Thursday 30 November 2006

Nina Simones' Lyrics

http://www.lyricsdepot.com/nina-simone/dont-smoke-in-bed.html

Nina Simone

20th Century Russian Poets

http://www.richardboffin.com/poets/ in Russian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_language_poets
List of Russian language Poets ( In English)

A POISON TREE

A POISON TREE
by: William Blake (1757-1827)

I WAS angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunnèd it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole,
When the night had veiled the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

Questions From a Worker Who Reads

Questions From a Worker Who Reads

Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished
Who raised it up so many times?
In what houses of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?
Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished
Did the masons go? Great RomeIs full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whom Did the Caesars triumph?

Had Byzantium, much praised in song
Only palaces for its inhabitants? Even in fabled Atlantis
The night the ocean engulfed it
The drowning still bawled for their slaves.
The young Alexander conquered India.Was he alone?Caesar beat the Gauls.
Did he not have even a cook with him?

Philip of Spain wept when his armada
Went down. Was he the only one to weep?
Frederick the Second won the Seven Year's War.

Who Else won it?Every page a victory.Who cooked the feast for the victors?
Every ten years a great man? Who paid the bill? So many reports. So many questions.

Bertolt Brecht

Wednesday 29 November 2006

Feelings

Feelings

The feelings i have i have
The feelings i don't have, don't matter much right now
The feelings you have you keep to yourself
The feelings that matter are suppressed
If you can have the courage
to tell the one you love your feelings
relations change

Peter Burton November 2006

Sunday 26 November 2006

Poems about Poets

A Portrait

Myth as collective unconscious
a representer of mass culture
a parody of English realist novel
using stylized language
demonic vernacular urban

carnivalesque tolerant experimental prose
transcendence from mundane reality
through rebellious poetic words
scorning nationalism
scorning state and church
through celebration of the body

Peter Burton November 2006


"Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly " LH

Harlem Renaissance Man

Passionate clear humane
Harlem renaissance product
subtle and ironic
humorous and prolific

perceptive representer of black
musics' emotions
through immersion in African-American culture
crying loud against racist Southern " Justice"
with words as weapons
Scottsboro boys
hypocritical philanthropists
Jim Crow YMCAS
"Coloureds not admitted" signs
no part in 4th of July speeches

The "Weary Blues" of black mens' souls
"laughin' to keep from cryin' "


"The human soul entire, sqeezed
like a lemon or a lime drop by drop,
into atomic words" LH

Peter Burton November 2006

Imagine

Autonomous imaginative finely tuned visions
intensely lyrical intensely profound
confronting power with divided self

skeptical idealist urbane conversationalist
emotionally literate elevated prophet
agnostic ironic celebratory skeptic

Jupiter as Urizen
all reality a phantasmagoria

Imagination our eternal redemption

Peter Burton September 2006


Swansea Bohemian

Thirties Bohemian Celtic Bard
dedicated representer of human emotions
autodidactic original Swansea stylist
brought up within national oral tradition

surrounded by raging London Blitz fires
craving for mythical golden age past
with conflicting archetypal images
the old and the innocent
the " Loud Hill of Wales"

Peter Burton October 2006

' Mind forg'd Manacles '

Orc the enemy of
Urizen and Albions' Angel
fire consuming the tyrants' palaces

Orc rejoices at their shrieks and groans
despiser of all despotic oppressors
false hearted Enitarmon
undeclared Rintrach
jealous oppressors and cruel deceivers
ruling by fear and unjust laws

seflish envious brutal authority still
nothing prevents their howls of despair
in these visions of the 'cloudy heavens of Albion'

Peter Burton September 2006

Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry

http://www.qub.ac.uk/heaneycentre

Wilfred Owen Association

http://www.1914-18.co.uk/owen

I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big- gun gears;
And caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts;
And buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts;
And rusted every bayonet with His tears.

And there were no more bombs, of ours or Theirs,
Not even an old flint-lock, nor even a pikel.
But God was vexed, and gave all power to Michael;
And when i woke he'd seen to our repairs.

Saturday 25 November 2006

Radical US Bookshop

http://www.citylights.com

The Charge of the Blue Locusts

The Charge of the Blue Locusts

Half a mass picket, half a mass picket
Half a mass picket onward
All in the Battle of Orgreave
Rode the mounted police
Charge for the scabs ! he said
Into the valley of beatings
Rode the striking pickets

Forward the defiant miners
Was there a striker dismayed
Not tho’ the miner knew
TUC tops has blundered
Theirs not to defy
Theirs not to hear the cries
Theirs but to fight and try
Into the valley of beatings
Ran the striking pickets

Mounted police to the right of them
Riot cops to the left of them
Ranks of blue locusts in front of them
Marched and thundered

Charged at with baton and shield
Boldly they dodge then yield
Into the jaws of authority
Into the ranks of blue locusts
Ran the striking pickets

Flash’d all their truncheons bare
Flash’d as they swung through air
Thumping on their shields there
Charging a miners’ army while
Most of the country wondered

Plunged into the cavalry-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke
Miner and striker
Reel’d from the truncheon blows
Shatter’ed and sundered


Mounted police to the right of them
Riot cops to the left of them
Ranks of blue locusts behind them
Marched and Thundered

Charged at with baton and shield
They that had fought so well
Facing a bloody coppers’ hell
All that was left of them
Left of the battered magnificent miners

Peter Burton

The Cockle-pickers and the Gang-Masters

The Cockle-pickers and the Gang-masters

The moon was shining on the sea
Shining on that fateful night

But there was nothing odd about this at all
As workers worked through the night

The sun had long set in the sky
Just like every day before

As cockle-pickers made their way
Unto that killing shore

The Cockle-pickers and Supervisors
were walking close at hand

The former wept like anything
to see such quantities of sand

O Cockles come and walk with us
The workers did beseech

Come walk with us in quantity
Along this silhouetted beach

But no cockles followed them that night
Without backbreaking toil and sweat

Persuaded back in China to
A lifetime of regret

It seems a chance the gang-master thought
To play them such a risk

After we’ve brought them out so far
And made them work so brisk

O workers said the gang-masters
You’ve had a pleasant run

Shall we be going home again
But answer came there none

But this silence was not odd at all,
Cos they’d drowned almost everyone

Peter Burton

The Confidant Man

The Confidant Man

Not pantomime but Charades
a wild goose chase
for
unassailable reliable testimony
infallible evidence
But there are no guarantees
in this world
only people choosing their parts
before reciting their lines
All evidence
Potentially suspect
trust, honesty, fidelity
unprovable intangible qualities
certainty leading to dogma
an essentially honest person wronged
or a diabolically plausible
abuser of trust ?
a necessary preservation of a stable core identity
or vain confidence trickster ?

Peter Burton August 2006

Poems about America

Not so long ago

Exhausted farms abandoned
to the banks and the birds

A Mass army of immigrants
sharecroppers, farmers and
unemployed moving west


Travelling through the
highways and the Idaho
hills

Highways 30 and 66
Old Spark, El Paso and every
westward trail

They came in old beat up dodges
La Salles and Model T Fords

With every possession that
they owned strapped
to the running boards

But the banks had
got to California and Oregons’
valleys’ first

And the farmers
had to compete in line
fearing the very worst

For the first time in their lives
the lines of farmers talked and talked
of unions and real dignity
and the need to fight and organise

Pete Burton June 2006

To Two martyrs

It was the year 1920
And the need for examples
Was in the air

Sacco and Vanzettti
Became the heroic
Murdered pair

Of labour organisers
In Massachusettes charged
With murders they didn’t commit

Even the prosecuter and judge
To this they did admit

Opposition to war
And labour organising
Was the real charge over there

And two innocent men in 27
Then went to the electric chair

Peter Burton June 2006

I don’t hear America

Those of mechanics , each one ground down by
Downsizing and fear of the same

The carpenter silent as he signs on for welfare
The mason silent as he searches for work
The boatmen silent when there is no boatbuilding
The hatter silent, hats not in fashion

The woodcutters silence as this is mainly done
In the rain forest now, the ploughmans going
Nowhere anytime soon

The silence of the mother, ground down by
Drudgery and insecurity

Each introspective and worried about the future
Silence with closed mouths and post 9/11 thoughts.

Peter Burton
What a waste !

White working class prisoners exit
Through the revolving door
Vowing never to come back
But I’ve heard that before

Back to the run-down schemes
To face the same choices
With a criminal record
And few representative voices

Its £ 30,000 a year to
Keep a prisoner banged up
But no boss would pay that
No matter how hard they worked

It’s a system of contradictions
and conflict built in
It’s a crime, a huge waste
And a terrible sin


Sacre BLUE !!


Mr Orange saw red and was determined
to show that he was not yellow and remain
in the black and the whole country was tickled pink


Rosy? Flat Bloody chance

Nae wonar am feelin depressed
Nae wonar am feelin’ down

Surrounded by you’se knaves and fools
Liars, cheats and clowns!!

( Unison had one day strike over pensions and called the rest off)

Tigger ain’t such a wonderful thing

Tigger Tigger you can’t fight
Doesn’t matter whose wrong , whose right
Cos you’ve got privileges and perks too
And you’d jump from a high rise
If a goose said boo!

Change of Direction

I’m glad its been regenerated
But with Tesco and Wimpey houses?

Glad they’ve ended the long decay
But with Tesco and Barret houses?

Don’t want to complain about the change
But Tesco and Wimpey houses?

Perhaps some day decay
will not end this way ?

With Tesco and some houses.

Teaching by Numbers

We have a rising 4 rating as an
Educational school
No one leaves here for sure
Feeling like a fool

Cos we get bums on seats
“By any means necessary”
We even have a shanghai force
In case the numbers are lessening

So if you think that you are
in a position to enrol
Please come to us , not to them,
We may even send the Rolls

During Holocaust memorials

Learn the Lessons

Industrialised mass murder
Of Six million Jews
By faceless bureaucrats
Following orders
Conforming from fear
To the diktacs from
Hellish superiors
Scientific “experiments”
On human cargo
By conscienceless beasts
Of depravity
No parallels
from the past
History as progress ?
Only if we learn

Blairs’ reference to praying to God

Gods to Blame

Gods to blame
He told me to invade

And anyway, Iraqis’ free now
If not, then Gods’ to blame


Chain of Command

Speak angrily to your
Subordinate
And bully him when it pleases

Subordinates need to know
whose boss until hell
bloody freezes



Racist Zapper light

Some bars ought to have
A fly-zapping circular light

That is big enough and
Strong enough to
Attract the racist right

Short Poems

Underdeveloped ?

I arrived at the gates of hell
to witness the doomed battle
against the drug barons of Medellin, body
counts multiplying amidst
the inferno of rival
barons, guerrillas, hired
assassins and marauding
teenage gangs , crime 10 crimestoppers 0
greed and power
twin kings but only a vision
of raw, blood and guts capitalism
in reality

Peter Burton June 2006

Freedom !


Possible return to the Victorian nightmare
Of extreme wage-slavery
Scapegoated powerless immigrants
Eaten up by
Late British Capitalism
Swallowed down whole by
Corruption and greed
Destroyer of dreams
Creator of bitterness
And crimes
We all need socialism
ALL!

Peter Burton July 2006


The History Man ?

I once went for an interview
as a young man lacking guile

The two man interview panel
kept me waiting quite a while

They then asked me why I wanted
to teach history so very much

I replied that historys’ lessons
were what kept humanity in touch

With where we’d been
and where we’re going
and how to get us there

They looked at each other
then back at me like
I’d come to them
as part of some mad dare

Peter Burton June 2006

Some Men

Manipulate , play the game
Come across as a nice guy

Bed them, don’t wed them
And then you say goodbye.

Peter Burton

Zimmermann

Rimbaud, Verlaine, Thomas and Shelley
Ferlingheeti, Kerouac, Burroughs and Ginsburg
Williams, Presley, Guthrie and Johnson
Brando and Peck , Dean and the Bible

Just some of the things that influenced you

Underdeveloped ?

I arrived at the gates of hell
to witness the doomed battle
against the drug barons of Medellin, body
counts multiplying amidst
the inferno of rival
barons, guerrillas, hired
assassins and marauding
teenage gangs , crime 10 crimestoppers 0
greed and power
twin kings but only a vision
of raw, blood and guts capitalism
in reality

Peter Burton June 2006

Freedom !

Possible return to the Victorian nightmare
Of extreme wage-slavery
Scapegoated powerless immigrants
Eaten up by
Late British Capitalism
Swallowed down whole by
Corruption and greed
Destroyer of dreams
Creator of bitterness
And crimes
We all need socialism
ALL!

Peter Burton July 2006

The History Man ?

I once went for an interview
as a young man lacking guile

The two man interview panel
kept me waiting quite a while

They then asked me why I wanted
to teach history so very much

I replied that historys’ lessons
were what kept humanity in touch

With where we’d been
and where we’re going
and how to get us there

They looked at each other
then back at me like
I’d come to them
as part of some mad dare

Peter Burton June 2006

Some Men

Manipulate , play the game
Come across as a nice guy

Bed them, don’t wed them
And then you say goodbye.

Zimmermann

Rimbaud, Verlaine, Thomas and Shelley
Ferlingheeti, Kerouac, Burroughs and Ginsburg
Williams, Presley, Guthrie and Johnson
Brando and Peck , Dean and the Bible

Just some of the things that influenced you

Ali

Courageous , charismatic, principled and straight as day
“Ain’t no Vietcong called me nigger” you said
And showed your countrymen the way


The House that Jack built
( or chief puddin)

O How ad like to slap yer face
Great puddin o the Scottish race

Ye stand up there
Dodgin beams

And spoutin forth so much
Tosh and reams
of lies and spittle

A great first Minister in Jack McConnell?
We’d be better aff wi Daniel O’ Donnell


The man with the iron mask (1)

Affable, intelligent
popular as well

But underneath that mask you wear
Your as sectarian as hell !

Ali

Courageous , charismatic, principled and straight as day
“Ain’t no Vietcong called me nigger” you said
And showed your countrymen the way


The House that Jack built
( or chief puddin)

O How ad like to slap yer face
Great puddin o the Scottish race

Ye stand up there
Dodgin beams

And spoutin forth so much
Tosh and reams
of lies and spittle

A great first Minister in Jack McConnell?
We’d be better aff wi Daniel O’ Donnell


The Man with the Iron mask (1)

Affable, intelligent
popular as well

But underneath that mask you wear
Your as sectarian as hell !

Friday 24 November 2006

Swansea Bohemian

Swansea Bohemian

Thirties Bohemian Celtic Bard
dedicated representer of human emotions
autodidactic original Swansea stylist
brought up within national oral tradition

surrounded by raging London Blitz fires
craving for mythical golden age past
with conflicting archetypal images
the old and the innocent
the " Loud Hill of Wales"

Peter Burton

Mexmode

Mexmode

Markups and Mistresses
Profits and Yachts
Bonuses and Bentleys
Outsourcing and Sweatshops
Contracts and Goons
Speedup and Exhaustion
maggots and beatings
self-respect and dignity
fighting-back and organising
flics and false judges
sackings and threats
of closure and re-location
demands and strikes
exposure and embarressment
Solidariy and Justice
and Victory for the workers!

Peter Burton

Universal Alliance

Universal Alliance incorporating the Vision Quester News Agency & Phoenix New Life Poetry
http://www.universalalliance.org.uk

Good Radical US E-zine poetry site

Tuesday 21 November 2006

Harlem Renaissance man

"Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly "
LH

Harlem Renaissance Man

Passionate clear humane
Harlem renaissance product
subtle and ironic humorous and prolific
perceptive representer of black musics' emotions
through immersion in African-American culture
crying loud against racist Southern " Justice"with words as weapons

Scottsboro boys
hypocritical philanthropists
Jim Crow YMCAS"
"Coloureds not admitted" signs
no part in the 4th of July speeches

The "Weary Blues" of black mens' souls
"laughin' to keep from cryin' "

"The human soul entire,
sqeezed like a lemon or a lime drop by drop,
into atomic words" LH

Peter Burton November 2006

Blakes' Poetry

http://www.poetry-archive.com/b/blake_william.html

Political songs/satire site

http://bootnewt.hostingzero.com/

Some Ginsburg Poems

http://www.rooknet.com/beatpage/writers/ginsberg.html

Indiefeed:Performance Poetry

http://www.indiefeedpp.libsyn.com/

Sunday 19 November 2006

My Play etc

http://www.paulineconspiracy.com

The Kate Adams

The Kate Adams

Massive red paddles beat the water
Great billious smokestacks fill the sky
Nightime furnaces throw flames across
silhoutted dark waters as a

calliope whistle interrupts the chattering of
fancy dressers, cotton millionares,dapper ladies,
tricksters ,circus characters
drifting in a semi-wilderness

down the Mississippi
inspiring Delta bluesmen
to write songs
as the white money factory floats on by.

Peter Burton

The Mask of Blair

The Mask of Blair

I met bloodshed dressed up as prayer
He had a smile like Tony Blair
Very happy he looked , yet false
Lies and intrigue and not much else
Next came ambition and he had on
a penguin CBI conference cresanthomom

cuts and Bank of England independence
and for former reformist sins -repentance
clothed with a sergeant like bullys' creed
next came ex-steel town no hoper John Reid
we pleaded and begged him to " Save the Craig" !
and got a war and refugee dawn raids

And many more new Tories played
in yet another masquerade
spinners , fat cats, Lords and Peers
all living off workers very worst fears

Peter Burton

The Man in the Iron Mask

The Man in the Iron Mask

prevaricate and overstate
equivocate and exaggerate
fabricate and ostentate
wear a mask and be a fake

double life and double dealing
big black lies will leave them realing
perjury and huge betrayel
Hope i don't end up in gaol

spinning, weaving ,circumvention
falsehood, bad faith, self-deception
disingenous and perfidious
deceiptfulness and meritricious

be dishonest , break the faith
ham it up and simulate
misrepresent and misreport
belt it out until I'm hoarse

perfidy and mendacity
cant and real duplicity
trickery and facade
could it be that I'm going mad ?

dress it up and put it on
never admit that i am wrong
evasion ,cant and gritting teeth
conceal the truth and make believe

economize and trump it up
Hope i don't run out of luck
fraudulence and quackery
cunning, guile , hypocrisy

juggle ,conjure, hocus-pocus
hope their eyes are out of focus
elusive , delusive and collusive
engage in lots of dodgy ruses

fiddle, diddle, swizzle sell
my lifes become a bloody hell
coin it ,forge it, tongue and cheek it
weave and hatch and hope i sneak it

invent, concoct ,fake and cheat
see and saw and cold and heat
duck and dive and dodge and deal
I wonder how her bum would feel ?

maybe i can just brass neck it
even if it means i wreck it

Oh what a tangled web they weave
when leaders start to bloody deceive !

Peter Burton

To Joe

To Joe

“The only band that mattered”
That group “ they changed my life”
Rebellious , uncorruptible, intelligent
A real passion and zest for life

Led by a rock and roll ball of energy
With Topper on the drums
Iconic, extroverted, crazy
Heavy soulful , punk reggae young guns

Peter Burton

Maggie

Maggie

The papers say you are senile
That you can remember long ago
But not 10 minutes before.
This means you’ll remember
When there were miners and printers
Dockers and Car workers who made useful things

Strikes and riots and class ridden
taxes, Spivs and greed and too much crime
to explain

Maybe you’ll remember the creation
of homeless and agency working
for private profiteers

Somehow I find it hard to feel pity
You changed all our lives in such a terrible way.

Peter Burton

Paradox land

Paradox land

A wine Bar in Frisco
Opens out to the street
On a hot summers night
White wine in iced buckets
And plates full of oysters
Well-heeled people eating
From super-sized plates

One can hear the clink
Of glasses and chatter
And admire the beautiful clothes
As neat waiters eager to please
Rush around
Asking if “everythings just right”

While on the pavement right in front
of them
Lies a black man face down
Invisible or so it seems.

Peter Burton

Vorkuta

Vorkuta

You organised great hunger strikes
In Stalins’ hellish slave labour prisons

And improved the rations for everyone
Including the non-political prisoners

Until Stalinist guards one day
Following Kobas’ murderous orders

Frogged marched you out of there
to the nearby waiting forest

where you were made
to dig your graves
before being shot and burned

but time is on your side my friends
and history is far from done

Peter Burton

Spartacus

Spartacus

You forged a slave army
by the force of your personality
You subverted the Romans
view of dumb ignorant slaves

You defeated ten of their
best trained armies
using weapons forged
with metallic booty

Your martyrdom
set the example for
others who came after
the class fighters who brought Rome
to its knees

Today those in power
fear the modern day slave
the worker who toils but who
also has power

Learning from history
they try to avoid martyrs
but at the dusk of the system
their fate will be the same

Peter Burton

To the martyrs of 1820,Swinging Sixties, Maclean

To the martyrs of 1820

Riots for food,
Child labour
Soaring prices
Workers trying to live
On a shilling a week

Open and secret meetings
Reform pamphlets
United Scotsmen and Glasgow green drills

Hardie and Baird led the fight
For reform
With a march organised on the
great Carron Ironworks

But soldiers from Stirling
Cut off the reformers
And a great bloody battle
Then did ensue

In the square off Broad street
Under the walls of the Castle
Hardie and Baird paid with their lives

Hung drawn and quartered by the authorities
On ‘evidence’ submitted by government spies
But not before defiantly demanding
their countrymen’s’ rights.

Thrown in a shallow grave near Stirling
Lying there for a long twenty seven years
disinterred by Glasgow radicals after
they found you
then buried in Sighthill with the respect
you deserved

Peter Burton


Swinging sixties?

Greensborough Segregation
SNCC creation
Huac Demonstration
Pacifist orchestration

Bay of Pigs invasion
Desegregation
Voter Registration
Washington demonstration

SDS statement
Cuban Missile derailment
Birmingham protestations
Washington demonstration

Mississippi Murders
Harlem ghetto rebellions
North Vietnam bombardments
SDS projects

Berkeley free speech movement
Johnson bombing Vietnam
Malcolm X murdered
University Teach-ins

Montgomery bloody battle
Washington anti-war prattle
Oakland protest troop trains
Watts’s rebellion contained

Draft card burnings
Anti-war self-immolisation
Anti-draft sit-ins
Black power expulsions

Black panther party
Mass draft card burnings
Be-ins and hippies
Detroit and Newark
Oakland repression
Pentagon storming

Women’s’ liberation billed
Orange black students killed
Bobby Hutton killed
Martin Luther killed

Democratic convention riot
Precision stockade rebellion
SF college strikes
16 Black Panthers killed

Destruction of peoples’ park
Hundreds beaten after dark

SD splitsNew York imperial buildings hit
A million protest in
Washington and Frisco

Peter Burton

Maclean

Tales of the clearances
And your mothers’ oppression
Calvinism, Huxley and Spencer
Created the fire in the belly
Of the young John Maclean

Marxist education a lifelong obsession
Understanding the need for radical change
Neilsten thread mills
Singers Strike
Solidarity
Then your anti- war agitation made you a
A household name

“I have been listed in the socialist army
for 25 years God damn all other armies”
You proclaimed to Sheriff Lee
Then sent to prison for the first of five times
rejecting leniency

3 years penal servitude followed
your sentence cut short by public outrage
On trial again in 1918
Asked if you objected to any juryman you replied
“I object to the whole of them”

Made Bolshevik consulate
With tens of thousands
At Buchanan street station to greet you
The workers replacing the horses
Waiting to pull the carriage along

And thousands lined the Shaws in 23
to respect a socialist martyr who lies
in Eastwood cemetery

Peter Burton

Know thyself

Know thyself

Self as Mask so intertwined
self-quarreling to reality
except for those whose
pleasure lies in Lathe's wharf

Self as is
Self as it longs to be
representation of lifes' tragedy
a perpetual phantasmagoria

a traditonal form in style
shakespearean tradgedy as zenith
mixing faith and skepticism
with antinomies of the feminine

Peter Burton

Poem for Vietnamese

Poem for Vietnamese
Military technology against human beings
Independence the continuity thread
Domino theory guarantees conflict
South- East Asia a resource paradise
Phu Quoc Qui Mhon
engineered Tomkin affair
A bomb gets dropped for every civilian
My Lai 4 My Lais' everywhere
as stressed up GI'S succumb
to racially stereotypical sub-human propaganda images
Marines hit the ground firing
from swirling helicopter gunships
russian roulette, bamboo prisons , underground tunnels
sex
death
drugs
hard liquor
"Yet one more turn of the screw"
" LBJ LBJ How many kids did you kill today?
" Ain't no Vietcong ever called me Nigger"
" We won't go, we won't go" !
" Have your draft card back" !
" Sometimes to be silent is to lie"
Underground newspapers Student General strikes Army refuseniks
" I ain't gonna kill, its against my will "
Black armbands, fragging, Vietnam Vets against the war
winter soldier investigations , concerned officers
pilot refuseniks, Kovic anger spirals as
war profiteer frontman Johnson gets nervous and
Vietnam is lost in the Mississippi Valley
Peter Burton

Death of a Human

Death of a human

Ordinary men as heroes
ground down
by
raw Capitalism
an American nightmare
represented by
naturalistic form
and realistic time
money the measure of all things
materialism
debt
alienation
solitary death
the sold
American " dream "

Peter Burton August 2006


Down the Rabbit Hole

Punctillious
waistcoated
White Rabbit
followed
down
the
rabbit
hole
by a portion
consuming
practitioner
of logic
attempting continually
to reason
with unreason
a typographical mouse tail
a hookah-smoking caterpillar
a Duchess nursing pig
a tea-drinking mad-hatter
a cheshire grinning cat
a march-hare squeezing
a dormouse into
a teapot
a flamingo-mallet croquet
playing murderous queen and
a dolorous Mock turtle

I'm on the far left- Alice had it easy !

Peter Burton August 2006

Heroic witches

Heroic witches inducing ambition
to expose the hierarchical class society
based on oppression and war
witches ethereal outsiders from
the social order subvert through
language and subversive subconcious
trying to change his identity
exposing male will to power
represented as evil by society
with lady as egoistic bourgeois
in opposition to collective identity
tradition and loyalty struggle with
desire and tear them both apart

Peter Burton August 2006

Desire

Desire

O Whistle an' I'll come to you , my girl
O Whistle an' I'll come to you , my girl

Tho' partner and parents an a' would go mad
O whistle an' I'll come to ye, my girl.

Peter Burton August 2006

( Rabbie helped wi this)

The Confidant Man

Not pantomime but Charades
a wild goose chase
for
unassailable reliable testimony
infallible evidence
But there are no guarantees
in this world
only people choosing their parts
before reciting their lines
All evidence
Potentially suspect
trust, honesty, fidelity
unprovable intangible qualities
certainty leading to dogma
an essentially honest person wronged
or a diabolically plausible
abuser of trust
a necessary preservation of a stable core identity
or vain confidence trickster ?

Peter Burton August 2006

Shark Attack

How dothe the big long shark
Improve his shining teeth
By selling you what you don’t need
More skillfully than any thief

How cheerfully he seems to grin
How deftly he then sucks you in

He milks your kindness
and its far from funny
Then he quickly departs
Once he’s got your money

Peter Burton July 2006

Photography as Art

Photography as Art

An all-encompassing way of seeing
defying limitations of technique and technology
an infallible means of creation
old controversies with painting dying
as skilled photographers
represent everything and anything well

art as cultural document
photography legitimised as art
beyond recording and informing
facilitating profound examination of world
and the self.

Peter Burton July 2006

The Betrayal

The Betrayal

Twas down in Barcelona no so long ago
when an anti-fascist popular front
came steppin' through the floor

This countrys' awful tragedy
i' ve learned so terribly well
The colour of its flag was black
it became a fascist hell

The NKVD they dragged them there
into Kobas' torture cells
Trotskyists Militants Anarchists murdered
with a brutality to terrible to tell

Stalins' henchmen then sealed their fate
there was to be no Spanish Revolution here
misleadership betrayal and treachery mixed in with
a dictatorship of fear

The Left it must unite now against these crimes
Unite with no more delay
next time a Workers State will be formed
and a Workers Party will lead the way

Peter Burton September 2006

The Paranoid Man

paranoid jealousy
overreading all signs
obsessively hunting for hidden knowledge
to control events
endlessly frustrated
in absence of any real mystery
jealousy perpetually bending
the ' evidence 'for its own ends

Peter Burton September 2006

Malcolm X

Malcolm X

Born Malcolm Little in Omaha in 1925
You were forced to flee
white supremicists twice
before the age of five

Your fearless father was murdered and
Your mother then went insane
Eight children then got fostered out
But no one got the blame

You wanted to be a lawyer and you
Graduated the top of your class
But your racist ignorant teacher
Was much worse than a pain in the ass

So you drifted into crime in Harlems’
Tough mean neighbourhoods
Running numbers ,narcotics,prostitution
The main leader of the hoods

You got ten years with your buddy
Malcolm “ Shorty “ Jarvis
Serving seven in reality on
A host of burglary charges

While doin time for all these crimes
You had a religious conversion
Accepting Elijah’s Muhammeds' teaching
And the Nation of Islams’ version

Of analysis and enpowerment of Afro-American blacks
While the long feared “Black Messiah”
then crisscrossed the States
Buiding the NOI


Brilliant oratorical skills
and many wise insights
Then brought the activities of the State
And an agenda of a shortened life

Then the test of faith arrives
Elijah is no living prophet
Affairs and children everwhere
And warm comfort from good profit

You broke with the Nation Of Islam
And founded the Muslim Mosque
Returning from Mecca in 64
Preaching unity to beat the boss

But this new message of unity
Made you a bigger threat than ever
The NOI then moved against you
And the State was boxing clever

Slaughtered in the Audobon ballroom
in the year 1965
A second man is caught by the crowd
But he was never ever tried

Laid to rest in Fernhill cemetry
A martyred “Black Messiah”
The powerful just could not let you live
And feared your love and fire

Peter Burton September 2006


Dignity is everywhere


Shabby ,run down, crowded ghettoes
poverty lurking from tenement ends
paint-peeled windows
bare-bulb shadows
decorate the cold drab struggle
anger bitterness envy resentment
fuel the drug ridden
alcohol buildings

Yet people live there just
as in all Ghettos
with honesty and self-respect.

Peter Burton September 2006

Poem to Woody

Poem to Woody

Out of vibrant Okemah
You bounded precocious and unconventional
Profoundly touched by Claras' death
a keen observer of Oklahoma surrounds

You went through the decline of
your influential mother
hastened by financial ruin
creating a permanent rambler
a projector of wry humour

Pampa, Corn Cob trio and Mary Jannings
then followed
all lost to the Great Dust storm
poor refugee ' Okies' moving west

Freight train hoboing, hitch-hiking ,walking
to meet with Californians' parochialism
feelings expressed in ballads and radio broadcasts
as self-promoted lifelong " outsider"

The rambler inside takes you
to "The Big Apple"
the left branding and embracing you
for your "authenticity"

Leadbelly, Houston , Ives ,Seeger
Will Geer, Sonny Terry , Brownie McGhee
Singing songs of Protest
Songs of Freedom
And for what you believed in

Lomax ,Moses Asch,Folkways
performances with
the Almanac Singers,The legendary Weavers
establishing against the stream
folk music as commercially viable

Proud Noble Gifted Woody

Peter Burton August 2006

After the Flood ?

After the Flood ?

Federal Budget cuts and the Louisiana
National Guard deployed to Baghdad
In the face of warnings of Hurricane Katrina
Wreak havoc on a magical city
A mystical city of REAL culture-
Blues and jazz funerals
Parades and sexuality
Graveyards and voodoo

A city of kindness and hospitality
Of social networks and support
A city of racism and corruption
of Jerald Thomas and protests
A city of black filled hellholes
infamous Angola State Pen
and Orleans Parish Prison

The rich flee from Katrina
And the poor in their 4 by 4’s
And SUVS while
The poor nowhere to go
And no way of getting there
Suffer demonisation for
Committing the crime of
Surviving

The media
Deflecting attention
From (ir)responsible corrupt city fathers
With Images of blacks as “ loot” ers , marauders
Criminals
conveniently forgetting to report the complete
absence of contingency
Planning

Public workers again act as heroes
with Police as exception lying through
fear about the location of life-saving buses
dispersal of groups and protection
of abandoned property their
thinly disguised goal

While greedy Halliburton
voyeuristically looks on
planning a long desired
white-washed
French quartered corporate
Restructured Disneyland
amid visions of super-gated rich
compound enclosures to protect
the rich from an angrier poor

Cultural genocide racial cleansing
Corporate plans
Vie with grassroots organisations’
resistance to Disney-fication
getting organised
by diaspora activists networking
to fight for their community
vision of a newer New Orleans

Meanwhile a Biloxi man
Finally lets go of his wife’s hand
as she tells him to
“look after the children
and grandchildren”

Peter Burton August 2006

Saturday 18 November 2006

Political Poems

http://home.triad.rr.com/dyrwen/Poems/political.htm

Great Poets by Nationality and Century

http://www.poetseers.org/the_great_poets

Burns' Poems

http://www.worldburnsclub.com/poems/translations/index.htm

Poets against the war

http://www.poetsagainstthewar.org/

The Weary Blues

The Weary Blues
by Langston Hughes
Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway . . .
He did a lazy sway . . .
To the tune o' those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man's soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan--
"Ain't got nobody in all this world,
Ain't got nobody but ma self.
I's gwine to quit ma frownin'
And put ma troubles on the shelf."
Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more--
"I got the Weary Blues
And I can't be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can't be satisfied--
I ain't happy no mo'
And I wish that I had died."
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.

Langston Hughes' Poems

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/83
I Want To Go With The One I Love

I want to go with the one I love.
I do not want to calculate the cost.
I do not want to think about whether it's good.
I do not want to know whether he loves me.
I want to go with whom I love.

Bertolt Brecht

Brechts' Poems

http://www.poemhunter.com/bertolt-brecht/poems/poet-6695/page-1/

Radical Poets

http://www.angelfire.com/mn2/anarchistpoetry/poets.html

Friday 17 November 2006

First Selection ( 20 Poems here )

http:/www.paulineconspiracy.com

Birth of a Union

Myth and fantasy
intertwined with
storytelling
of customs
and feelings
ambiguously
dissenting
and conforming
simultaneously
glorifying but burying
dead romantic past
grafting Britishness on
paradoxically
in opposition to
challenging cultural nationalism
through realist fiction novel
creating shared myths
and moral values
forging
a nation of strangers
with mediocre characters
romantic realism
representing
abstraction of
nature and culture
church and state
recent memories
of Highland clan
extinction and lowland
capitalist development
as future

Dotheboys

Grotesques and moral ogres
Amiable idiots and perverts
Sadistic dwarfs and drunks
Freaks and eccentrics
Servile servants
Interconnected isolation
Of the city
Criminal underworlds vie
With middle-class respectability
Anarchic excitement
With bourgeois safety
Pathological death obsessed
Macabre extremes
Identities fixed and imprisoned
Hypocritical
Oppression of children
Exposed as victims
False patriarchy
Beaming paternalism
Carnivalesque anarchic emotionally
Spendthrift families of protection
And microcosms of greed and violence
Exposure of “society” as
Oppressive and unreal
Baptism required
For true identity
To shine
Bread and circuses
Fairy-tale paternalist
Charity mongering
Amidst the
Frankenstein social order

Far from the Towns perception

Perception of idyllic
Rural settings as
Picturesque stable
Tranquil and secure
Belies the real affair of
Poverty, unemployment
Competition and exodus
Sexual competition
Snobbery
Vanity all
Escape the day trippers’
Gaze upon
“idyllic nature”
transforming work
objectified desire
flesh and spirit
in conflict
oppressing
ostracising
social
conventions
unintended consequences
of conscious social choices
no appeasing
happy ending here

Prejudice from pride

Actions not intentions
Or feelings form the
Ethical life
Dependent on truth
In a world of deceit
Sympathies
With empathetic
Characters
Condemning selfishness
With satire
Ambiguities
Rebellion
Against
Aristocracy
Love within acceptable
Class parameters
A balance
Between behavioural pressure
And rampant individualism
Combining instinct with education
Idle harming rich
Imploding rural gentry
Forgetting their manners
Conserving realism

The “Decisive Moment”

Silhoutted “decisive moment”
combines with incisive composition
instinctive and intelligent
geographical triangular forms

Representations of expressions of freedom
while striving for visual perfection
his gaze to him was everything
his gaze was who he was

Peter Burton August 2006


To be or ……?

Paranoid Jealousy
Over-reading all the signs
An obsessive hunter of hidden knowledge
Tryin to control events

Endlessly frustrated
In absence of any real mystery
Jealousy perpetually bending ‘evidence’
For its own ends

“Did ye get Healed”

A Shaman heightening our senses
Using Incantation and rhythm
Searching for spiritual epiphany
total passion in his voice

A mystical misfit naĂ¯ve and majestic
Alternatively beautiful and venomous
Caledonian soul and Yeats as mentor
An Eden misty and wet with rain


King of the Delta Blues


You would play to a single female
In the audience
Using the most complex original strings

Picked out for her beauty
And the hope of a later fling

Your lyrics could not fail to impress
And your face was pretty too

You’re the legendary Robert Johnson
The King of the Delta blues.


Brando

They voted you the actors’ actor
By about a million miles

With your mean moody magnificence
And occasional transforming smile

Honest, radical ,principled and bright
Your performances and life radiated light


Goodnight Irene

Released with a pardon
So the legend goes
After singing to the Governor
In the most powerful ,moving tones

Fighting, bragging, whoring, brawling
Turning hard men into jelly
But nobody could sing the blues
Quite like Huddie Leadbelly

Plain English ? Does that Add Value ?

Flexible learning
Lifelong learning
Widening access
Social inclusion
Quality assurance
Adding value
Validation
Verification
Accreditation
and best practice
programme reviews
enhancing frameworks
personnel development
strategic opportunities
and teambuilding
cross-school networking
equal opportunities and diversity
hierarchies
power maddies
cowed workforces
double standards
big fat salaries
two tier workforces
temporary contracts
student fodder
running businesses
gravy training
teacher blaming
finger waving
motivation waning
curriculum varying
better know the lingo
if you want to be professional

I’M A TEACHER !
GET ME OUT OF HERE !

Shark Attack

How doth the big long shark
Improve his shining teeth

By selling you what you don’t need
More skill-fully than any thief

How subtly he gets under your skin
How cheerfully he seems to grin

He milks your kindness
and its far from funny

Then he swiftly departs
once he’s got your money

Play safe

Stay comfortable with your misery
Play safe, don’t take a risk

Hide your vulnerability
Play safe, don’t take a risk

Pursuing happiness is for others
Play safe, don’t take a risk

There’s too much pain
If it doesn’t work out
Play safe, don’t take a risk

Never near a farm

There are far too many people around
Carrying Farmfood Plastic bags

They always seem to be headin hame
And have a tendency to smoke fags

Their inner contents look mysterious
It just doesn’t look like food

But then knowing Farmfoods as I do
There is no way it would


Scottish News story .

Pi Pick up a Penguin ?

The researchers were on the news the other day
Telling us that male penguins like to play away

What a relief it is , you have to say
That men don’t think and act this way

Cover it up in cover it up land

Cover it up, cover it up
How is it going to look?

Cover it up, cover it up
How are we going to pay?

Cover it up, cover it up
What does this say about us?

Cover it up cover it up
Maybe it’ll all go away ?

Out of shape blues

Well ma baby done left me
Says a was hastlin her to get fit
Well ma baby done left me
Says a was hastlin her to get fit

Said to me at seventeen stone
You are a hypocrite
Yes you are a hypocrite

Well I said to ma baby
Why don’t we form a pack ?
Well I said to ma baby
Why don’t we form a pack ?

I’ll get in shape if you do too
What do you think of that?
Yes what do you think of that?

Well ma baby done left me
seems packs are just not hip
Well ma baby done left me
seems packs are just not hip

Wonder what ma babys doin now
And what she thinks about it
Yes what she thinks about it

Sexy Lady

The sexiest woman I ever did see
Was ten years , at least, older than me
The sexiest body with its all over tan
And beautiful clothes to turn any man
You were off limits, married, unfree
But oh what lust I had for thee


Vulnerability

Conceal your feelings
Fight your feelings
Never open up

Suppress your feelings
Deny your feelings
It will only lead to hurt

But pain and loss are complex things
Suppression rarely works
Please tell me beautiful lady
Did ignoring your heart work ?


Gods to Blame

Gods to blame
He told me to invade

And anyway, Iraqs’ free now
If not, then Gods’ to blame

The Worker pays for all

The Worker pays for all


As I sat thinking all alone
On my dozing bed
Some usual thoughts
Came into my sleepless active head

And rising from my slumber, I
my thoughts did recall
I knew I saw before my eyes
How workers pay for all

I many riches did imagine
In this strange scary dream
Yachts Clubs Bentleys and Mansions
Were a part of the theme

What of it you might ask of me
Its been this way since the Fall
Is that the truth I grimly asked
Why workers pay for all

I thought I saw a fantasy
A vision that was a fable
That workers so exploited are
And must pay more than they are able

I thought I heard them cryin say
Their wages was so small
For rich men always gain I say
And workers pay for all

I thought I saw how rich men
Did beat the workers faces
And greedily did feed off them
With no pity for their cases

They work and work until they’re soar
For money that’s far too small
The rich men in their clubs they roar
But workers pay for all

I thought I saw a spiv there
Walking in his pin-stripe suit
His power and wealth affected him
His only love being his loot

His wealth he by extortion got
Ensuring others took a fall
He had worked for it all not
And workers pay for all

I thought I saw an Ascot lady
Go proudly amongst the throng
Strutting like a peacock there
No wisdom on her tongue

The rain it makes her plumes all fall
She ruffles out in pride
Pride may well come before a fall
But workers pay for all

I thought I met discontent there
While talking to a fellow worker
No time for a cup of tea he said
You’d think I was a shirker

I’ll see what I can do , I said
I’ll go and talk to the Brick wall
The bosses riches aye increase
While workers pay for all

Peter Burton November 2006