Issue 11: November 2005

Lara Frankena | Sandra Greaves | Jen Hadfield | David Hale | Paul Perry | Philip Wilson

PHILIP WILSON

Meeting The Creatures

Saw them at the Garage just the once.
Got two tickets. Though I liked the songs,
I liked her more. As Hammer as at the beginning,

she kept charcoal round the whites of her eyes,
caked her lips in clay of eighty-three,
wore the slave collar that set her free.

A raven mini-dress. Pitch hair to pale skin.
He should have been irrelevant at the drum,
but after two hits I wanted to be him,

and not just because he got to sleep with her.
She'd become irrelevant when all I could hear
was the thunder of his playing, the sheer

electricity he was banging at that kit.
I needed to be a part of it,
needed to smash the tom-toms into next week,

have my earring fly around, persistent wasp,
the perfect crash always just out of my grasp,
the snare roll a summons to fall in lust.

So I had to tell Jayne it wasn't Siouxsie
who had me going. It was Budgie.
I thought she'd be pleased, take it easy,

but the ride we were on seemed to finish
that night. There were times when we'd just punish
each other. Then nothing. There were other fish.

So yeah, I saw the Creatures, and they made
the things that go on between my dates
that little bit different. Not, you know, like Slade.

 

You Are What You Eat

Though, in a hall very like this one, his lids
once flicked at a shaft of red-hot steel,
the undiluted bawl seems to get him through
as he grinds a wet flesh-flap into a mat.

We gulp it on video, coming back
from a day spent harvesting Africa
with a boom and a mike and I fall away
deep into a dream I don't want.

The coach hits what we call the East End.
Our drab stairwell leads down to fire,
molluscs clarting on stone slabs that reflect
lights of citadels known as banks;
and Lucifer, in a worn-out mask,
raises a trembling shaft of red-hot steel,
his clowneye bulging, his sodden cheek adrift.

 

Song With Words

The last thing I'd expected was a llama
thrusting its face at me, sucking its cheeks
in agreement with my views on confession,
starting to spit (minus the little paper pellets).
And that trick with the ears. First one, then two,
then none. Redefinition of pouting lips.
Gorgeous pouting llama. Half in sulk,
half convinced we'd take it for a drink,
it trotted along in Oxfordshire,
where dusk was dusting the dark green field
in which it lived and moved and had its being
and it looked so hurt when the dark green field
stopped short and left it idling by the fence,
waiting for the next gaggle of retreatants
to truant for the Fox. I think Mark was right
to tell me to keep my fingers to myself.

Four pints later I sent a text to Red
but screwed up on spelling, making her think
we'd gone ecumenical with fantastic hats
and flowing robes and a way with horns.

On the way back we guided our feet
by the gaps between trees and sang about Peru,
about llamas doing their racehorse thing
and waiting for us: the conquistadores,
warriors of God from a civilised land,
who would put them here under guiding stars
in a dark field in Oxfordshire.

 

Philip Wilson teaches French and German and plays bass guitar from time to time.
He has recently completed an English version of the Middle High German Marienleben
of Brother Philipp the Carthusian of Seitz. 'Meeting The Creatures' was first published
in Poetry News. 'Song With Words' was first published in Chimera.