asked myself, prodding and poking with a stick.

'It's a box', said the courier, his arms straining under the weight.

'Should I sign for it?', I asked.

'Yes', he said, and I did.

'Would you like some tea?' I asked as an automatic defence.

'Yes', he said, forcing his body over the threshold and into my home.

Once we'd finished our tea he took his leave and left,

And I remained alone again, a courier bereft,

I prodded and poked for the rest of the day,

And at the end of it all I gave it away

To a charity shop,

The box.

A week later my friend came round.

'Would you like some tea?'

'Yes, that'd be lovely'.

And so we sat, and he talked.

He talked of music I didn't know,

And films that broke the mould,

He told me how to roast a duck,

And philosophies of old.

He talked without speaking,

In platitudes without meaning,

And used big words he'd heard,

Absurdly preening in the mirror of his verse.

'Subversive' he'd say,

'Yes', I'd say.

'Contemporary', he'd say,

'Yes', I'd say,

'Cultured', he'd say,

'What else?', I'd say.

When he'd finished his tea we went upstairs,

To admire my marvellous collection of clocks,

Tick Tock, Tick Tock,

Tick Tock, Tick Tock,

He commented upon the mechanics of it, how smoothly it all ran.

'Thank you', I said, 'I try the best I can'.

Tick Tock, Tick Tock,

Feeling the need to return the compliment,

I turned to him and asked,

'I like your personality, where did you get it?'

'Well funny you should ask', he said, turning to the clock,

'Yes, funny you should ask, you see, I got it from a box'.

Tick Tock.

Dead Butterflies

             Writing is like having this big box full of moths, and in amongst the moths are trapped several butterflies. Every time you have an idea, the box opens and out fly a thousand or so moths. Your job is to weave in and out of them with a small net, trying to catch the few butterflies sweeping and spiralling amongst the bedlam. To do so takes incredible nimbleness, dexterity and judgement; after all, it's sometimes quite difficult to tell what's a moth and what's a butterfly. 

              Even if you do manage to snare yourself a butterfly, you then have to pin it down, and quite a few can slip away and escape through accident or carelessness. And even then, even if you succeed in pinning your butterfly down, you've killed it. You've captured its beauty, ensnared it to paper, but you've taken away its motion, its grace, in many ways the things that made it beautiful to begin with.

              The true art of writing, and something I don't think I shall ever accomplish, is being able to breath life back into dead butterflies. Even here, in this very idea, something that in its inception was so pure and perfect has, through the wrong turn of phrase here and there, through the odd clunky phrase, through the regrettable choice of word, become sullied and still; a dead butterfly upon a lifeless page.