The 2014 Aldeburgh Poetry Festival runs for the 7th-9th November and this weekend Ink Sweat & Tears is featuring poems on the theme of ‘Poetry & Disobedience’ which is the subject of the IS&T-supported Short Takes this year.
War On The Home Front
This was war
on the home front
& I was a squaddie
armed with a body of political opinion
gleaned from the sleeves
of punk rock records
You’re all lackeys
of a fascist state
I would cry
Yes, dear mum would sigh
Now why don’t you
get out of my kitchen
& put the world to rights
while you still bloody well
know everything?
& we argued across
the political divide
& across the kitchen table
& I called for an end
to the arms race
& I said if I were able
I’d smash up all
the guns and tanks
& burn down all
the theiving banks
& we’d all live
happily ever after, thanks,
in small, self-sufficient
eco-centric village communes.
& mum said yes, dear.
A trifle simplistic.
Now clear off
& she shoo’d me
from my stool
it was autocratic rule
& it’s all a little foolish now,
but back then I saw red.
Why why why WHY WHY
don’t you respect me
as a pacifist?
I said,
as I slammed her head
in the kitchen door.
For 12 years I was a ranting political poet; something I blame squarely on my then girlfriend’s cat, Captain Marmalade. He was a Leo and suffered appalling catnip comedowns. On one of these he scratched my copy of the first Clash album so severely that the needle jumped seven times a second, and acted like an aural stroboscope. I had a spontaneous involuntary altered state of consciousness and I found myself in the Punk Zone- a cul-de-sac off the Twilight Zone populated entirely by disembodies entities who’ve a problem with authority figures. To cut a long story short, I became possessed by the spirit of Lawrence Clarkson, a 17th Century Ranter and Radical Mystic; a man who was imprisoned during the Civil War for invading church pulpits and swearing for two hours solid. Without repetition. I thought, I’ll have some of that
So for the next ten years, I channelled the spirit of Lawrence Clarkson, through my poetry, until I moved to the West Country, where I was cured by a shaman who practised Bristol Healing. This is where you are dragged to the banks of the holy River Avon by a huge, bearded ex-docker and the evil spirits are beaten out of you with an empty cider bottle fashioned from pure, healing Rose Quartz.
Ever since then I’ve just listened to country and western, and written poetry about my dysfunctional childhood.
Jonny Fluffypunk was born in 1969 in Buckinghamshire. Describing himself as ‘a stand-up poet, sit-down storyteller and give-up guitarist’, he presents a unique blend of poems, songlets, surreal banter, off-beat observation and bitter autobiography. He has won many major Poetry Slams and has twice been placed second in the National All-Stars Slam at the Cheltenham Literary Festival. He has published The Sustainable Nihilist’s Handbook (2012) and Man Up, Jonny Fluffypunk – One Man’s Struggle with Late-Onset Responsibility is his new show.
When sending in his poem, he noted ‘It’s unashamedly populist and lowbrow, but then so am I.’ He will be in performance today as well as telling it like it is in his Short Take (3.00-3.15pm). For more on the festival see here.