SELECTED
POETRY
by Martin Blyth

'EDWARD HOPPER: WESTERN MOTEL, 1957'

The green sedan�s parked under a blue sky.
Beyond the empty road, there�s a background
of brown hills, drab as a worn-out mattress.
Perched on a wide divan, the woman turns
from the bland view through the big window
as if she�s bored with it - yet one senses
she�s only just arrived. Tense and upright,
listening for a knock, or the noise of a car,
she wonders why she never had any doubt
he�d be there first. Now she feels awkward,
looking so smart. Caught in the anticlimax,
she won�t kick off shoes or let down hair,
in case it gives him the wrong impression
that she�s used to this, and doesn�t need
to sit and wait for a missing reassurance.
She hopes he�ll bring it soon. Until then
she won�t start unpacking suitcases,
setting her things out, trying to soften
the blank stares of walls and furniture.
It may all come to nothing. She can imagine
telling a new lover: �It was just a night
in some motel. I don�t remember the name.�

� Martin Blyth

Reproduced with permission

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TWO LARKIN PARODIES

'THIS BE THE OBVERSE'

It fucks you up to have a kid,
Pride falls, and good intent turns bad.
Kids do for you, just as you did,
Unthinking, for your mum and dad.

A battered form of love survives
From fucking, through the fucked-up stage.
The arrogant, ungrateful knives
That cut you down in middle age

Flash in a vicious circle; and
This gives the strength to see it through:
Knowing it helps the old withstand
Seeing their kids get fucked-up, too.

� Martin Blyth
Reproduced with permission

'ANNUS MIRABILIS UPDATE'

If you see a couple of kids
And guess he's fucking her and she's
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm
It shows your own ignorance

Of the new plight in paradise for lovers.
Her older sister pushed caution aside,
Thought it as outdated as french letters,
Insisted nothing should impair the slide

To endless happiness, as symbolised
By flesh in flesh. But she's more careful. Now
You can't trust what the other person said
(They might not even realise), somehow

One's own past seems an age of innocence:
Scared about pregnancy, not hiv,
Getting it when you could, not as routine
Thanks for a nice evening. And one sees

Not high windows, but health information
In surgery and chemist's shop
Suggesting massage, mutual masturbation
And sucking, now the fucking has to stop.

� Martin Blyth
Reproduced with permission

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'TERENCE HARDS'
[DIED JULY 27, 1991]

(for Robert Nye)

Life trickles on here he wrote
to a friend, and a decision
has been made. And while the letter
was still in the post, life ended.

Knocked over by a passing car
as he crossed the street near his home:
surely no way to die, and Morcombelake
no place to live, for a poet?

To wearying drivers it�s just one more
bad bit of road grinding its way
through another suffering village
a sudden aroma of Dorset Knob biscuits

and that�s all. Nothing much to stop for
or remember it by. Yet he was happy there
walking the hedgerows like a gipsy
while his old pony grazed on the verges.

I just want to be left alone he wrote
to make the best of what I�ve got
without distractions - a modest enough way
to state a poet�s hopes and ambitions

though grander words have no greater meaning
and self-importance regularly impedes
that humbling and lonely task of delivering
the best of what you�ve got on to the page.

Suicide, stray bullet, insult to the brain
may seal the reputations of the famous.
Bring struck down by a car in Dorset
sounds more of death than immortality.

That wouldn�t matter to him. What did matter
stands in the same letter as an epitaph:
I revel in words - you know, the magic
of them - and that is enough for me.


� Martin Blyth
Reproduced with permission

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'DOWN CROMWELL STREET '
(a music hall ballad)

My name is Fred West
and I'm one of the best
at a spot of the old d.i.y.
But I try not to boast
for the thing I like most
is Doing In Youngsters. That's why

Lynda's laid out in the bathroom
and Alison's close to the loo.
Concreting the basement
Provided a placement
for five of the others. But who
did I choose to put under the patio?
Well, Rose had got jealous of Shirl.
Though chopping up Heather
I still wondered whether
We should have got rid of our girl.

You can see from the sign
on our house I was fine
with a fretsaw. And likewise a knife.
For after a bunk-up
I'd carve a girl's trunk up
just like that. Now, where's the wife?

Oh, Rose is up in the bedroom
with one of the Gloucestershire force.
Charmaine's safely stowed
In Midland Road.
I've done a few others, of course.
But who to put under the patio
Of all those we tortured and raped?
Not sweet Anne-Marie.
She was gentle with me
and that was how she escaped.


� Martin Blyth
Reproduced with permission

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