Poem: 'Images From Peter Blake & Claes Oldenburg'

Are you still worried by that troublesome problem of what exactly to buy

Bob Dylan for his 70th birthday? Well – worry no more, here’s the ideal gift.

‘THE CAPTAIN'S TOWER: 70 POETS

CELEBRATE BOB DYLAN AT 70’

edited by Phil Bowen & Damian Furniss & David Woolley.

Foreword by Ronnie Wood.

With poets including Allen Ginsberg, Roger McGough,

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Simon Armitage and... me!

(Seren Books, £9.99 ISBN 9-781854-115607)

www.serenbooks.com

IMAGES FROM PETER BLAKE

& CLAES OLDENBURG (1962)/

THE MANDRAX VARIATIONS

Fingers drum on monochrome streering-wheel
(Dada dit, Dada dit)
with impatience stolen from James Dean,
impatient for the lights to change,
impatient for the lights to swell out,
engulf the air, engulf the supermarkets
where people queue in silent sepia tints,
engulf the drabness of streets,
the emptiness of sky.
Fingers drum on monochrome steering-wheel
(Dada dit, Dada dit)
thinking of half-completed erotic collages
that no-one will exhibit,
thinking of multi-coloured butterflies
leaving muddy foot-marks across
a severed retina,
thinking of carved wooden grasshoppers
crawling out of amphetamine midnight walls.
Waiting for the lights to change.
Waiting for the world to change.
Fingers drum on monochrome steering-wheel
(Dada dit, Dada dit)
open-top American car, wind-tangled hair,
dumb insolence practiced from early Presley movies,
in angular reflecting American wing-mirror,
like a segment of a picture he’s yet to create
overlaid with Monroe, Bikini atoll and CND symbols,
like a jerky sporadic target
on a blaring fairground silk-screen,
like a cut-out on a cereal packet
of Kennedy or Gagarin,
like the photograph of a Pop star
in a locket on a schoolgirl’s chain

DADA DIT, DADA DIT, RED AMBER GREEN, RED AMBER GREEN,
DADADIT,DADADIT,REDAMBERGREEN,REDAMBERGREEN,DADADIT

It is 1962.
Beatles in a Hamburg cellar.
Dylan in a Greenwich Village Coffee House.
I am 15



Published in:
‘HAT No.5’ (UK – November 1977)
‘PIERIAN SPRING Vol.10 No.2’ (USA – May 1985)
‘RIVER RAT REVIEW No.5’ (USA – April 1989)
plus anthologies:
‘JEWELS AND BINOCULARS’ edited Phil Bowen
(Stride / Westword) (UK – October 1993)
‘THE CAPTAIN’S TOWER: SEVENTY POETS CELEBRATE BOB DYLAN AT SEVENTY’
edited Phil Bowen, Damian Furniss & David Woolley (Seren Books) (UK – May 2011)
and personal collection:
‘POWER LINES’ (Unibird Publications) (UK – October 1988)