‘See me live before I die’ or ‘See me live before I
die’ is my new, new-media coded cry, which, spoken, doesn’t work
as a sight rhyme.
My new show’s been conceived, written, taken
abroad, performed on a bigger, brighter, more open continent, where
I’ve been before.
It’s been reviewed – received rave
reviews. It’s been rehearsed, rehearsed, rehearsed, and
it’s been very well advertised… but ticket sales are low, so low for
the solo show, no one seems to want to go – no!
The hope: that
the rush will far outweigh the advance. Fat chance. I’m staring at a massive
bill for tax, shivering – can’t afford heat. It’s the wrong time
of year to sell tricks on the street – I’d sell me a kidney if I
thought that they’d ’av’ ’em, but there seems no shortage of
alkie cadavers. This ain’t rock and roll, or poetry of old – no fat
patronage, fi ne living and gout. My funeral will be better attended, no
doubt. (I hear they love a dead poet round here. Yes, I hear they love a dead
poet round here.)
Because it seems gravitas only comes with the
staid, sentimental simplicity of Graves. Poems only get spoken when a
dyed red paper poppy gets adorned as a token, in sombre tones, when
they’ve become tomes dug from the tombs, when the body gets dragged to
glorify and fetishise the dead, and academics take the skeletal remains and
write intertextuality,
and the poet’s unspoken grappling with a
suppressed sexuality. Meanwhile up the road, close to boiling, the blood pumps
through the veins, takes oxygen to the brain of the living poet, who breathes
life and energy into crafted poetic prose, but nobody goes, because the poet
didn’t have the decency to die. There’s your problem, mate
– you’re still alive!
Your mind controls your
breathing, you’re making music with your speaking, you’re a highly
strung but fi nely tuned meat machine, articulating/nuancing lyrical
thinking.
If you want your words to carry on, you’ve got to die, rot,
become carrion, let the vultures rip you up, deconstruct, decontextualise, and
shit you far and wide.
Yes, they love a dead poet round here: ghostly echoey
churches and dimly lit lecture halls, shadows on the
walls,
resurrecting guarded cypher codes in zombie tones. Your
sprightly voice isn’t welcome here – it’s your own! But they
won’t be told, because… they love a dead poet round here.
True
story: Laurie Lee writes poetic prose. It’s genius, the audience
suppose. And when he sits an O-level exam on work written by his own hand, he
scores a pathetic 43 per cent and he’s told that he ‘didn’t
understand the authorial intention’! Perhaps they’ll keep him in
detention until he’s a better poet, when he’s dead,
because… they love a dead poet round here, yes, they love a dead poet round
here. I’m thus surrounded by some of the dullest dead writers round
here, and a cast of talented, frustrated, living geniuses round
here,
and I am depressed… for I have spent (what’s looking
increasingly likely to be) a shorter-than-average lifetime creating oral
poetry, in an age where those that hold the keys only seem to validate that that
they can read. The broadsheets, the literary elite and the mainstream have never
listened to a word I’ve said, pop culture is now celebrity-driven
drivel, and my two favourite Beatles are dead! And they like a dead artist round
here, they like to misrepresent minds around here, they like to starve to death
artists round here, write ‘the death of the author’ round here, throw
their money at dead bards around here whilst they charge them for living round
here. Make them pay through the nose for the garret that they chose in view
of blue plaques around here.
And they’re scared of an artist round
here who can speak their mind back without fear, who can debunk the odd
myth, demystify art, tell them straight up what the poem’s about. They
fear those spoken soldiers with no received pronunciation who want to reload the
canon and with a bang make them listen. They ignore or abhor living poets
they’d adore, because they want a dead poet round here.
