Classic Poem

I

GO TO WORK ON A BRAQUE!

2

Youths disguised as stockbrokers
Sitting on the grass eating the Sacred Mushroom.

3

Liverpool I love your horny­handed tons of soil.

4

PRAYER FROM A PAINTER TO ALL CAPITALISTS:
Open your wallets and repeat after me
`HELP YOURSELF!'

5

There's one way of being sure of keeping fresh
LIFEBUOY helps you rise again on the 3rd day
after smelling something that smelt like other peoples' socks.

6

Note for a definition of optimism:
A man trying the door of Yates Wine Lodge
At quarter past four in the afternoon.

7

I have seen Pare UBU walking across Lime St
And Alfred Jarry cycling down Elliott Street.

8

And I Saw DEATH in Upper Duke St
Cloak flapping black tall Batman collar
Striding tall shoulders down the hill past the Cathedral brown shoes slightly down at the heel

9

Unfrocked Chinese mandarins holding lonely feasts in
Falkner Sq gardens to enjoy the snow.

10

Prostitutes in the snow in Canning St like strange erotic
snowmen
And Marcel Proust in the Kardomah eating Madeleine
butties dipped in tea.

II

Wyatt James Virgil and Morgan Earp with Doc Holliday
Shooting it out with the Liver Birds at the Pier Head.

12

And a Polish gunman young beautiful dark glasses
combatjacket/staggers down Little St Bride St blood
dripping moaning clutches/collapses down a back jigger
coughing/falls in a wilderness of Dazwhite washing