BREAST FED BY TELEPHONE
A Collection of Modern Poetry
Ben Gilbert
Copyright © 2013 by Ben Gilbert
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a review.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
garudabooks.com
First edition: September 2013
Cover image by Petrafler
Formatting by Polgarus Studio
Other Books by Ben Gilbert
No Place Like Home
Tales from the Marsh
Seven Million Year Itch
The World Peace Journals
Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: The Modern World
Breast Fed by Telephone
DNA
Visit to a Gallery
The Modern World
Pornography
Black Magic
Just get on with it
Medicine
It's Not Me
Chapter 2: Towards an Edge
Bent
Dutch Ladies Sauna
The Day You Were Made
Scent
Revenge
Atonement
Chapter 3: Of Politics and War
Al Khadra
President Gas
Paranoia
Enemy of the State
Kony
Welcome to America
Chapter 4: Just Fun
Tobacco Chunda
Crow
Fat Cats
Fishy business
King Zero Goes Fishing
The Wasp Keeper
Neverland
Chapter 5: The Light of Being
Emptiness
The Girl Who Wouldn't Be
The River
Chapel Bank
A Rainbow’s End
Chapter 6: Words
Words
To Lets or not To Lets
The Broken Perfect
Poetry
Dear Sly
Jade
Pandora
The Light of Being
The Reader
Slippery Fish
Chapter 7: General
A Scottish Herd
Hebridean
One Last Bender
Surf's Up
The Art of Daring
The Other Side of Midnight
The Wishing Well
Tomorrow Never Knows
The Violinist
Geoff's Boots
The Garden of Eden
Dead Man Walking
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all people who have helped me find my writing style, and all those who aided my big experiences so I actually have something to write about.
Personally, a big thank you to Yvette who introduced me to the crazy world of French linguists and helped me understand that there is no proper English in anyway whatsoever. The language people speak – is the language.
To all the writers that have influenced me in some way; the list is big, and to name but a few: Hemingway, Orwell, Lessing, Genet, Derrida, T.S. Elliot, Sophocles, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and anyone who writes a good manual of how to do something useful.
And a thank you to the big outdoors, the Himalayas, the endless treks and disasters which became adventures, the high seas, big rock faces, dark canyons, angry bears and the endless green of swamps.
To all my students who experienced some of these poems and short stories in the classroom.
And to Russell Pond for showing me I could actually do this myself.
Chapter 1: The Modern World
Breast Fed by Telephone
Once upon a time
To hide that you were mad,
You could play with your hair
Find a smoke if you dare
Or hide in book
If you could.
But that’s in the past,
For now
If you’re awkward and lost
You’ve got a machine in your hand
To give you a task as well as a mask.
A hand job supreme
Relief with no cream
So no need to scream
With your hand held machine.
You’ll never be weaned
From this big breast machine,
So keep on sucking sucker
And suck in the passive
To find you’ve been had
By something that’s massive
That’s more mad than mad
And connected to you.
DNA
It’s in your DNA
They say
Makes you what you are.
But that’s only half the story,
Add to that
Every experience ever had
And you have the story
Full soap glory.
So now you’re stuffed
Set up for life
There’s no way out
From being you.
But hang on a sec
What if it’s not true
It’s all a trick
To make mud stick
And stop you being you.
Visit to a Gallery
A pile of stones
Some old charred bones
On the gallery floor.
You barely look
As you take a snap
To share
With a million friends or more,
To say you were there
But it’s the phone
That was there
As you hurry away
To do it all over again.
A pile of stones
Some old black bones
As your echo fades away.
But by the end of the day
It’s you that is fading away.
The Modern World
I sent a message
I tried to call
But you disappeared down the hall.
Without an App
You have no hat
You cannot be
Without
That damned
Electricity.
That was ten seconds ago
Maybe more
Still no answer.
So now I guess,
You’re history
Pornography
Lap up the art
Devour the art
Suck up the writing
Then
Spew out the scribbles
At dinner
In a coffee shop
Someplace else
Where you can
Pour out your heart
To engage
In a discourse
Before
You spew out some more
In that final course,
Intercourse.
Black Magic
You write about the gutter
But you’ve never tasted pavement.
Black magic is everywhere
Especially in your head.
Stop thinking clever like
It doesn’t suit you.
And never forget that
God gave man writing
To put
Confusion
In its head.
There’s no almost in life
So just quit
Before you get beat.
Time’s up
Did you screw up?
Just Get On With It!
Dream on.
You’d love to do it
You really would
First thing tomorrow
You’ll be straight on it.
Nothing stopping you now
An open ocean
Fast flowing breeze
Surf is up
Ready to roll
Timing is everything
But wait!
Tomorrow you have to walk the dog
Do the shopping
Watch a soap.
So don’t ask me again
Because I’ll just say:
Quit lamenting
And just get on with it.
Medicine
Poison or cure
Drink the medicine
Down in one.
Yuck
This really sucks.
If the poison cures
It was all in your head,
And if the cure is poison
You may well be dead.
With your head down the loo
You’re totally screwed
As demons hatch their plot.
So just walk away
Or they’ll lead you astray
And you’ll think that this is your lot.
It’s Not Me
Please excuse me
I’m off my head
It’s the medicine
You see.
As time slows down
Goes the speed of light,
I feel odd
And off my head
And stumble
Sick across the moving floor.
Where’s my breath?
My oomph’s all gone.
Where’s my sleep?
My dreams all gone.
I can’t look you in the face
Let alone your eye
I’m all disturbed
And very out of sorts.
It’s the medicine you see
Will make me better
So it’s said.
It’s the medicine you see
And
Absolutely nothing
At all
To do with me!
Chapter 2: Towards an Edge
BENT
There were two pipes
Let’s say copper pipes.
One pipe was a straight pipe
Absolutely true.
The other slightly crooked
Some would say warped
Or maybe kinked
This was the bent pipe.
There were many less bent pipes than straight pipes
This seemed a good thing
As it took straight pipes to make bent pipes
As well as straight ones.
To tell a straight pipe from a bent pipe
Was a tricky thing,
They often looked alike
To the average kind of pipe.
So a bent pipe asked a straight pipe
‘Are you straight?’
‘Rather than bent?’
Replied the straight pipe
But bent pipe didn’t like that one bit
Because for some unknown reason
Bent pipe felt like a straight pipe.
‘Oh’ said straight pipe
Rather bemused
‘I see.’
And not wanting to upset bent pipe’s sensibilities
Made an offer
That bent pipe could just not refuse
‘If you don’t call me straight pipe, I won’t call you bent pipe’
And bent pipe agreed.
But some straight pipes and some bent pipes didn’t like that one bit,
For they liked to be bent or straight.
It made them feel special
To live in a name
Marked
We’re all the same.
Dutch Ladies’ Sauna
Not a hair in sight
They’re illegal here
Disgusting and unclean.
Too much like MaMa’s jungle
Back to the jungle.
We’re better than that
Pure
Like little girls
Like dolls
Ready to be played with later on,
Open and exposed.
So keep your wild mane to yourself
Hidden in some dark corner
And out of this Dutch Ladies’ Sauna.
The Day You Were Made
Looking at the crowd
Every single one of them made by sex
Even the ones that don’t like hetro sexy sex.
Some were born from tingly soft wet slippery give me more of that throbbing kind of rigid stuff.
Others from boredom like another piece of toast
Mmmm, honey, peanut butter or marmalady jam.
And yet others from the cruel ravage of pillory and rape.
Nothing nice about that.
How were you made ?
Any of the above?
Go ask Mum and Dad
You may find that one of them is your brother sister auntie uncle neighbour down the road.
Or is that a line you just simply wouldn’t want to cross ?
Scent
I like your smell
Of sweat
I like your smell
Of sex
I like your smell
As you wander by
And it lingers in the air.
I like your rump
And I like your face
I like your taste
Mixed with lace.
And you may guess right
That day or night
I
Just like
You.
Revenge
When I was four
The girl next door
Who incidentally lived at number four
With its very black door
Told me this rhyme.
“Wild Cat Billy had a ten foot willy
He showed it to the girl next door
She thought it was a snake
So she cut it with a rake
And now it’s only four foot four.”
In a frenzy to make Billy fit
Her hips and sexy jaw
Accidently left, a little bit more
Than just the planned four foot four,
And soon the king of kings
Made this cruel girl sing
For she had left that little bit more
And soon all five foot four
Soon nailed her to the floor.
Atonement
I’d like to kiss your cunt
Said the actor to the actress
On the TV.
I too would like to kiss her cunt
But alas
It’s only 2D
On a second hand TV.
Chapter 3: Of Politics and War
Al Khadra
The desert talks
of
Winds and sand
Of silent nights
Under chilly stars.
A poet’s whisper
A woman’s murmur
That soon becomes
A desert storm.
Inspiring all
That’s
Al Khadra
Poet of the sands
Remembering those greedy sods
Who stole this precious land.
President Gas
The president
Has got no balls.
He didn’t have the gall
To show the world
And sing a song
About
What is right
And
What is wrong.
Played the game
Oh, what a shame
Of politics and lies.
Paranoia
You seem suspicious
Shifty like
It’s something with the eyes,
Yet they blink and look
Like everybody else’s eyes.
You seem subversive,
You had a friend
Who quoted
Marx
And took a visit to a mosque.
You seem dangerous
You like to speak your mind,
Challenge those
Who think they know
Just what is good
And what is woe.
You’re a terrorist
Because we say so.
We don’t like you
Or the place you care
Call home.
You scare the hell out of us
Weedy
Narrow-minded
Bunch
Whose nation
Is
Declining so.
Enemy of the State
Big Brother is watching you
Listening to you
Logging everything about you.
For
You
The People
Are now
The Enemy of the State.
Kony
Who is the baddest of them all?
Kony!
Kony!
Kony!
I hear you clearly say
And I wouldn't disagree.
As his tribe was ravaged
Turning him savage
Born was the LRA.
Welcome to America
Leave your culture by the door
Shut it tight
And step on in.
You are free
To make cash obscene.
But do not question
Who we are
For we are right
And have the might
To lock up those who disagree,
And throw away the key.
So please pretend
Or you’ll meet your end
That you are free.
Chapter 4: Just Fun
Tobacco Chunda
Muscles laced with treacle sauce.
Fresh lamb with sock and knicker stew.
Rabbit’s pooh and honey dew.
Washed down with a glass of fresh tobacco goo.
Now relax
Perhaps two three minutes at the most
Before the churning and the pain
Sends you running for the porcelain.