Martin Figura Poems

After Ginsberg
I saw the best suits of my parents' generation
destroyed by poor tailoring, synthetic fibres
and hysterical lapels,
dragging their shopping down the high streets
of Albion in Pacamacs with hairdos under
hairnets and headscarves,
Brylcream-headed husbands burning pipe tobacco
in walnut bowls and inhaling through
the clenched teeth of repressed ardour,
who feared the wind rush in the negro streets
of Victoriana blowing the sounds and smells
that threaten the unfamiliar and didn't
even know Elvis Presley existed yet,
who got drunk on home-made egg-flip at Christmas
and sang the old songs around the piano
while their kids were happy with a tangerine
and dinky toy,
who saved so that one day they might have
a little car and be saluted by the AA man
as they drove by,
who were all the time boiling vegetables to eat with
Spam while listening to the radiogram valves
singing hot with Family Favourites and after sprouts
there was Much Binding in The Marsh until
Billy Cotton cried out WAKEY WAKEY and
Bandstand glowed out in the deathly grey
of cathode rays,
who on Fridays went dancing up the club in sixpence
a week Montague Burton suits and crammed into
eighteen hour girdles and mail order dresses with
their blue hair piled on top, but just too soon to have been teenagers,
who tripped out to Skegness Vimto-fuelled in charabancs
to shine under Billy Butlin's neon "our true intent is all
for your delight" while being served brown ale by lasses
from Doncaster in grass skirts under plastic palm trees
in The Beachcomber Bar,
who never used the front room but kept it pure and the
antimacassars pressed for visits by doctors or
vicars or teachers for tinned salmon and tinned pears
and tinned milk and polished their front steps
and never ran out of string,
who knew their place and never thought the universities
were for the likes of them but prayed for office jobs
for their children and stood for God Save The Queen
at the Empire and said how wonderful their policemen
were and fought in the war for the likes of me,
who had more words for toilet than the Inuit have for snow
and put their teeth in jars then slept in their vests
under candlewick counterpanes in cold bedrooms
with dreams of winning the pools and bungalows
in Cheshire with inside loos and labour saving devices,
who at dawn trod into brown slippers onto cold brown
linoleum and could only face the day through the
sweet brown haze of a hundred cups of tea and
twenty Capstan full strength.
...

I just talk too much I talk too much
never shut up if you cut me in half
with a spade I'd continue to talk
for up to nearly an hour from both ends
I'm more send than receive
have never had an unexpressed thought
in my life the path behind me is littered
with the hind legs of donkeys
and those times when you should just
shut up
that's when I talk even more
let it tumble out no matter how incriminating
there would be no need to tie me to a chair
and slap a rubber hose into the palm of your hand
for I will sing like a canary at the politest enquiry
tell you more about myself than you ever wanted to know
give up my own children just for a chat
in fact I can guarantee that the most hardened torturer
will soon be sewing up my mouth
to stop me telling him what I know
but I shall only rip my mouth open
spit out my broken teeth and carry on talking
through my tattered bleeding lips
and what I don't know I don't let worry me
for I never let lack of knowledge get in the way
of giving an opinion why should I
I've a habit of repeating myself
I've a habit of repeating myself
that was pretty obvious right,
but you try talking non-stop
and not saying something pretty obvious
along the way and if you're one of those
quiet people that just looks then you're just
asking for it without actually asking
if you see what I mean
but you can't just stand and look at each other right
and if you're not going to say something
then I have to simple as that simple as that
so it's your own fault don't glaze over
when I'm talking to you if you want this poem to stop
sometime in the next hour then for God's sake
do something useful, go and fetch a spade.
...

Crow-eyed nurses watch the faint echo of a man
in six inches of bath water, silver-white lithium
drifts metallic through his blood stream, the span
of his hand in front of his face takes the low hum
from his mouth, returns it as a pebble to his tongue
for him to swallow, keep in the swim of his belly
below the muffled drum of his heart with all the rest.
...

Suddenly June catches her breath,
wakes reeling from the vertiginous
blurred curvature of the earth,
its unappeasable distance
where she hangs, voiceless.

Below, lines of silver
slowly pull into focus,
she sees three rivers.

These rivers are survivors
coursing through canyons
of beasts and wild flowers,
like blood through veins.

They carry her with them.
This isn't a dream.
...

The rear window flickers into life as we pull away,
the uncertain image of a boy on a bicycle appears,
behind him a painted backdrop of the avenue,
its sycamore trees and pebble-dashed houses:

Piggotts', Mitchells', Mrs Donnelly's with all
its confiscated footballs, her poodle yapping
at the fence. Children's games are caught
in mid-air, at the height of their action.

Uncle Philip turns onto the busy road. The boy
pedals like mad to stay with us, but we stretch away
and leave him stranded, disappearing.

Then there is just white light
and the loose flapping sound
of a film end escaping its gate.
...

‘True Stories of Men at War'
As fathers stroll home from work
there is no birdsong and the November light
is all but gone.

Small boys run amok in avenues,
take cover behind privet hedges -
the smell of cordite, heavy in the air.

Over the traffic, the sound of battle:
grenades whistling overhead, the sporadic
rattle of toy guns from doorways.

At tea time, those whose turn it is
break cover, make a zigzagging run for it
shouting - ACHTUNG ACHTUNG.

They go down in a hail of bullets,
competing for the most dramatic death.
The pavement is so littered with Germans

the men must pick a way through
to reach their gates and take their sons
down paths into quiet houses.
...