Monday 4 August 2008

Fringe


The Edinburgh Fringe Festival
A gaggle of jongleurs
Merry men in backstreet pubs
Witty one-liners in comedy clubs
Selling your soul to Beelzebub
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival?
There ain't nothing peripheral
About a purple fucking cow
And now that marvellous bovine beast
Is my boss.
I'm not sure I like the grass round this pasture
It smells like shit.

We're welcomed aboard the Sponsor Ship
Fuelled by Dutch beer
Brewed in the UK
The Cow Crew working
For minimum pay
I just Wannaburger
To fill my Baby Belly
And I'll wash it down
With skimmed milk
The farmers lick their lips
The fatcats who got the cream
From the Cash Cow that never moves
Past your eyes.

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival
Once home to the naive romance
That makes my whole sorry life worthwhile
I wear Smirnoff on my chest
But my heart on my sleeve
And in the frivolous nature
Of music, dance and art
I will always believe.

Wednesday 9 July 2008

For His Goddess

O, You will know he’s contrite
Be it that he might
Kneel before the grace of You, basking in
Aphrodite’s Divine Light.
O, that he should walk the desert
Under the watchful gaze of Amon-Ra and
Through the myopia that is the night.
O, that he should think nothing of deprivation
From Pan’s gastronomic delights
And delight himself in the sparcity of
A grain of rice.
O, that he should self-flagellate
With a feline beast so marvellously ornate
Is to simply be polite, and show true love
For his Goddess.

(Written aged 19 for my pissed off girlfriend)

Thursday 26 June 2008

A Disgrace to Black People


I have a dream
That one day I'll be able to walk down the street
And be judged
Not by the skinnyness of my jeans
But by the content of my character.

So picture the scene
It's a muggy afternoon
Excited beads of sweat lie expectantly on my forehead
Like a romp of cheeky otters.
I'm cruising through Broomhall
A shady, shady part of Sheffield
Where Somalians are the current incumbents
And if you believe what the Daily Mail will have you believe
They're coming over here in their droves
With their suicide bombs
And their Sharia Law
And their sheepy hair
Stealing our highly-skilled, highly-paid cleaning jobs
Jumping to the front of the housing queue
And raping our women!
(Probably)
If you believe what the Daily Mail will have you believe
(I don't, but the texture of their hair does have a somewhat ovine consistency).
I'm feeling good about myself
How can I not?
I've got my techicoloured dreamcoat on,
The one I haggled down from twenty-five dondons to seventeen
on Brick Lane one Saturday afternoon.
The iPod's in
Belle and Sebastian are on
The French-tinged Scottish pop
Soundtracking what has largely been a nice day.
I'm walking through this squalid council estate
Punctuated with lego flats and low-rise squats
It's the school holidays
And in the distance
You can hear the klaxoning laughter
Of pre-pubescent kids
Swinging on ropes
Jumping from frames and
Racing around these urban monoliths
Like a barrell of cheeky monkeys
I don't even like kids
The ebullient insolence of youth
Long since battered out of me
(By sixteen years of unneccesary exams
At the behest of the National Curriculm.)
I'm party to the post-9/11 Apathetic Adolescents.
Generation Ket.
But it's hard not to feel the cockles warm
As the treble of trouble rings out from the playground.
A ball bounces right in front of me
And with elegance of a pseudo-Zidane
(Albeit pre-headbutt days)
I flick the ball up.

"Oi, mister give us our ball back, please?"
It's a bit like feeding time at the zoo
As I deliver the ball back to the Somalian simians
The chattering imps excited with fervour.
"Thank you...
Batty man."
I beg your pardon?
"Is dat girl's clothes?
Why are you wearing girl's clothes?
You're a disgrace to black people!"

I done a quick look around to make sure
Lenny Henry wasn't about
But he was nowhere to be seen
These obscene words aimed squarely at me.
He didn't just play the race card
He played the whole entire deck.
I took a deep breath.
I took a deep breath.
I took a deep breath.
Then I walked away
And I turned the other cheek.
Did I bollocks?
An eye for an eye, and the world would be blind?
Boy, your myopia meant that
You could never see the wood from the trees
And obviously you can't see me
And I intend to open your eyes, I promise.
So what constitutes being black these days?
Is it money, cash, hoes and escalades
Dazzling bling and ice on the wrists
Grab your dick, walk around with a limp always.
What is it to you today to be black?
My black skinny jeans uncongenial it seems
Well, what if I wear them half way down my arse?
Am I black enough for you now?
I'm good to go
You'll find me in the club?
No, you fucking won't.
I'll be at home listening to Dizzy, to Diddley, to Jimi, to Miles,
To Prince, To Duke, George Clinton, Ray Charles.
Or in the front room arguing with my friends
About when the sorry for slavery's gonna come
And the reasons why I'll have to do a Zeph and politely reject
My OBE at next year's New Year's Honours List.
Am I really a disgrace?
I might dress, walk, talk and act like Carlton Banks
But my arms could flail about eliptically
Oscillating wildy to the sound of Tom Jones
And I'd still be blacker than you'll ever be
Not that this is a competition
Your Uncle Tom here is just worried that there's a dearth positive role models
Beyond Brian Belo off of Big Brother
And various people that propagate
Sexism, materialism and homophobia
You've been caught up in your own self-fulfilling prophecy
For whom the curved bell tolls
And believe what the Daily Mail will have you believe
about yourself
When Linford said that he was more than just a lunchbox
He was talking on behalf of you and me
(Well maybe not me, contrary to rumours, my willy is minimal)
My master status is not as a black man`
It's as a bloody brilliant man
And if you disagree,
I'll go tell Wilberforce the deal is off.

Wednesday 25 June 2008

Manifesto


I'd love for my poems to be graceful and long-legged
Like how Sylvia or Byron or Zeph might have said it,
Straddling conventional wordsmithery,
A wizard of lyrical alchemy.
But I don't just want to stand on the shoulder of giants, fuck compliance!
I wanna stride over metaphors, slide over similes, enfranchise
enjambment.
Pour milky vowels into a bowl of crunchy consonants
(I'll have one from the top please, Carol)
and douse it all in alphabetti spaghetti.
Thinking outside the epistemological box?
What bloody box?
I want you to dance across the page,
Eloquent acrobatics and wordy somersaults
As I keep the Beat.
I've got a lot of time for those geezers,
The academical crowd-pleasers
Who put the best words in the best order,
But I've only got one voice,
and this is how it manifests itself.
Yes! I wanna permeate fickle ears
Yes! I wanna resonate past my expiration and into years beyond my existence.
But there's a perverse masochist stoically nestling inside of me
That wants my progeny to see
That a Paper Tiger cannot bite you.
You've got two ears
So I know you can hear,
But are you listening?

Thursday 10 April 2008

The One What Got Away


For all the times I dillied
and all the times I dallied
Everybody's got one that gets away.
Mine was Jo.
She's got a boy's name, I know
And though I never saw
I promise, she was all girl.
She had great big effervescent ginger hair
The colour of a nice'n'spicy niknak or a girl who fake tans too much
And as such her face was pale
So alabaster and translucent
you could see right through her
the faint hint of red blood cells
floating purposefully up their canals.
And her teeth.
Her english teeth,
like Mossy or Miller or Austin Powers.
But it was fine, cos she was fit.
Ethereal even.
You know them girls that boys are scared to try it on with
in case they get knocked back.
Legs up to here
Hair down to there
Tits all out here
Arse all like pow!
And I'd watched and witnessed valiant indie knight upon plucky indie peasant
in their check indie shirts and pointy winklepicker shoes
give it large and stumble and fall
on the dancefloor at fuzz.
But i'm not scared!
I'm confident, I'm savvy and charming as well
I'm impudent, I'm presumptious, I'm sleazy as hell!
Yeah, baby, yeah!
No. No.
I've lost it, I've bottled it, I've waved me white flag
I'm a wiener, a willy, my ardour, it's sagged.
Like a great big man-sized flaccid penis
Struggling to raise me game
in the face of her great big ginger pressure.
I'm far too stressed, i need less pressure.
i know, i'll go down the friend route.
The chute that shoots right the way to her heart
I'll go round hers and we'll giggle over Cosmo
and slag off Tyra on America's Next Top Model
(how saggy are her tits these days?)
and she'll come over to mine and I'll cook her some food
Some Belle & Sebastien to get in the mood.
She cuts me a stare and lends me her eyes.
I think I must be in there now.
No. No.
That chute that shoots its way to her heart has just shot me, right in the foot,
and we've gone from being friends to even better friends.
I think she's got a new fella now.
His check shirts are indie as fuck
His winklepicker shoes are pointy as fuck
And you should see his hair -
it's bigger than mine!
But no schadenfreude from me.
I'm happy for her.
But I think to myself from time to time
about those days when she'd come over
or I'd go over
and I'd lend a half-heartedly sympathetic ear
and listen to all her boy troubles
"the trouble with men is they're all boys
I need someone to sweep me off my feet."
I knew all the answers, I knew what to do
But all that time I dillied
and all that time I dallied
and in the end
I just let her go.

Wednesday 26 March 2008

Resolutions

You know Johnny, we had some good times. Do you remember that time when we ran the streets in search of that emerald? Skipping in and out of gardens, jumping over fences getting chased by dogs. They were great times weren't they, Johnny? The best. And what about that cake we had? We stuffed ourselves full of cake. Battenburg, Victoria Sponge, Chocolate Gateau, you name it, we had it. God, Johnny, I was so full, but it was lovely.

You taught me a hell of a lot, Johnny, but I think now it's time we go our separate ways. Do you remember Jackie? Well, he's teaching me how to be good. We'll still talk and stuff, maybe go for a lemonade or something, who knows, but for now, it's just Jackie and me.

Sunday 20 January 2008

Whatchu Chatting About, Blud?

I lmfao when I hear what passes for vernacular these days
A sket is a skirt which means girl
who gives head to any man passing by her yard
Prang is not nang which means good
It means scared or para like, when you've been blazing too much weed.
How limited is our lexicon
When everything that happened today
Was 'random'?
How ironic is it that
No-one actually knows what irony actually means
(I blame Alanis and her ten thousand spoons)

Thursday 10 January 2008

I Fought The Law And The Law Won


I done did me a law degree, you know.
I done got me an Archbishop Reverend Desmond, you know.
Yeah, I know.
What was I thinking?
I'll tell you what I was thinking.
I was always shit at school
Always on report
Always Tardy Boy cos I had to get the Tube,
And I was rude. Oh boy, I tell you I was rude
I told this teacher one day that I'll show her my pubes
And when my teacher told my Dad, he became rude
On my arse,
And he lashed me and battered my face
Like he was Ian Beale and he was frying a plaice
I remember my Mum that day,
Wading in to help me
From the thunderous blows
Of my Dad's bolts
Begging and pleading for my Dad to stop
"Chinedu, Chinedu, stop now, stop!"
And then ten seconds later,
She was having a pop.
This meandering reverie I call my education
Carried on throughout SATs
(which, let's be honest, were a pile of gash)
I got Level 5 in Science, Level 6 in Maths, and Level 7 in English
For those of you that are interested in my grades.
Shades of brilliance were evident in the sphere of Sport
Which you'll find even my good friend Heracles support
Visions of me, with the skill, the strength and the heart to be a winner
Oh it weren't for beginners!
Deep down in your soul.
Oh I was a gladiator!
I played rugby and hockey, football, athletics
My Dad, yes my Dad again, he went apoplectic.

"Chukwuemeka! Chukwuemeka! Where have you been?"
I've been at rugby training.
"Why aren't you doing your homeworks?"
Because I've just come back from rugby training.
"Well you haven't done your homeworks for two weeks now. Why?
Well Dad, the great thing about being on a sports teams at school is you can get away with doing no homework. It's brilliant isn't it.

The veracity of my statements were,
Strictly speaking not all true
As my quietitude proved
At Parents' Evening.
That was
the only night in the year where
Diligence and I would flirt
The only night in the year where
I had essays for dessert
The only night in the year where
I did any homework
Not
the only night in the year where
My arse really hurt.
I was described by Mr Wellington as a loveable rogue
While I'd be tying together the shoelaces on his big brown brogues
But I was eloquent, ebullient and charming to boot
You just couldn't hate a precocious little imp like me
Unless
you were my Dad, yes my Dad again
Who thought my behaviour was beyond the pale.
"You're stupid, you're an idiot, you're going to fail!"
So I thought alright,
I'll show that cunt.
And I'll bet he'll hear this and think
That it was all his own doing,
But I'll acheive in spite of the butt-whoopings
Not because of them.
So I banged out straight As at A Level.
On Results' Day
I couldn't wait
I'd rehearsed my little speech
That I was gonna say
Take this A
Take this A
Take this A
And take this U in General Studies
For those of you who are interested in my grades
Put them in your pipe and
Smoke them.
He was sat there with two flutes and a bottle of Chandon.
I've digressed it seems and you all might wonder
How all this relates to my legal blunder.
To cut a long story short, you see
I decided that I'd do me a law degree
Because
I was actually good at school
I was good at lots of sports
Extra-curricular Boy
Public speaking and all sorts
Then actually got to uni where I had
10meg broadband straight to my desk
And I spent the next three years
On BlacksOnBlondes dot com.