(SR): OVERTURE: The Grand Tour
Overture
THE GRAND TOUR
1
‘Tis the end of March & my rent is due,
But two life options lie open to me;
Break with a lover, lose status, split thro,’
Or chain myself to the servility
Of capitalism… a poet true
I yearn to be, so young, so sure, so free;
Romancing my mind with poetry’s flow,
So be it, with sure brave heart, let me go!
2
I made love to my love the night before
I wrapp’d my guitar in a grey, baggy
Jumper once worn on cold nights down Turf Moor,
Emptied Santander of my rent money,
& embark’d upon my third busker’s tour –
Her scent mull’d like wine, her tongue full honey,
How we laugh’d as we revell’d, dear Rosie,
In kisses, love-songs & pure poesy!
3
I watch’d the white cliffs recede to a speck,
Then sang a fond farewell to old Blighty,
But like a wreck-head at a discotheque,
A certain chunderness dock’d to smite me,
& had to head down to the under-deck,
Feeling so sick I think I would whitey –
As one voyage ends, another embarks
At Ostend, swapping Pounds for Francs & Marks.
4
Thro’ Belgium’s monotonous flat fields green
With mental-moustach’d men I shar’d the train,
Behind Flemish floozies, barely fifteen,
Who were singing the Spice Girls… no, not again!
We pass thro’ Bruges, whose spires of golden sheen
Glisten’d in the morning’s early-day rain,
Like beads of sweat on a boxer’s muscles –
Half-hour later we’ve rock’d into Brussels.
5
On changing trains for Waterloo Station,
I start my march with pride, forth to the sight
Of the Iron Lion of my nation
Pois’d oer the field of a terrible fight;
To walk with the ghosts of Napoleon,
Then bus it back to Brussels for the night;
See Catatonia play, blitzed on grass –
Boy-oh-boy that chick’s got a real nice ass.
6
I cross’d the border into Germany,
There took a little stroll around Cologne,
Whose cathedral tower’d high above me,
The holiest skyscraper hewn from stone;
With the Youth Hostels are far too pricey
& Sol was not yet sitting on its throne,
I hopp’d on a train, & off down the line,
Soon top speed hit by the side of the Rhine.
7
All thro’ Europa’s heart, in style, I go,
Handsomest citadels stood guard the way,
When, darkening the river’s ancyent flow
Sol sets again, stars tinkle in their play;
Into old Nuremburg my train did slow,
I’ve nearly crossed the Reich in one smart day;
The Frankenhoff hotel, a cheapish bed,
With joint sharp roll’d to stroll the streets I head.
8
I view the building where them Nazis heard
Their too kind fate; wyrd monsters like Herr Hess,
Who’d murder at an evil tyrant’s word
& smear an entire planet with his mess;
I sample German beer – glass size absurd –
Then find an all-night café to play chess,
Back at the Frankenhoff I cannot sleep
Beneath my room some strip-joint’s bass booms deep.
9
Onto Vienna’s cultured legacy,
Whose clean old streets are beautifully lined
With splendid architectural fancy,
As if some Roman mind had here design’d
A capital of neatest majesty;
First perfect moment of my tours defin’d,
Steps climbing up the Opera House roof,
Poet perches on a pegasus hoof.
10
With Parsifal tromboning thro’ my skull,
I roll up one last reefer, wash, get dressed,
& did one from Austria (far too dull)
On the world famous Orient Express;
With the rage of matador-aiming bull
I supersoar, roarin’ t’wards Budapest,
Ambassadorial, a Sultan’s feast,
All set to sample first tastes of the East,
11
A friendly, warm couple buy me coffee,
She is Norwegian, he is a Scotsman,
They are honeymooning in Hungary
Far from their home, the fishing port of Bergen;
He gives me sev’ral fags & some money
Which I change when I get to the station,
Into Florins worth less than one-fifty –
Well, Scots are renown’d for being thrifty!
12
“What the fuck ma doing in Hungary!?”
Think I as I search for somewhere to rest
In the dirty, bustling, car-choked, friendly
Bullet-hole-wall-lined streets of Budapest;
Architecture clearly steer’d by Turkey,
But laced with the consumeristic West;
I find the Mellow Mood Hostel – what luck!
For four pounds a night it’s as cheap as fuck.
13
The Turks might have come to murder Magyars,
But up to their angel-built baths Ill go,
To boil in the waters, cool in the spas,
Immers’d in reading Shelley’s dreamy flow,
Then a ‘Cisco lawyer goes for my arse
“What the hell mate?!” – the man offers to blow,
Blood muddies the waters, he gets the point –
I click! It’s a freakin’ gay pick-up joint.
14
I meet a lassie later, out we go,
The price of a nice evening meal to share,
“I’m from Richmond, where Edgar Allen Poe
Was born…” “I’m from Burnley, Lancashire…” “Where?”
The ghoulash was great with the wine, we flow
Out to the street, breathing in the sweet air,
Where, in a moment of drunken romance
I kiss’d her neck & seiz’d my shagging chance.
15
I left the lassie dreaming in my bed;
Shit, shower, shave, pack, roll-up sleeping bag,
Greet the warm morning, buy freshly baked bread,
Cheap beer & cheap cigs from some gypsy hag,
Play chess in the street, get really wasted,
Swindle a swindler with a kingside blag,
Then heading back west on the railway line
I get me kicked off by the border line.
16
I gaze on familiar boyhood star
While I walk a few K to the border,
Singing a song I thumb down the wrong car,
They bundle me in, “Silence!” the order,
As the cops check’d my passport, my guitar
Rang out in bizarre tuning & coda,
Bemus’d they drop me at the train station
“Gizza lift” “No!” my tour’s first frustration!
17
‘Neath European night skies, thickly starred,
I find myself in a desolate zone,
Tip-toeing past the sleeping border guard,
Relics from the cold war the scene adorn,
Two young Austrians thought they were hard,
With angry clashing voices of slabstone,
I looked straight down the barrel of a gun,
“Who won the fuckin war!?” & pass’d right on.
18
I take the greatest train jump of my tour
From Vienna to Villach, on a sleek
Inter-City, as each Alp towers o’er
My little carriage, each volcanic peak
Thrust from the verdant, fertile valley floor
With breathtaking beauty – I could not speak,
Until dinnertime by a mountain stream…
Villach’s heap’d watchers echoed as I scream.
19
How glad am I to enter Italy,
For the call of the muse grows ever strong,
Like some wild animal trapp’d inside me,
To find fair form in my juvenile song;
Snowy mountains shrank into flat country,
Thro’ fields of lazy green we zoom’d along,
To Venice; as Italy greets my feet
The Grand Canal sparkles, but where’s the street?
20
Three days I spend in ardour Venetian,
Three nights in a disus’d railway carriage,
Gusting around this floating museum
By footfall & barge; there is a marriage
Between my soul & sheer elysian,
A poet dreaming pulses for the page,
As here, in this soft city, I savor
My first Italian ice cream flavor!
21
Thro’ Venice, I, poetical rover,
Roam streets by night, guitar oer broad back slung,
Under a statue of Casanova,
Ditties composed near Chichester were sung,
Eldritch voice attracting coins each number,
O tuneful tayles melodiously wrung!
&, after playing for an hour, these big,
Black bongo bangers add beats to the gig.
22
Distant Riviera di Levante
My heart’s destination, mine art’s true call,
But first, the mausoleum of Dante,
To tap into a predecessor soul,
Overgrown with moss & creeping ivy,
Good lord, you were the wildest of us all!
Ravenna, this may be a swift sojurn,
But one day, with my epic, I’ll return.
23
How balmy is the Florentine evening,
Whose stylish sweetness softens Dante’s tongue!
Outside Shelley’s villapast I’m busking,
Attracting, soon, a most beautiful throng
Of German fraulines, young friends visiting
This sultry city, entranc’d by my song,
Two follow me into a bonny park
For passionate encounters in the dark.
24
We wake in arms, after cappuccinos,
We’ll wander moped streets, a sacred city
Thro’ which patient Arno anciently flows;
I buy a book to fill with poetry,
The title page marks Maya with a rose,
Then buying food, we climb a hill, where we
Build a fire, dinner cook, watch the sunshine
Fade over Florence, with a dry white wine.
25
‘How romantic it is to be abroad,
Free from the chains of a working mans day,’
Think I while walking the main Pisan road,
There pass a troupe of buskers on the way…
With guitar, pens & notebook all my load
I am here, aye, & all my dreams OK –
Then see the leaning tower – am I drunk?
On further inspection one side has sunk!
26
Back from the tower Fate bids me to meet
That busker’s troupe in musical mid-flow;
There’s an old black bluesman with dust-bare feet,
A dark-eyed Chilean, Kapitano
& Italian saxman strafing the street;
They offer me wine, adding my oestro,
You’ve never heard a more raunchier noise,
& just like that! I am one of the boys.
27
I settle with this best of holidays;
Each one begins with pasta from a nun,
Then idle hours spent musing under rays
Of an English summer-like springtime sun;
When falls the warm evening I, then, amaze
The Pisan public with songs sweetly spun,
Then blitz’d on six bottles of Tuscan red
Outside a church we made our cardboard bed.
28
I jump a train for San Guilliano
To walk on Shelley’s mountains… but, instead,
I’ll sit in the street with old man Franco,
Who ploughs me with red, risotto & bread,
Plus a whole sow’s leg – my stomach doth blow,
Tho’ hardly understood one word he said,
We’ve convers’d on the Wolrd War, England, life,
Italy, poetry & his dead wife.
29
Pisa is like Oxbridge, old student town;
One daym while composing, I met a bunch
Of poser undergraduates, they’re down
With what I’m doing, cook up a great lunch,
Converse in English, then show me around
Pubs, night-clubs & jazz cafes; as the crunch
Doth come, with Latino chick well-endow’d
With looks, I fuck her, do my country proud.
30
I wander up the coastline for to muse,
Setting up camp in a cliffside quarry,
Resplendent in luscious blue, sea-side views;
By the chapel of Portovenere,
Tonight my life, my mind, mine art, shall fuse,
&, awakening to my destiny,
Prepare for the sun to set ‘low the line,
By building fire, ent’ring town, stealin’ wine.
31
With topless bottle of red in my hand,
Up cliff-face I scamper with the surge-might
Of some Hyksos hero from Samarkand,
To claim the top, where gulls in freedoms flight,
Silhouette the setting sun, awesome band
Of gold over azure seas, from this height,
I muse on the rippling sea-meadows blue –
This evening gives birth to a poet true.
32
I pause to reflect on the life I knew;
Nice house, nice job, nice girl, nice skunk, nice deal;
Compar’d them to these skies & seas of blue,
& sense of sheer assurity I feel
At joining the bravestars, we happy few,
No more the cog of the soul-grinding wheel,
Besides, England does my fucking brain in –
& I bet, as I’m writin,’ its rainin’.
33
Dizzying to my heart’s epiphany,
Last sun-chink slipping slow below the line,
One last shed ray sped ‘cross the darkling sea,
To sparkle on an object, close, divine;
A Silver Rose, so lovely & so wee,
Has caught my eyes with such delightful shine –
Plucking this moment’s floral momento,
I left for camp, led by its petals’ glow.
34
Southwards I go, to Viareggio,
Beneath Apennines peaks, whose lofty height
Canters o’er like Byron on a canto,
Now shrouded by this drowsy, star-strewn night,
I build a fire beside a soft sea flow,
Then cook a meal up, in the ember’s light
I shed a tear for some long ago year
When Shelley’s corpse was found & burnt – right here!
35
I awoke to the skin-warm, golden glimmers
Of glorious sunshine, whose burning rays
Ever stronger grow, over sand shimmers
A floaty, velvety, dream-splaying haze,
Watching speedboats dashing between swimmers
All thro’ the day my skin cooks more ablaze,
So much, when back in Pisa my new tan
Has cut so deep, folk think I’m a black man.
36
Soon back am I in bohemian swing
Musing away; one long, mellow daydream;
By the side of the Arno sometimes sing,
Or bask in the sun with wine & ice-cream,
Or busk to the world as a poet-king,
Or party hard with Kapitano’s team
Life! Life! forever tender, thou, to me
Having tasted this breath of Italy.
37
In the warm morning, after a party,
I sit with Kapitano round a fire;
He teaches me the bird-songs of Chile
& how to spend a day without my lyre;
Brimming with wisdom, into the city
Drift I, where in a shock of love desire
She sits on the grass banging wee bongos,
‘…To describe the way I feel,’ the song goes.
38
She seems to me the first fair star of Eve,
With ocean eyes & smile of teeth pearl white,
And perfect curves like you wouldn’t believe,
My heart melteth at the sensual sight
Of beauty’s first essence – this I receive
In raptures, as we, by Lord Arno’s flight
Converge as one, ‘til comes the sad sundown –
“Meet me in Rome,” we kiss as she leaves town.
39
The night before my tour’s final movement
I play my farewell set, busk up a pill,
Slide down the Maccinera for groovement
With a slick Sicilian band, until
An onslaught of Dutch Techno bombardment
Releases built up pressures, ‘til the chill;
Coming down leisurely, laid back, sublime,
Puffing out chillum smoke, passing smooth time.
40
Heading down south on the click-clack train track,
At two AM the conductor finds me
With a bag of books, the rags on my back,
& in my hands a copy of Shelley;
Expecting some Hampshire inspector’s flak
This guy, instead, showers me wi’ pity –
Six hours later, ochre twilight at dawn,
I walk the streets of Rome, a man alone.
41
As o’er the Eternal City doth come
The mellow, yellow orb of Italy;
I tour the absorbing Colosseum,
Musing upon the world of poetry,
& my place clearly in it – struck dumb
By Rome’s incredible decadency,
Where ghosts of fallen grandeurs wide pervade
& legends linger, tho’ their glories fade.
42
These ruins seem to speak, they sing with pride,
Splendors far surpassing exhortation,
Where bridges, spanning the Tiber’s jade glide
Bare intricate statues, inspiration
Flows throughout my poetry, sanctified,
As, in a nation within a nation,
Dead popes standing in guard o’er Peters square,
I start my final stanzas – almost there!
43
I sharpen my features & dress to impress,
Entering a candlelit theatre
Where a dark, Grecian drama’s in progress,
Aha! My marvelous Manuela,
My sexy, smiling,’ stage-struttin’ actress,
I knew right then that I had to have her,
“You look beautiful, like a Silver Rose!”
That night… her hotel bed… our teeth-torn clothes.
44
With my lady sleeping, thro’ the city,
I roam, sweet sunhine illumines the streets,
A tranquil Protestant cemetary,
& Shelley’s tower, here my muse completes
Her visitation; I feel tired, empty,
But wait! As I stood by the grave of Keats,
Strength surges back to try the train-jump home
So did one from the glory that was Rome.
45
Cashing in my emergency tenner,
For now I’ve realis’d I’m quite hungry,
& knew I needed a few more lira,
To help me make the length of Italy
So, one last set of songs sang in Pisa,
My sojurn there already memory,
For Kapitano had moved on to France
To work the World Cup with a beggar’s dance.
46
Leaving my gentle Arno to her flow,
I train-jump to an uncertain future,
& once again view’d Viareggio,
Le Spezia, then pass’d thro’ Genoa;
Spent sunset in the streets of Torino,
Then jump’d a new train towards the border –
But traveling don’t always go to plan,
My bloody train had landed in Milan!
47
I was now sev’ral hundred miles of course,
& how it happen’d did not understand,
But youth is driven by a hidden force,
Which made me take the train to Switzerland,
At whose harsh border found I smart resource –
For they had me rejected out of hand
(I look’d like a tramp) – after midnight, tense,
I found a rabbit-hole shewn from the fence.
48
I felt like I’d escaped Colditz Castle,
But as I pass’d thro’ chocolate Zurich,
I was toss’d into a world of hassle,
The Swiss care not for buskers & their reek,
After lots of shouting & a wrestle,
I was plung’d in a police cell for my cheek,
But come sundown eveything was sorted –
The next day I was to be deported!
49
They marched me on a fancy Swiss Air Jet,
Handcuff’d until the very last moment,
For I had slipped right thro’ their border net,
Back to my native island must be sent,
On fine French wine my flight was free from fret,
For, thanks to a filthy rich government,
I’d been handed a shed load of Swiss Francs,
My benefactors – Nazi-loving banks!
50
I thrill’d so much to drop into Heathrow,
Tho’ from the wine a little worse for wear,
To Rosie’s boudoir, hopefully, did go –
At first she gave me such a startl’d stare,
But romance, soon, did reconvene its flow
I fed her verses on a velvet air,
Said she, “Why don’t we take a bath, my sweet…”
With that hot wash my Grand Tour was complete.
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