Fixed

Scouse poetry from ranting zine Another Day Another Word, number 1, 1982

Fixed

Knock, knock. it’s three o’clock
So I open the door, an guess what I saw
Two or three CID’s, or maybe more
They’ve got me out of bed, and now
they’re hitting me on the head.
They said, ‘We’ve had a tip off, an we’re
looking for some Leb’
They said I was one of the clowns, who’d
been pushing it round town
I said they were wrong, but they wouldn’t
believe
So they called me a thief an a n*gger, an
said they wouldn’t leave
Then all too sudden, maybe too soon, one
came out of my living room
He said he found it behind the chair
He said it was a bit of luck, for it was
just lying there
They all started to smile an call me names
They said this was the end of my narcotic
games
I said you planted it you fuckin’ pig, but he
just leant over and gave me a dig
Then I was down the station stripped and cold
Three years would be the sentence I was told
I couldn’t believe them, I said it wasn’t true
But I knew they could frame me, if they wanted to.

Mick Turpin

Cold Turkey

Seething Wells takes no heroes in this review of a book on John Lennon from the NME, 12 October, 1985. It all gets a bit ‘No Elvis, Beatles, or the Rolling Stones…’

Skinheads 1970

Feature from Jeremy, a gay magazine, 1970.

Craig Charles – Peel

Craig Charles second Peel session, 7 February, 1984, from when he was a gigging poet.

The Guerilla Fighter

This poem is from the first issue of The People’s Voice, November, 1968. The magazine is from Cork and published by Saor Eire, launched by Irish Revolutionary Forces, who were former IRA members who wanted a more left wing and activist approach.

I Do Love Whiskers

Poem from quirky Basildon zine Attitude, number 5, 1984.

I Do Love Whiskers

Whiskers is the best for me
I’m totally convinced
Nothing else will ever do
For my little prince.
He shakes his head
and wags his tail,
you can almost hear him say,
Fuck me, I do like Whiskers
I get it every day
Morning noon and evening
she strokes me on my head
slips into her black negliges
and takes me off to bed.
She swings me round
rubs my tum
and I do the same for her.
She loves her pussy,
and I love hers
in rhythmic moaning purrs.

Mik Remmington

Poets For Peace

The Images Of War pamphlet as reported in the NME, 21 August, 1982.

Word War
A group calling themselves Poets for Peace have also just issued an anthology in pamphlet form, called ‘Images of War’. There are 18 writers involved, from Jeff Branin who served in the Vietnam War as a combat engineer, through John Elsberg, a US editor of a new poets’ anthology, through lyricists like David Morgan. The press which issues ‘Images of War’ is Kawabata Press, and you can obtain a copy of their booklet for 50p (plus postage if mail ordering) from Knill Cross House, Hr Andarton Road, Millbrook, nr Torpoint, Cornwall. NAM – which was praised by Paul Foot, amongst others – is also still available from Kawabata Press for £1.25.
Cynthia Rose

Only Silly Faggots Know

This poem is from the May, 1974 journal Mouth of the Dragon, A Poetry Journal of Male Love. This was the first issue, I don’t know if there were any more. The journal was from New York City.

Only Silly Faggots Know

only faggots know
only silly faggots know
pain, nights and nights of dark
streets, rain, raining alone
and parks full of crocodiles
Men who beat up faggots know crocodiles
eat men slowly, little by little bit by bit
and shit them out into the dark sewage water
of jungles without flowers- but
only silly faggots know and know and know
and see and see and see cha-cha down the streets of tinsel
and dinosaur rhinestone teeth and know and know and know
what only silly faggots know and drugs don’t know
and Men who beat up faggots don’t know
and faggots from the Stock exchange don’t know
and faggots from Abercrombie and Fitch don’t know
and faggots from the Metropolitan Opera don’t know

but the subways at three o’clock in the morning know
and Christopher Street at 4am knows
and the baths too exhausted to care
and too exalted to give up know
and split the sides with tell-it-all
tell-it-all tell-it-all tell-it-all
because that’s what we’re here for
and that’s why I love you
because you do know
where I have been and you have walked with me
through the mined crocodile fields
and passed the straight apes on the street corners
and gone through the morning hours with me, afraid
on, sooooo afraid,
but not turned-off, not to turn back
but to reach for me
to reach out for me sitting here
when I needed you
because only you know.

Perry Brass

Slam Poem Bacon

Nick Offerman with a slam poem about bacon, from 2013.

John Cooper Clarke, What

The Times, 9 February, 2024 notes the launch of Clarkey’s book, What.