The Persistence of Football Results on Bealey Ave
as the full moon lights up the city
in which I finish these verses,
as in the freezing, in the falling snow, up there,
on the all grinning, all scheming balcony,
deputy chairman Clementis removes his hat
and places it on the chairman’s bare faced head,
as we, the crowd (collectively embracing
our death bound selves for once),
as we begin to sing,
*
During the nineteen eighties, when all the
gamblers were toasting the killings they’d made
buying and selling junk bonds on tick, chip
on both shoulders, I balanced: Mercedes? BMWs?
German Holdens with greedy snouts. And as for Ladas,
when one of those clumbered by: Hey guys.
Whadya call a Skoda full of food?
And then one day, I turned a key.
And at first spark of the BMW’s
fuel injected, quietly thrumming motor,
on my instant breath, I forgave myself.
What a car, eh!
What a wheelie on my road to Damascus,
my newly installed, six valved heart,
a slyly brutal French art house movie
in which the middle class audience (knowing
the safe distance from themselves),
watch Granny Le Grande slaughtering
the pet rabbit stew they’d eat anyway
without one single memory
of a bleeding, opened out throat,
the aging boxer, saved from drowning
by a pleasantly spoken man who enjoys
eviscerating frogs, becomes a friendly capon,
and the oldies fall in love all year round.
And if there’s to be a tragic end,
then it’s one for them, way over there
on the wet side of the bed, the middle-aged,
third way socialist snags weeping their jaffa
tears over love at last sight: Arletty’s pale,
supposedly anguished face, vanishing
with relief into us, the couldn’t care less,
once singing crowd.
So before my paying up day (The
principle of hope, eh? The ends of history? Oh,
go get stuffed), on the methamphetamined,
triple bypass avenues and shady dead end streets
of late post modern capital, I’m the blue
propeller, enjoying, while they last,
all the freedoms of our now almost
goebblized world: Trippen shoes? Wow!
Three pairs, please. Irish linen suits, eh. Four of those then.
And while you’re wrapping those Japanese olives,
hand me those invitations to Zeralda’s feasts.
Thus exhilarated by our new order,
I enjoy everything that’s left, except, my maties,
for one small irritating thing: the drongos
who drive UAV’s, Patrols, Pajero’s, Safaris,
and who tailgate my BMW while driving
their out of our way trucks with car brakes.
And when that happens? Oh deary deary me,
it’s just Broken Nose Jimmy and me,
two upright administrators from Southland,
no boozing no dancing no swearing,
no a-laying of our hands on that MaryLou,
in our Main Street Motel we be just
a-watching those Internet movies,
and with our petrol headed arteries
choked to the max, in Uberalle’s bazooka ute,
we run the stadium streets: That Patrol
there, eh bro? No, Jimmy. That Safari there, eh.
They wanna go off road. Then praise be, eh bro.
Their word’s ours. Road rage, my maties?
Tiny Twin Towers in every street.
But today, at the corner of Manchester
and Bealey, when I happened on a crash
involving a car that somehow was still
travelling to where it was going to
before the driver of a Land Cruiser,
his eyes glazing over the which one tonight
from the lumpen-proleteriat invested streets
(the whores, I mean, you know, my maties,
the service industry crowd strung out on P),
and talking, perhaps, on a cell phone
while listening All of the day and all of the night
to Classic Hits FM, had failed to give way,
and glanced unerringly off at last sight
into the rear of yet another Land Cruiser,
today, I stopped, and walked back.
And before it vanished forever
into whatever traces shall remain of us (a
carbon based life form that lived only once
amongst two hundred million galaxies),
while two mustaches and a lady from
Fendalton in black FFM nylon stockings,
talked precisely about insurance,
along with the rest of the crowd
on our footpath balcony, I applauded the car,
a barely dented, battleship gray Skoda
I can’t speak for the others, of course
(they’d just think I was full of shit, and I am),
but what I saw today on Bealey Ave
wasn’t just any old car,
but an aging steel worker from Prague
who’d somehow survived the times
when the dyslectic dialectics of history, up there,
on their all scheming, all vodkolised balcony,
had all by themselves, and without
making one ideological error in case
the alert, yellow eyes of their sponsor
(a five foot two, jovial father of the
singing crowd), cited them too
as class enemies of the revolution,
and they got themselves arrested
and beaten and beaten and beaten,
and after the usual orthodox confession,
had their frontal lobes obliterated,
chunks of their bone and brain tissue
spewn out across floors in such senseless
patterns the dialectics themselves
still don’t have enough random
access memory to reassemble the shatter,
but enough, then, to present,
in the falling snow, in the freezing,
the same old promises promises
of the worker’s heavenly state
where the dreaming crowd could go on
singing 7/7 of holidays by the sea
wearing neither shoes nor coats
as they worked the people’s treadmill,
a central committee’s five year plan;
the times when you wouldn’t talk
to those who owed you an answer,
because when you looked at their eyes,
you saw only the cunning of those
who knowing the forelock distance
not only used the people’s noose,
but also (in one of those radical
interventions so pomped up these days
by the usual well paid theorists
of excusing truth), air brushed
from all the Party’s documenting photos,
a deputy chairman placing his black hat
on a bare faced chairman’s head,
and his coat, and his smile, and his life;
and if you woke after that, after drinking
the plasma of broken words, cheap
Russian vodka until 5 am,
you were still falling through traps,
your memory abandoned to memories
of memories that had happened for real:
“Arrest Stasova, too. Turned out she’s scum.
And Kirsanova? She’s too closely involved with Yakovlev.
She’s scum, too. And Muntzenberg?
He’s a Trotskyite. Try and lure him here.
And if he comes. Arrest him. And then
you beat and you beat and you beat”,
ah yes, my maties, the times of the people’s state,
when choked between history kill
and the need for decent shoes,
resistance was the good old ways
of fucking up the bosses: missing files,
swarf into machines, defective parts in cars,
and yes, eh, jokes in passing: Hey Postie.
These new stamps with Lenin, they don’t stick.
Comrade, you’ve been spitting on the wrong side.
So tonight, as I, an aging steel
worker from Prague who’d survived the Nazis
by building Skoda motors for the Wehrmacht’s
Tiger Tanks, and later, the Party,
by assembling cars designed by committees,
as I accelerate down Bealey Ave past
the Spartakus Stadium in my by now
modified BMW after watching my team
winning the championship final,
barely hearing on the FM radio
my grandchildren had bought me,
the latest news from Radio Prague,
Doctors Leaving For Better Wages,
Violence Growing Amongst School Children,
Illegal Money Lending (the same hourly
on the minute, one size fits all prop-agenda,
we listen to all of the day and all of the night
on the Classically Mature SM Hi
of the free market economy
provided to us now care of our new sponsors,
the miraculous mandarins of late capital
and their soft path fascism, up there,
in their all laughing, all full of it,
give the punters what we want
credit cards and sport corporate box);
as I accelerate into Fitzgerald Avenue,
no longer trying to balance the happiness
of searching through old wardrobes
for the brief freedom of alternating
nudity and fancy dress
and Deputy Chairman Clementis’s broken neck,
but knowing now there’s no safe distance
when you’re being hung, or shot
and that in all cases, it’s never the bosses,
but the work of the singing crowd
yet again collectively embracing our us
that gives our kids decent shoes
and those unruly mouths that talk back;
as I, an aging steel worker from Prague,
no longer overstaying in the land of promises,
as I carry our invitations to Zeralda’s feasts
down the methamphetamined
24 hour a go go stadium streets that now
claim to benchmark what’s left of our hearts;
as the full moon lights up the city
in which these verses were begun,
I’m smiling back at Mary Lou’s let’s fuck smile
and her black seamed FFM stockings,
because, comrades, in the quiet of my voice,
I’m also still happy with our latest result:
Skoda TWO, Land Cruisers NIL
.
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