70. Chris Bilton

A poet who rearranges reality with humour to make it more bearable

Chris came to poetry quite late, having spent many years focusing on his fine art and photography. His work in these fields, particularly that which focuses on the natural world and ornithology around his native South Yorkshire, can be found on instagram. Much of Chris’s poetry is humorous as he believes that “it is the small banalities of life which make us human”. He feels that humour can rearrange reality, making it more bearable, “let’s face it” he says, “reality wants rearranging quite badly at times”

Poems

Random Reading Syndrome
Brooklyn 7.35am
Sod's Law
The C Word
Wendy House on Wheels
Albert Gummer

Random Reading Syndrome

If it’s got words on it, I have a primal need to read it. 
Besides bed side books, newspapers and magazines
It’s the notes folks leave lying around that intrigue me.
Can’t read the writing or make out any meaning,
But the scrawl needs reading at any price.

Even that scrunched paper blowing down the street,
You never know, it might be for me!
English as written is my drug of choice,
I’m addicted and need that line of language.
In my head there’s always that little voice,

Read the label on your ASDA salad sandwich,
There may be meat lurking under the soy sauce.
I save all my instruction manuals,
And every one of my precious VIZ annuals. 

I have filing cabinets full of instructions
Of goods bought in boxes now redundant.
I wait until I’m alone, then I browse them,
Running my hands through them in abundance.

Small ads in the papers are read throughout, 
Specially the boxed ones, they’re never missed out.
Fred Smith of Dalton wants his Ginger Snaps
Or Beth gives lessons but bring your own straps.

I can order devices that keep a rupture in check,
Or do homemade tattoos from my arse to my neck.  
But it’s the internet that drives me to certain distraction,
With one link to the other that’s all the attraction.

Reading up how to mend a pinking engine,  
And ending up studying my meagre pension.
I had no intention of homing in on mega lists,
Of the weird and wonderful megaliths of info
Running by my eyes like word highways 
And byways, crashing and smashing their way
Into my brain nonstop 

Stop, stop, stop!
I want to get off! 
Too late is the cry,
As I plop
And sink 
And drown 
into a swirling pool of 
My own drool 
Of small print. 

<<< 

Brooklyn 7.35 am

Walking into the Motel was like getting 
Back into wet swimming trunks, damp 
And with reservations.

A shaven skull spoke, ’Single room 
With TV?’ The skull turned pink 
reaching for the register. 
It followed through with, 
‘Never give up on a Biro,’ 

As he spittle-blew down the pen.
He turned deep purple, a whip of 
Bulbous vein throbbed and glistened,
Rivulets of sweat swam on his face.
His two-way mirror eyes pivoted in the
Skull and gave advice, ‘Mind the bugs.’ 

The brush strokes were broad,
but the central thrust was clear.
He came over as someone 
who had run over my dog, 
and was now trying to make up for it. 

I agree to a room with TV.
On the box a televangelist frenzy 
Feeds on scamster stew.
’Heelall heelallHeelall heelall Heelallheelal !
His hunger is lost on my tired bones.

I change channels. CNN tells me a man 
Was assaulted by a dolphin, but the 
Good news, it was not HIV positive.

A corseted colossi knocks on my 
Door and suggests we have a good 
Time. I decline with embarrassed thanks,

Oceanic feelings fall apart 
In this buoyant pool of shared emotions.
A breeze blows through the crack in the Window, 
I swivel on the past twenty-four hours 
and try to sleep.

<<<

Sod’s Law

I once had an allotment plot and became a shovel metronome.
A place greenhouse’ came to die, 
Mourned by clucking fowl and crowing cock, hot to trot, 
Pecking at pink plastic baths with hard rain rings, 
Sliding into slow and useful decline. 

Forever silver, supermarket trolleys would never be pushed in anger again
But saved for impromptu barbeques. 
Steel water tanks with rivet sides 
Invited the hand to feel deep space cold. 
I broke up lumps of soil with the back of my spade, 
powered by the smells of Sunday dinners 
In tune with a thudding steelwork drop hammer. 

Quickness and guile were keynotes when weeding, 
Never let them get the upper hand, they take over. 
Dandelions move in gangs 
And nettles have a throbbing cosh. 

Sheds, when unlocked, issued ferret smells 
Of muscular tea and minty sweets in damp coat pockets. 
Inside, unsafe trestle tables rocked with every footstep, 
Onion bags and spud sacks lay lumpy and hard, 
All bar coded by morning shadows.

Other plotters came to chat. 
Pipes were breached and rollups passed around. 
Soon I had friends, and a bronchial cough. 
On plot two, Nelly Billow, 
A cosmic fireball red head. 
Her goose hiss voice calling as she happy-slapped nature 
With tropical storm abandon.
Camouflage trousers tucked into muddy boots 
Gave her an old style European dictator demeanour, 
With not quite as much facial hair. 
All balanced on a voluminous bosom. 
She kept her seeds in a shortbread tin 
And her husband’s ashes 
In a quiet corner near the sprouts. 

Jim, on plot six. 
His wit so sharp it threw off sparks, 
His voice, a gentle drizzle of acid rain. 
His gums were loose but his dentures fine, 
Found in the hard ground around the drought of 1979.  
They glinted through bonfire smoke, 
Thick enough to squeak.

He once showed me how to dispatch a duck.  
You need to stretch its neck like this. Ho fuck! 
He said, and botched his mission. 
He took it around the back of the shed. 
Agonised squawks could be heard, 
Followed by a muffled thump of submission. 
You can’t win em all, he said
Teeth slithering around his mouth
Like an alien greeting its next meal.  

His demise was, alas, not as swift as the duck. 
The accident happened like a game of mousetrap. 
Showing off his pantherine grace, 
He rolled a cig with one hand, 
While flipping open the lighter with the other 
and flicking the cigarette into a waiting sideways mouth, 
Then, an unexpected Zippo forest fire of flame ignited. 
To avoid the blaze his head went back 
Hitting the awning of his shed with an almighty crack. 
Down he went over the sprouts 
Like a sack of spuds, 
Never again to dig and toil on his hallowed soil.  

As the ambulance disappeared up the track, 
I turned to Nell and said, 
Well that’s that. 
Fancy a wholemeal biscuit with green tea? 

Bugger that, she said
I’ve got the key to his shed, 
Let’s get pissed with his homemade wine instead.

<<<

The C Word

My first ‘digital’ examination.
The lady doctor said she couldn’t do it on her own
and had to have a second person in the room. 
Wait a minute, she said, 
I’ll call the receptionist to be the chaperone, 
Good grief, I thought, 
Every time I speak to her, I'll know she knows. 
 
I had visions of her refusing (she didn’t) 
and the doctor asking in the waiting room 
if anyone was willing to come in for a sec, 
there would be a bum’s rush for front row seats
to see my predicament, complete with pirate DVDs, 
the producers cut of course, and world distribution 
on offer from the History channel and BBC repeats.

Finaly, she got down to business,
with an angle poise lamp on the job so things were clearer, 
I wondered was that place so hard to find around my posterior.

A few weeks later a prostate biopsy was on the cards. 
This  can’t be so hard, I thought
The doctor demonstrated 
what the instrument would sound like when penetrated, 
he said a staple gun 
Hmm, not sure about that, 
To me it sounded like he was filling up his spud gun 
and was about to fire the contents onto a dart board, 
with the bulls eye as full-blown cancer 
and other rings being varying degrees of a prostate health disaster.  
As it happened, I scored low 
It was good to know 
early diagnosis saved the day. 
So, I’m here to say
Get a PSA test, chaps, 
and postpone, for now, the hereafter.  


<<<

Wendy House on Wheels

Back in 72 things were zingy, 
Fresh and bright, 
With the great smell of aerosol 
Peppermint breath
Strong, like Agent Orange 
Defoliating a Vietnamese forest. 
And Watergate simmered 
With giddy Gordon Liddy 
And the miners’ strike kicked 
Chuckling Edward Heath dizzy. 
Survivors from a plane crash 
Practiced cannibalism. 
Bloody Friday bombs 
Blew Belfast into oblivion. 
11 Israeli Athletes 
Murdered by Gunmen at the Munich Olympics, 

And what did I do in 72, 
I rode around on a scooter.

It was an obsession 
To go fasta 
On a Vesta 
Wearing a Parka, 
Rallying to the rallies
At Skeggy, Scunthorpe and
Scarborough.
Packing a pocketful
Of something for the weekend 
With members of the Scooter Club 
On a Vesper or Lambretta, 
A Real deluxe. 
Changing gears with your Feet, 
And greasy hands with oily nails, 
Mending my Wendy house on wheels.

I was an angry young man 
In a tank top and helmet. 
Looking like the dad 
In a Cliff Richard film
Who’d join in the twist at the end. 
Driving round with friends 
A transistor radio 
With a single ear-piece 
tuned in to some profound bollocks 
From radio DJs
Trying to ride on the beach 
And getting marooned.   

When riding in the rain 
In a lightning storm 
I thought I’d been hit 
By a nuclear holocaust.  
My eyeballs were exploding, 
My arms were x-rays, 
my pop had gone crackle 
but I still kept calm 
trying to look cool 
Riding through a lightning storm. 

Yes, I was hooked 
On anything with hooters 
That screeched and yelped.
When you cruised on a scooter 
Trying your luck 
Rolling up at Sheffield’s Black Swan
(Mucky Duck)  
Hoping to see Be Bop Deluxe 
Or Dury and the Blockheads 
To watch Ian braying some poor geezer 
with his crutch. 
Or Brinsley Schwartz 
Kicking Nick Lowe’s arse 
With a riff worthy of 
Any Dinosaur rock star. 
Dr Feelgood, 
Were John the Baptist for Future Punks. 
Wilko Johnson 
Nearly beat me to death 
With his eyes and attitude 
Just because I tried to photo him 
Blocking the sink spewing chunks.
Fuzzy guitar solos 
from Joe Strummer’s 101ers,
It was all over in a flash, 
Wish I'd got their autographs.

But I still had my scooter with the  hooters. 
So, I Choppered it, 
elongated the forks, 
Splashed a dash of psychedelic paint 
In happening colours, 
Added 20 rear-view mirrors 
And a flicking foxtail 
On top of the bowed six-foot aerial. 

Was I an Easy Rider on a Lambretta? 
No, 
More like Norman Wisdom on LSD 
Mr Grimsdale!!

I did a bunk, 
Did a wheelie 
Did a brick wall. 
Nothing comes 
From looking through loads of mirrors 
And seeing bugger all.

<<<

Albert Gummer

Gas leaks and drips for Albert Gummer, 
hold no fears, he’s a super plumber.

At 24-hours notice he will be there,
Toolbox in hand and sniffing the air.

But one day he met his match,
The problem was an attic hatch.

He pulled and tugged without much luck, 
The lock was well and truly stuck.

With one last effort the hatch burst open, 
And a tidal wave put Albert in motion. 

Down the stairs and into the drains, 
Careering towards the sewage main.

Now in heaven is poor Albert Gummer, 
Who was the world’s greatest super plumber. 

<<<