Poem: Perhaps...

 Perhaps...

...during Lockdown

some Number 10 partygoers

stumble out of the door

and throw drunken gags at each other

and one says,

‘Hey, for a laugh, let’s go find one of

these hospitals 

where people are dying

and cheer’em up…’

and they stumble into cabs

and get to where Dick Whittington

heard the bells of London 

where the Whittington Hospital looks out over London

and they manage to get the works lifts to work

they jam in

ride to the 5th floor

to the intensive care ward

where visitors are strictly forbidden

and they crash into the ward

cheering and laughing

‘No need to bring your own booze

we’ve brought it.’

And they see us there

inert, plugged into tubes and lines

staring blindly 

trying to live

and they say to us

‘Hah! you think you’re in a bad way?

What about us?

We’re smashed.

It’ll be hell in the morning

but what the fuck!

You’re no bloody fun, are you?

Let’s go, guys..’

And out they stream

out of the hospital

into the night street

and one of them finds

Dick Whittington’s cat

in stone 

a statue of a cat

on the pavement

and it becomes the funniest thing

that any of them have ever seen

It’s a cat

it’s a fucking cat

It’s a statue of a fucking cat

and they have this great idea:

‘Let’s piss on it,’ one of them says

And that’s even funnier. 

Dissolution Street (a new take on Dylan's Desolation Row)

 

The King is in the counting house, eating bread and money,

He thinks if he talks like Julius Caesar, we’ll think that he is funny.

Plato has found a way to play chess, using tanks and guns

‘Who cares?’ says Henry Ford, ‘we’ll make ten thousand suns.’

John and Yoko close the curtains and get beneath the sheets

They can hear the bombs outside, falling on Dissolution Street.

The banker says to the poor man, ‘You’re helping keep things great.’

An unborn baby arrives in hell and says ‘Sorry I am late.’

Louis Braille’s lost his sight and says people keep giving him bad looks.

They say they know how to handle him, they take away his books.

King Midas tells the multitude there’s always plenty to eat

The queue at the food bank stretches down Dissolution Street

They found that the judge was lying, so the judge changed all the rules

They found gold beneath the playgrounds, so they sold off all the schools

Doctor Death went to hospital, where he met up with Dr Who

Doctor Death said he was out of cash, so he sold the hospital too.

The Sheriff of Nottingham was saying that it was honest to cheat

As he strung up Robin Hood on  the gibbet  on Dissolution Street.

The doctor’s telling me the good news, my foot won’t be falling off

The nurse is telling me I’ve got no lungs so I don’t need to to cough.

Another nurse is telling me, ‘Move!’, cos I often fall out of bed.

The doctor’s telling me more good news, he says I’m not brain dead.

The diary’s open on yesterday but I don’t know who I’ll meet

They say I’m deconditioned, now I’m on Dissolution Street.

The Queen says that it’s awful how people resent her fur coats.

The real problem she says is people arriving in small boats

They will eat every one of you, she says to you and me

The safest thing for all of us, is if we push’em into the sea

One or two can come ashore and as some kind of treat

They can be nurses or clean the floors in Dissolution Street

From the other end of the corridor, I hear a woman scream

I lean out of bed and ask the nurse, ‘Can I stay in my dream?’

He says, ‘You’re dead anyway, so you’re missing the bad weather.

This is the last place on earth where we’re all working together.’

They bring in the last machine they have, I could see my heart beat

I might be dead now, I think,  but we can leave Dissolution Street.