Come on Everybody

by Adrian Mitchell

  The milk is not for the good elephant.

  The milk is not for the bad elephant.

  But the milk may be for the lucky elephant

  Looming along until the end of the kingdom of the flies.

  A family of people, trapped in Death Valley,

  Drank from the radiator,

  Laid out the hubcaps as bowls for the dew,

  Buried each other up to the neck in sand

  And waited for better times, which came

  Just after they stopped hoping.

  So the sweet survival of the elephants demands

  Vision, cunning, energy and possibly burial

  Until, maybe, the good times roll for the first time

  And a tidal wave of elephants,

  A stampede of milk,

  Tornadoes through the capitals of flydom,

  Voices flow like milk,

  And below the white, nourishing depths –

  Bodies moving any way they want to move,

  Eyes resting or dancing at will,

  Limbs and minds which follow, gladly,

  The music of the milk.

  So you drink my milk, I’ll drink yours.

  We’ll melt together in the sun

  Despite the high-explosive flies

  Which hover, which hover,

  Which hover, which hover,

  Like a million plaguey Jehovahs.

  Their prisons, their police, their armies, their laws,

  Their camps where Dobermans pace the cadaver of a field,

  Their flame factories and Black Death Factories,

  The sourness of their sky –

  Well that’s the poisonous weather the elephants must lumber through

  Surviving, surviving,

  Until the good times roll for the first time.

  But it doesn’t end

  With an impregnable city carved out of the living light.

  It doesn’t end

  In the plastic arms of an Everest-size Sophia Loren.

  It doesn’t end

  When the world says a relieved farewell to the white man

  As he goofs off to colonise the Milky Way.

  It continues, it continues.

  When all of the elephants push it goes slowly forward.

  When they stop pushing it rolls backwards.

  It continues, it continues.

  Towards milk, towards acid.

  The taste of milk has been forgotten.

  Most elephants agree peace is impossible.

  Choosing death instead, they are jerked towards death

  Slowly by newspapers, nightmares or cancer,

  More quickly by heroin or war.

  And some, the tops of their skulls sliced off

  By money-knives or the axes of guilt,

  Bow their great heads and let their hurting brains

  Slop in the lavatory to drown.

  There are prophets like Ginsberg – grandson of William Blake –

  Desperate elephants who drink a pint of diamonds.

  Their eyes become scored with a thousand white trenches,

  Their hide shines with a constellation

  Of diamond-headed boils,

  Each footstep leaves a pool of diamond dust.

  And sure, they shine,

  They become shouting stars,

  Burning with light until they are changed by pain

  Into diamonds for everyone.

  And sure, they go down shining,

  They shine themselves to death,

  The diamond drinkers.

  The world is falling to pieces

  But some of the pieces taste good.

  There are various ways of making peace,

  Most of them too childish for English elephants.

  Given time and love it’s possible

  To cultivate a peace-field large enough

  For the playing of a child.

  It’s possible to prepare a meal

  And give it with care and love

  To someone who takes it with care and love.

  These are beginnings, but it’s late, late –

  TV Dinner tonight.

  It’s possible to suck the taste of peace

  From one blade of grass

  Or recognise peace in a can of white paint,

  But it’s not enough.

  In Nirvana there’s only room for one at a time.

  WELL, YOU COULD STOP KILLING PEOPLE FOR A START,

  Let loose the elephants.

  Let the fountains talk milk.

  Free the grass, let it walk wherever it likes.

  Let the passports and prisons burn, their smoke turning into milk.

  Let the pot-smokers blossom into milk-coloured mental petals.

  We all need to be breast-fed

  And start again.

  Tear the fly-woven lying suits

  Off the backs of the white killers

  And let their milky bodies

  Make naked pilgrimage

  To wash the sores of Africa and Asia

  With milk, for milk is peace

  And money tastes of guns,

  Guns taste of acid.

  Make love well, generously, deeply.

  There’s nothing simpler in the savage world,

  Making good love, making good good love.

  There’s nothing harder in the tender world,

  Making good love, making good good love,

  And most of the elephants, most of the time

  Go starving for good love, not knowing what the pain is,

  But it can be done and thank Blake it is done,

  Making good love, making good good love.

  In houses built of fly turds, in fly-turd feasting mansions,

  Fly fear insurance offices even,

  Fly-worshipping cathedrals even,

  Even in murder offices just off the corridors of fly power –

  Making good love, making good good love.

  Good lovers float.

  Happy to know they are becoming real.

  They float out above the sourness, high on the seeds of peace.

  There are too few of them up there.

  Too little milk.

  Drink more milk.

  Breed more cows and elephants.

  Think more milk and follow your banana.

  We need evangelist, door-to-door lovers,

  Handing it out, laying it down,

  Spreading the elephant seed, delivering the revolutionary milk,

  Making good love, making good good love.

  United Nations teams of roving elephant milkmen

  Making good love, making good good love,

  Because peace is milk,

  Peace is milk

  And the skinny, thirsty earth, its face covered with flies,

  Screams like a baby.

  A Tourist Guide to England

  £ Welcome to England!

  England is a happy country

  £ Here is a happy English businessman.

  Hating his money, he spends it all

  On bibles for Cambodia

  And a charity to preserve

  The Indian Cobra from extinction.

  £ I’m sorry you can’t see our happy coal-miners.

  Listen hard and you can hear them

  Singing Welsh hymns far underground.

  Oh. The singing seems to have stopped.

  £ No, that is not Saint Francis of Assisi.

  That is a happy English policeman.

  £ Here is a happy black man.

  No, it is not illegal to be black. Not yet.

  £ Here are the slums.

  They are preserved as a tourist attraction.

  Here is a happy slum-dweller.

  Hello, slum-dweller!

  No, his answer is impossible to translate.

  £ Here are some happy English schoolchildren.

  See John. See Susan. See Mike.

  They are studying for their examinations.

  Study, children
, study!

  John will get his O-Levels

  And an O-Level job and an O-Level house and an O-Level wife.

  Susan will get her A-Levels

  And an A-Level job and an A-Level house and an A-Level husband.

  Mike will fail.

  £ Here are some happy English soldiers.

  They are going to make the Irish happy.

  £ No, please understand.

  We understand the Irish

  Because we’ve been sending soldiers to Ireland

  For hundreds and hundreds of years.

  £ First we tried to educate them

  With religion, famine and swords.

  But the Irish were slow to learn.

  £ So now we are trying to educate them

  With truncheons, gas, rubber bullets,

  Steel bullets, internment and torture,

  We are trying to teach the Irish

  To be as happy as us.

  £ So please understand us

  And if your country

  Should be forced to educate

  Another country in the same way,

  Or your own citizens in the same way –

  We will try to understand you.

  Sorry Bout That

  Truth is a diamond

  A diamond is hard

  You don’t exist

  Without a Barclaycard

  Sorry bout that

  Sorry bout that

  Even South African cops

  Do the sorry bout that

  They showed me the world and said:

  What do you think?

  I said: half about women

  And half about drink

  And I’m sorry bout that

  Sorry bout that

  Mother, I need that booze

  And I’m sorry bout that

  If you cut your conscience

  Into Kennomeat chunks

  You can get elected

  To the House of Drunks

  Sorry bout that

  Sorry bout that

  You’ll never have to think again

  And I’m sorry bout that

  You can do the Skull

  Or the Diplomat

  But I do a dance called

  The Sorry Bout That

  Do the Mighty Whitey

  Or the Landlord Rat

  But I’ll keep grooving to

  The Sorry Bout That

  Sorry bout that

  Sorry bout that

  They make me dance with pistols and ten to one

  I’m sorry bout that

  I saw Money walking

  Down the road

  Claws like an eagle

  And a face like a toad

  Well I know your name baby

  Seen you before

  Slapping on your make-up

  For the Third World War

  Sorry bout that

  Sorry bout that

  Someone set the world on fire

  And I’m sorry bout that

  Victor Jara of Chile

  (This ballad has been set to music and recorded by Arlo Guthrie)

  Victor Jara of Chile

  Lived like a shooting star

  He fought for the people of Chile

  With his songs and his guitar

  And his hands were gentle

  His hands were strong

  Victor Jara was a peasant

  Worked from a few years old

  He sat upon his father’s plough

  And watched the earth unfold

  And his hands were gentle

  His hands were strong

  When the neighbours had a wedding

  Or one of their children died

  His mother sang all night for them

  With Victor by her side

  And his hands were gentle

  His hands were strong

  He grew to be fighter

  Against the people’s wrongs

  He listened to their grief and joy

  And turned them into songs

  And his hands were gentle

  His hands were strong

  He sang about the copper miners

  And those who work the land

  He sang about the factory workers

  And they knew he was their man

  And his hands were gentle

  His hands were strong

  He campaigned for Allende

  Working night and day

  He sang: take hold of your brother’s hand

  The future begins today

  And his hands were gentle

  His hands were strong

  The bloody generals seized Chile

  They arrested Victor then

  They caged him in a stadium

  With five thousand frightened men

  And his hands were gentle

  His hands were strong

  Victor stood in the stadium

  His voice was brave and strong

  He sang for his fellow-prisoners

  Till the guards cut short his song

  And his hands were gentle

  His hands were strong

  They broke the bones in both his hands

  They beat his lovely head

  They tore him with electric shocks

  After two long days of torture they shot him dead

  And his hands were gentle

  His hands were strong

  And now the Generals rule Chile

  And the British have their thanks

  For they rule with Hawker Hunters

  And they rule with Chieftain tanks

  And his hands were gentle

  His hands were strong

  Victor Jara of Chile

  Lived like a shooting star

  He fought for the people of Chile

  With his songs and his guitar

  And his hands were gentle

  His hands were strong

  Astrid-Anna

  (This piece was written especially for an Anglo-German audience at the Goethe Institute in London)

  Here is a news item from a right-wing British paper – the Daily Mail.

  TERROR GIRL IS ILL

  ‘Baader Meinhof girl Astrid Proll, who faces extradition to Germany, is physically and mentally ill, her friends said yesterday. They gathered outside Bow Street magistrates court…and handed out leaflets saying she was having difficulty in breathing and had “sensations of panic”. Carnations were thrown to her as she was led away.’

  If Astrid Proll, who is now a British citizen by marriage – Anna Puttick – is sent back to Germany, she will be dead within two years. There are special sections in special prisons in Germany where prisoners like Astrid-Anna find it easy to obtain revolvers. Even odder, they do not shoot their jailers. They shoot out their own brains. If the British hand over Astrid-Anna to the West German police, we will be collaborating in yet another murder. Well, we done a few before.

  Sensations of panic

  Carnations were thrown

  Free Astrid Free Anna

  Astrid-Anna was accused of the attempted murder of two policemen.

  But she has never been found guilty of anything.

  But she was the first prisoner in Germany to be kept in conditions of SENSORY DEPRIVATION. In the Silent Wing of the Women’s Psychiatric Unit at Ossen-dorf Prison in Cologne.

  There are white walls, constant lighting, no external sounds – techniques designed to disorientate and subdue. She spent a total of FOUR AND A HALF MONTHS in the Silent Wing. About TWENTY-FOUR WEEKS in the Silent Wing. About ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED HOURS in the Silent Wing.

  Her trial was stopped by a doctor. He found the following complaints: weakness and exhaustion, the feeling of ‘being wrapped in cotton wool’, dizziness, blackouts, headaches and no appetite, feelings of breaking down, an inability to concentrate, increasing signs of phobia and agoraphobia. Her blood circulation began to collapse, depriving her brain of oxygen. Continued imprisonment, said the doctor, would lead to PERMANENT AND IRREPARABLE DAMAG
E.

  Four and a half months

  In the silent wing

  Four and a half months

  in the silent wing

  Shut in a white box

  Under the constant neon

  Being whitened in a box

  Under the silent neon

  Boxed in the white neon

  Of the silent box

  Under the constant wing.

  In the white of the silent box

  In the silence of the white box

  In the constant silence

  In the constant white

  In the white of the white box

  Your head starts exploding

  Your skull is about to split

  Your spine is drilling into your brain

  You are pissing your brains away

  In the white of the silent box

  In the silence of the white box

  In the constant silence

  In the constant white

  In the white of the white box

  Under the Nazis an experiment was made in which they locked a man in a white cell with white furniture. He wore white clothes. And all his food and drink were white. He very soon lost his appetite. He could not eat. He could not drink. The sight of the white food and the white drink made him vomit.

  Astrid came to England and began life again as Anna. She worked with young people in the East End as an instructor in car mechanics. One Englishwoman says: ‘Anna gave me and my children enormous support…When I was drinking too much, it was Anna who cared enough to see why and then helped me to make decisions that I was drinking to forget.’