Villanelles a go-go, baby

Thanks so much for all your comments on my last post about hobbyhorses. I really enjoyed reading all the lists and related information and there is an added bonus - I now know who to ask when I have a question about 'Swallows and Amazons', botany, punk rock, Greek mythology or pretty much any other subject you can think of. Between us we know everything...more or less...

Mentioning some of my old out-to-grass horses reminded me yet again of my misspent youth (I say 'youth'...I started behaving badly at about 12 and stopped at about 30...that's a bit more than 'youth' I fear...). I used to think about it a lot but these days I have fewer regrets, more laughs about it all, a good load of stories to tell. Somewhere in that era I tried most things (well apart from good old-fashioned hard work and bungee jumping). I was a thoroughly bad girl and whilst this does mean I can honestly advise Small Girl on most of the evils of our modern world I am hoping for the Ab Fab daughter-is-opposite-of-mother storyline so I won't need to spill any of these particular beans at all!

I haven't written many poems about all this business – a person doesn't want to be a bore - but every now and again a subject seems ripe for a poem and this week (for various reasons) it seemed to be time for an acid poem. Several things prompted it – an email from a pirate radio DJ I used to know and another poem by another poet – and it turned into the villanelle that I will post at the bottom of this ramble. I like doing villanelles about the kind of subject matter you might not expect to find in a fancy thing like a villanelle. It makes me feel a bit like a 'Wendy Cope for the ecstasy generation' (a title SO much more appealing than the dreaded 'Pam Ayres on acid' I've seen used to describe a couple of other poets – for a start how does anyone know Ayres is not already on acid...all the time?). One of my rock'n'roll villanelles 'Not tonight, Radiohead' has probably been one of my most successful and well-liked poems to date and it has just been published in the magazine The Mental Virus too by the way so its good run continues (though they seem to have added in lots of punctuation that certainly wasn't mine). It always amazes me when people read it wrong and say 'so you don't like Radiohead then?' (Doh!) That poem is on my MySpace profile page or on my website in the Songs section for anyone who hasn't read it and who wants to know what on earth I'm going on about.

But back to the acid. I didn't take a lot of it – it really didn't suit me – but I did meet it now and again, said 'hello', spent one of those 'longest nights of your life', swore never to touch it again...The metal head, the ridiculous sleep deprivation, the paranoia...there's not a lot to be said for it really. Here's the poem...not to be taken too seriously...



And from the menu came a whisper 'pick me, pick me'

I'm sure that pizza keeps winking at me
An olive for an eye and a mushroom tooth
Eating out is simpler without the LSD

It seems a good idea but it really might not be
Who can tell that to a know-it-all youth?
I'm sure that pizza keeps smiling at me

I raise my eyes but the ceiling's just sea
Rolling waves of doubt and a current full of truth
Eating out is simpler without the LSD

And then the freaky food can turn much less friendly
I swear that flatbread is a touch uncouth!
That bloody, cheeky pizza is laughing at me!

You shake your clever head and these days I would agree
To know what's wrong it doesn't take a sleuth
Eating out is simpler without the LSD

Cutting through is hard but chewing sets us free
I can't look down, it's alive, oh struth!
I'm sure that pizza has got it in for me
Oh, eating out is simpler without the LSD

RF 2008