Selected Poems

By Kit Derrick

© 2021 Kit Derrick. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review.

Acknowledgements

Psychosis, Under Doctor’s Orders With Adonis, and The First Cut is the Deepest, first published psychopoetica magazine

Alice first published Purple Patch magazine

Jack first broadcast BBC Radio Merseyside.

Thanks to Jane Bryson, Matthew O’Rourke, and Nick Price in helping with the selection of what made the cut!

Original Publications:

Generation Why:  2004

Carved into a Soft Bark: 1995

Fear: 1993

https://www.facebook.com/Hypnopub

Intro

At primary school, they made us neatly copy out poems onto sugar paper-backed displays to go up on the walls, and sometimes make up our own. That was what first started my love of poetry. Later, at University as I read more, met other poets and performed, my style changed, often into what I might call ‘Punch the mirror’ poetry. As I grew older my writing mellowed, and lost much of its anger, with more fiction than poetry being produced.

In what I chose to present in this selection, I’ve tried to weed out the worst of the teenage pomposity, and excise the more experimental for its own sake, even though some of those I personally love the best. Some not included here were deliberately provocative, and aren’t excluded on those grounds, more that on reflection, the provocation often overpowers the poetry.

What you’ll will find here is a selection, and in the words of one of them:

I've chosen these lines

From different times

and different tomes

but they cut up to my satisfaction:

Poems

Generation Why

Scarification

The Martyr

Apology to A Minor

The ‘L’ Word

Therapy

Quadrilogy 4 – Odd one out

It’s a Small, Small World

Poetry

Dylan Thomas In America

Psychosis

A Solitary Mister

Smile

On Her Prayer

The First Cut is the Deepest

Silence Is Golden

Screw this current year to Heaven

Jack

Something Like A Catfish

At your Funeral   for S.B.

Asylum II

Under Doctor's Orders Without Adonis

Alice

Staring at the Moon

Fin

From Generation Why (2004: Dr Hypno Publications)

Generation Why

Don't know it all

just know too much of what I don't need to know,

bought into slacker cheap,

know Kerouac to Coupland inside out,

so now I'll die and just get old

get not grow,

I'm not in the penthouse or the pit

for which I humbly apologise...

I'm ashamed to admit...

(I'm middle class)

The class which sits the exams

and files the safe certificates

and sits here getting angry I'm not going anywhere

and there's nowhere I really want to go

but I need to go somewhere do something

so I read newspapers and books and sell consumer goods,

drink and dream

often unfulfilling dreams,

I McWrite and regurgitate

There seems to be a hole in my philosophy

which is demanding all of my attention

which is an irritation which shouldn't be there.

I could get married but quite frankly why?

I would protest but I can't decide which cause

I should change the World

someday

My self-esteem is actually quite high and

Little britain treats me okay

I've got no complaints

except maybe that Eddie and the Hot Rods passed me by

Scarification

Average on the outside and even nondescript,

Nicci drinking with friends,

scarred on the inside.

A hot knife

disinfected with vodka                      for safety

smoking on a silk cut,

exhaling,

a piece of broken glass

high enough up the forearm not to be noticed.

The empty glass of alcohol,  the conversation empty of worries.

Nicci talking to the barman

who looks normal enough,

but shifts awkwardly on his elbow

in discomfort,

as though she's trespassing,

Nicci distracted and disinfected

as he feigns washing a glass

like a bad mime     listening

a cigarette between her teeth

Nicci is drunk

tonight

like all her friends.

Nicci is looking for attention

tonight.

She compliments his original

but unimpressive tattoo

and downs another bacardi and coke,

offers herself

The Martyr

I don't understand how the sweet pea knows

to curl and twist around the trellis,

hugging and squeezing

with every inch she grows.

I can't comprehend why or how she feels the need

to tie herself up when she could grow free

until the day she dies.

It seems so motiveless and selfless,

I don't see how she could

unless she somehow sensed the pain

of crucified dead wood.

Apology to A Minor

Children in Art Galleries amuse me these days

now that I've grown up and in.

They tell their parents that a famous piece of art

looks just like a waterfall

if you tilt your head at just the right angle

and the parent will tilt their head to almost

the same angle

and see a painting at an angle

and agree with a puzzled smile

and look at the next painting

with a vertical, fixed, appreciative stare

and an unintentionally slightly tilted head

and the child will look through a window

with wide eyes and a gaping mouth

will recognise with wonder the clouds

that look like windmills, cotton wool

and the face of a badger

and a Christmas tree

and the child is engrossed

and I feel sorry

because I want to force the child to turn its head

to face the paintings

and to see only what I see now

The ‘L’ Word

A simple pure and honest thought and

word

unafraid to be alone on the page with you.

Loving everything from the way you sometimes bite your lower lip lightly.

Yes, your thighs and shins and calves too,

I won’t lie to you.

The way you laugh

and the little way your fingers slip though my arm and curl while we walk.

Your nose.

The music you remember and the films we love (we’ve never watched together).

Your breasts and neck, your weak ankles.

Your pain I want to bandage with my arms.

Your knife I feel against my flesh when you hold it against yourself.

The aroma of your body I maybe imagine.

Your armpits even,

not romantic but I’m not trying to be.

Honest, as I promised

The shape of your lips and hips.

The ways your fingers twisted into mine across your belly.

Your belly.

Your neck.

Your eyes,

eyes I want to see differently,

Eyes I love to stare into, even more than I love to stare into your cleavage,

(you wanted honest and I love your eyes even more than I love your breasts

–if you know me even a little as much as I hope you do,

then you must know that this alone is true love.)

I love your smile, your happiness, your sadness, your pain,

because it is all a part of you

Your mind,

Your body,

Your Wendyness.

And I so want to tell you all this but I’m not brave or cruel,

and more

afraid of you losing what you think you need when that’s the last thing I want

for you

So this in silence

despite the fact that everyone I know tells me that I love you,

and I didn’t believe the first two or three

but now I know

and I want to be the one to tell you.

But I’m so afraid

In so many ways

Not just for me.

A simple pure and honest thought and

word

unafraid to be alone on the page with you.

Therapy

In wakeful dreams

I still see him

somewhere just beyond my fingertips

sometimes smiling

always watching

sometimes unpleasant

always standing

my father

his sleeping dreams

I am not so young now

though still, and I suppose

young enough in years

to remember him still breathing

which I often will

A shadow which is no longer dark

but sewn to my movements

He is walking forwards

He is Sheela-Na-Gig

He is a shadowless man

He is these bastard headaches

He is being able to love

Quadrilogy 4 – Odd one out

I have a mole on my right forearm

Darker than it was                                           Uneven round the edges

And I know it isn’t cancer

it should be.

Fits all the symptoms neatly.

Sometimes I pretend that I wish it was

but I’ve grown to love it

cheaper

(and safer as it turns out)

than getting another self-designed tattoo

Some nights it’s a shocking reminder

some nights a worry still

Some nights I kiss it before I go to sleep

relieved.

It’s a Small, Small World

I’m not old and I’m not exceptional

But I noticed the mileage on my car

And thought I’d calculate how far I must have been

if I added the count from every vehicle I’ve owned.

Two hundred thousand miles.

I’ve driven round the World eight times,

that’s four thousand, four hundred and forty four,

point four four

times my age.

During those years I’ve travelled

halfway to the moon.

My Grandmother never left the house

except to the village three times a week,

to the Town twice a year,

and once to Morecambe in the Wakes.

And that’s not exceptional, and I’m not old.

From Carved Into A Soft Bark (1995: Dr Hypno Publications)

Poetry

Poetry is not an animal

To be dissected

For intellectual pleasure,

Any more than a rose

Should have her limbs plucked forth

For the sake of beauty,

However sick it may seem.

Words are not music

To be transcribed

onto lifeless paper,

Any more than a rose

Should be confined in verse

For the sake of poesy,

However sick it may seem.

Writing is not an exercise

To be simply executed

For the sake of immortality,

As this is the death of a rose

That paints the poets’ sickness.

Dylan Thomas In America

Below the curly mop

Light bulb nose

And pork-pie hat

Lies a poet

Below the poet a thought.

Farcical and intensely wifed,

He answers questions

With beery quips

A Punch & Judy poet.

He leers and lurches

But can't offend the

Twinkle in his eye.

He laughs off his reputation

With a whiskeyed retort

And lampoons collegues as

He drops their names

From a height

Until a purple rinse

Asks how one as trifling

As himself

Can possibly be serious about

His poetry.

Mannish, Boy and Poet,

The elusive third appears

Briefly from behind

The bloated disguise of

Tatty lip-droop cigarette

And pulling himself up

Above his height

Delivers a deathly quiet stare:

His words are his life,

They write his private world,

They are religion:

He falls back on the clown

And falls back on the couch.

Tells her he reaches inside people

As he peers blatantly inside her blouse

And takes satisfaction at her skin tone blush

Brighter than her hair and his nose:

Then stumbles off to search

For someone who understands:

Someone not his wife

He left behind

To escape himself.

I hear this.

I see this.

Is my image important?

Psychosis

I've tasted the sweet

and spat out the dead taste

in my mouth:

Street corners sing it all,

Lighting twists in terraces

(and no, I don't even like Eliot, fucking pussy):

I've seen the beauty in both eyes

Cateract,

contact clouded melted lense

grafted to eyeballs

scorching bluebird soft-flesh hips

and finger traps;

Doe-headlamped river rats

sucking on algae and litter arm-bands,

Catching typhoid on crab-lines,

cramps in smiles and eyes,

cold in significance,

its' death indeterminate;

Cold cold yellowing photographs

curling burnt masquerade edges,

cool album cover images

stuck together with freeform jazz:

Dyfalu lines

Ich bin ein Auslander in meinem Kopf,

Krank im denken,

Nichts ist viellicht verboten,

Viellicht ist nichts verboten;

kiss my ass, move on down the line,

shake hands

leave my cheeks sandpapered

by the wind;

Hold on,

you think you've finished,

but you've missed a bit;

as usual:

(then 'Another fag packet poem')

Shiny-cold white corridor out-telescope stretched

beyond the event horizons

perspex hall of mirrors walls:

I look at two screens and I notice

only thin-skinned eye socket rims and limbs and

too prominent nose in hairy lip:

Wondering at the frame with

Worrying in no picture

With more than the picture:

Will my heart attack arrive tonight?

What are you thinking of me?

Why are you looking through me

at me?

Four walls with ears

spearing floors and ceilings,

Squash court hearings

Hydraulic wallpaper iron maidening ripened skin;

I am scared

I asked you for a word

and you said

"postillion".

I asked you what it meant

"a guy who used to ride

on the back of coaches...

ha ha...

Postillion struck by lightning...

something a friend of mine once said..

it was back at school."

and I'm stuck in a horrible sense

of deja vous:

and I tell you

and we laugh.

Just smile

and ignore the milk bottles

collecting outside my top lip,

under my too-prominent nose.

(I am well aware

the last line is borrowed)

I talk too much;

I see...  Anyway:

I wanted to go home

but my ankle hurts,

No, Terry, I never read that review,

and personally I couldn't give a fuck,

give my agent a call when you

want to talk about my new show:

Thank you and goodnight.

We'll keep it simple,

a little self-indulgence never hurt anybody:

but to get back to the point,

can anyone flash us a fag?,

I'll get a pack when I've

got some change,

I've only got a note:

Oh, and lob this somewhere

while you're at the bar

+++

Returning to normality for the day

I'm sorry if I caused offence,

As you know, I prefer to sit on it:

Sorry...

shuffle off to Buffalo

(I owe you one for that)

My eyes see straight ahead,

and I appreciate the thought;

I am, after all, a collector

of one solitary Van Gogh:

I am a writer of net curtains that

fall miraculously straight at the edge:

I am self evidently self indulgent

But you think I like it that way;

So that's OK then,

I've chosen these lines

From different times

and different tomes

but they cut up to my satisfaction:

sometimes I like to spit.

sorry to bother you, but

have you got a light?

A Solitary Mister

Alone

In the park

With his friend,

He kisses the book, and shaking, he cries

Alone in the park, with his friend who is wise.

Alone

In the park

With his friend

Sits a scholar,

He takes up his newspaper, inwardly sighs,

Then turns to his friend, and closes his eyes.

Alone

In the park

With his friend

Sits a miser,

He hoards up his memories, tells himself lies,

Alone in his park, with the friend that he buys.

Alone

In the park

With his friend

Sits a shadow,

Talking to no-one, he says his goodbyes.

His friend lies beside him, unnoticed he dies…

From Fear (1993: Poetry compilation)

Smile

fuck my eyeballs,

let your balls smack

against my eyes.

dig your nails deep

into my gums

and rip the flesh of my cheek

to the bone with nicotined teeth.

lick the spewing blood

into diverse patterns,

collaged with shades of fear.

suck hard fresh flesh

from the gristle of my nose

and stab your blood-starved tongue in

between my lifeshot eyes.

watch how snot and blood and spittle

kaleidescope and swirl and bubble

beautiful; and too fragile to touch.

all i can do is watch the television,

and smile.

On Her Prayer

If I was naked as a bone

without my skin of stories

(python coiled)

or bare of the poetry of bad flesh

my toothless skull would

laugh,

My empty sockets see

only the warm brown

bed

around me

The archaeologist would find too

many bones,

He fair and the foul as

one,

and only the voiceless words would remain.

We’d rest in pieces

as a beast with two backs.

The First Cut is the Deepest

Half an hour,

and then it will be six years;

six minutes of memory.

tick tock

The wallpaper is colder now,

and the pattern is no clearer;

just smoke stained and tired.

Try to talk nicely, nicely to me,

and I will be honest, cliched and twee

Five fathoms deep my memory lies,

ding dong shell

tick tock

It hurts more than pain:

paper cuts are always the deepest

because you can’t see them.

You can’t take a paper cut seriously.

blank or full of stories,

paper is harmless.

tick tock

hang ten ten

this is the sixth year

the day brought death.

Death, death everywhere…

If there were the sound of death only…

tick tock

the seconds are shuffling today

sympathetic laboured pains

there were none when his clock stopped

there were none with the second cut;

only bemusement.

tick tock blip monotone

last of the line

tick tock

blip on the six year alarm

tick tock

the contractions are already monotone.

How long is respectable

before we can turn off the machine?

This song had ended:

it could have had the decency to

wait for the tenth minute…

tie things up nicely, like.

Still ticking, I see.

I hate births that aren’t punctual.

Or maybe the pains are just bellyache

Maybe… or paper caesarean…

… maybe …

in my line

you can’t avoid paper;

it’s in the constitution.

Silence Is Golden

She sits on the floor,

On her heels,

On her own.

The pale skin and soft furnishings

Surround her

And make us shiver;

Father is not at home.

Only a very small dribble of blood

Is visible, and we can see no wound;

At least she isn't crying...

Mother does not live at home any more

But we needn't worry because

Father loves her...

Watch closely,

But quietly;

Viddy well, daddio,

But hush...

All that blisters isn't gold.

B Sides (ephemera, other works, or first published elsewhere)

Screw this current year to Heaven

The view through the glass is the same again today,

and no-one noticeably died.

The view hasn’t been affected in the slightest

by infection, from the other side of this invisible border,

in the last year or so.

Today, the water forms pretty streams,

meandering down the far side of the glass,

washing clean in parts.

It just makes the pane

more obviously stained from this side,

filtered through the dirt and streaks.

That is my current outlook

and perversely, it helps me to cope.

What do they say, by hook or by crook?

This is the middling time, with the end in sight.

Things could change, in case you mistook

my meaning. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t given up hope.

I just find it hard to live up to the conventional rulebook.

There aren’t any tears running down my own cheeks,

even though I tried. I truly did! But it’s so long since I cried

that I no longer have the patience for personal vanity,

and seem to have lost the drive in my heart.

Does my shell with no ambition for betterness embarrass

you? Scare you? Do you still cling to your dreams?

On reflection, I notice my hair is now inconsistently white,

Which goes against my own natural order,

But with a natural flow.

I’ve been behind the glass

For almost fifty years today, no-one visible died.

Jack

Jack Williams died in 1954.

The death certificate read that he had been accidentally

struck by a locomotive engine somewhere in Shropshire

on the curve of the main line to London,

occupation plate-layer.

My family tells me stories of Great Grandad Jack,

his sense of humour, the twinkle in his eyes,

the angular nose of which he was so proud,

his legacy to me.

His whirlwind marriage to a beautiful maid from Cork,

Great Grandma Lizzie May Ellen Hughes,

His patched moleskin trousers he claimed he's caught himself.

His bald patch worn he said by the pressure of her thumb.

His tales, at sixty, of their fruity nights in,

told to make her blush a peculiar puce of which he was so proud.

Stories of his youth in the Valleys, the pulpit and the coalpits

(He was born in Shrewsbury).

His party piece which made them laugh for the wrong reasons,

a fact he loved and played on, building the suspense each time.

But there are no photographs.

Only the memory of which he would no doubt be proud,

the memory of a working man boozing and laughing all the time

he wasn't conscientiously fixing rails, plates and sleepers.

And now a little deaf

Not hearing the cries of his workmates,

smiling up at them as they think he's joking;

Laughing at their increasingly frantic waving and waving back,

comically balancing on the rail,

his back to the curve in the track.

Something Like A Catfish

I lie below her

comfortable

Watching her watching

and weaving

through glances

Swaying and dancing

her shadow around me

a peculiar movement

that's not quite a smile

It seems to captivate

the room

is agreed that

she's delicious

and

I simply lie

alone

beneath her

and wonder

something like a catfish

At your Funeral   for S.B.

Thank you

For coming

To say goodbye

And I’m sorry for your loss, that it was time to die

You’re expecting                                                    concrete

verse                    and                                      agitation            politico

You can fuck off

I’m not sorry for anything in my life

Except,                you know,

I don’t need to say it to you, you know I had to go

(Whisper it)               (and, please, stop doing rhyming shit in my name)

I’ll soon be food for the trees and

I can’t think of anything better I’d like my ashes for,

So I’m sorry it’s inconvenient, but I just couldn’t do it any more

(stop rhyming now, you mewling cunt; if I was there we’d laugh at the stiff in the box and show nothing. Stiff upper verse, whisky chaser, cry later, or not, unseen)

Simply promise me this, after words, once in a while,

when you pass a tree in the street just say ‘fuck the police’

(though sometimes, I’d prefer, ‘hello, my friend’)

I regret I can’t be there for you today, but I couldn’t risk to think about that

Je ne regret rien

Kazoo

When you least expect it,

Don’t be surprised if you hear a rustle in the trees

And a twig with pink tinge offers up the bird

It might just be the breeze

Asylum II    after DT & EM

A girl mad as birds

to share the reformatory

twisting she’s twisted

free of the blotted sheets

soaking up her viscose

thoughts flying through

the wisping echoes of a cumulous dream

breaking up with the first hint of shadows

the daybreak offers

in supplication.

A deadlock rusting to the sounds

a fading hinge offers as it flakes

away to a distance

in another hue

a precious laughter breaks

large as the dead

open always to the myriad dawn

bringing warmth and illumination

from the night to the first soft breath.

Under Doctor's Orders Without Adonis

He told me I should stop

playing games

(and I tried to)

and I want to

and I wanted to kiss you tonight

I found myself hiding in the corner

of a circular thought tongue hanging and mind depilated

my posture unerect

trying to be open and honest

(like he told me)

trying not to be seedy

(whatever I think that means)

and fading

(failing)

“I know it’s been a long time

and I don't know if it’s

you

I want

but I think you'll do”

looking in your eyes

hoping you won't notice

and that you do

I've got some images in my head from a film

I saw the other night but I can't remember

whether or not they're me

I should re..

recreate the spontaneity he says I've lost

not that it matters really

(he told me that too)

Alice

"Third star on the right

and straight on 'till morning..."

Twinkling tears and diamond deep

in the davy of a shuttered eye

now grown slender perfumed woman;

still seeing  waif in her troubled perception

still bruised from the slamming of three doors

one trapping her in the world

one stopping her entering

the third she still holds fast with a puppy foot

the more I learn of her

the less I know

the more of me

I want to cradle her in my arms

in that useless way that helps

the cradler ease the guilt of

not being able to share a burden

I know I talk too much

(I try to bring my Wonderland

to Mohammed),

when it slips away

I get lost easily

I want my own Alice back

but all I get are

white rabbits and red herrings

I live in a vacuum

I have chosen a sexless vacuum

from my limited choice

to retain some safety

another problem in this larger body

eat me-

I trust

and live to be trusted

goo goo goo-joob

I don't know what's behind her eyes

but I know it’s still burning

and something hurts in me

when I hear a doormouse sing

three doors round

a child

locked under the stars

a bolt in her hand

a padlock on her eyes

a combination lost

smiling eyes with a tear

on the inside

but does it rhyme with

'fear'

or

'despair'

and does Alice know anymore?

Staring at the Moon

let's sit and talk

alone

sitting over the edge of a high cliff

only the sea below

crashing against the rocks

that were worn away the last two thousand years

or more

sit and talk

and know

only what's below us

a death or a constant

not even a thought;

something that was constant

before any time was there,

a time when we were perhaps

a hundred miles inshore

where we are now

but to sit with our feet dangling

over the edge of this high cliff

and look out

look out to the horizon

where sea meets sky

where grey meets blue

and blue meets grey

where one is one and the same

there we can sit and talk

you and I

you and someone

me and anyone

they are the same here

we can talk of life, death, unfairness,

the universe, the scenery,

television, childrens' toys,

music, death, the price of milk,

sex, politics, memories,

anything,

nothing is more important than anything else

nothing has any meaning

nothing except

you, I, the cliffs below

the sea crashing

the water pounding away

the rocks;

in five years

the rocks we're sat on

will be pebbles beneath

the sea below

either of us might be

ashes in the earth below

nothing might have changed

except the world around us

the world made by people

the world peopled by people

the world shared by people

sitting here still

that has no relevance

to the rocks we sit on

the cliffs our feet dangle over

the rocks below

the sea crashing

the pebbles of cliffs that

crashed five years below

behind, ago

what matters when we think about that?

what matters when we think about be a reflection of anything

in my eye

could be nothing

I was going to say that

nature is sublime

but what does that say?

seas that aren't blue

aren't grey

aren't white foam

seas that aren't green

just seas

and rocks

yesterday’s cliffs in pebbles,

walking down Granby Street

walking through a village,

walking in a city,

sat on a couch opposite

a woman in an armchair

sat looking at a photograph

at a mirror

at the stars

like pebbles in the sky,

looking at a photograph

of us sitting on a cliff,

meaning nothing

except a feeling.

Fin

Yanks with bumper stickers

Refute the teaching of the Tao

Shit happens

Thank you for reading.

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Or follow me at the tweetyplace on @kitderrick1

Table of Contents

Generation Why

Scarification

The Martyr

Apology to A Minor

The ‘L’ Word

Therapy

Quadrilogy 4 – Odd one out

It’s a Small, Small World

Poetry

Dylan Thomas In America

Psychosis

A Solitary Mister

Smile

On Her Prayer

The First Cut is the Deepest

Silence Is Golden

Screw this current year to Heaven

Jack

Something Like A Catfish

At your Funeral   for S.B.

Asylum II

Under Doctor's Orders Without Adonis

Alice

Staring at the Moon

Fin