ENGLAND’S OPENERS - Poem by Gerald England

A blackbird lands
A good beer-barrel
A man sits in a cave knitting
A theatre in Copenhagen
Abask the sea-wall
Alice was demure and O
All the way to Bury
Amid the heather
Among the lupins
And after little suzie
And it was his grief that kept him travelling
And the baby miscarried
And the gulls woke me at half past
Apple bread, champagne dip, Easter egg,
As a clashing cymbal in the discordant darkness of the night
At the Bay at the Back of the Ocean

Bare midrifs above belt-like skirts
Bedraggled daffodils line the lanes
Belladonna is unlucky
Beyond the wooded embankment home
Big Irma

Child lost in big store
Come to our raveup in York they said

Damn the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation
Deeply Katy threw her dress open
Dementia patients ramble on the freeway of her face
Don't smother the fire, mother

Everyone's going to heaven

First catch your crow
Friendly face peeping

Gillamoor looked great that day
Going to Glimps Holm

Hair dressed up in curlers
Have you ever watched a snail
He, bold, brassy, Geordie

I carry the weight of the world on my back
I do not like telephones
I got some tissues with my coffee yesterday
I knew of your visit to the blacksmith
I was a teenage werewolf
I was taking about Cleopatra
If God is dead

Kettle on coal fire
Knickerless Nicola

Labeled with a sticker on our lapels
Leaving Oldham
Lesbian bodies take advantage of patient work
Lost down country lanes

Moo
My son builds with his Lego
My wife is talking

Nodding drowsily against his winter habit

On the far side of Hope
One corner of the tarmaced field
Outside the X-ray
Overwhelmed like fish

Poor Peter
Possum roadkill

Queen Victoria

Real nude women mourned new ale
Re-listening to sixties protest songs
Rent a bench
Reproduction strictly prohibited

Sat in the car on Royd Moor Lane
Sharing its route with slow canals
She is Mother England
Sheep suckle their lambs
Skin was slit like the opening of an envelope
Sleet at the window
So this is Brighton
Somewhere I saw a South-West wind
Sunday-morning sex

The Arrival of the Queen of Sheeba
The dog dodges puddles in the road
The fox comes nightly to her garden
The geese do not know which way to turn
The taps are dripping all over the city
The wind that whistles over Oldham Edge
There hadn't always been a rainbow
There were several entrances
This is a multi-part poem in MIME format
Through the windy pass

Up Ingleborough

Victims of the bottle

We had a very quiet Christmas
When Margaret first met Malcolm
Why are your poems so full of country images

Yeah, yeah, I know what I said
You said you wanted to live