Reading you was my Fall:
before, glam spies in cars;
after, a drab inner world,
lamplit by career shadows,
pieces on a board, trading
stock and scalps, made real
by the pen of true Control.
Sunday 13 December 2020
Charley Pride - d. December 12th 2020
the lines, wedged open
the Opry doors, spun
both sides of the disc.
This morning an angel
told me you cannot keep
a song from being sung.
Friday 11 December 2020
Barbara Windsor - d. December 10th 2020
Camping, Again Doctor,
Henry, Matron, Abroad,
Girls, Dick, Giggling,
Flirting, Disrobing,
Pouting, Bitching,
Barring, Shaaaahting,
Struggling, Smiling,
Carrying On.
Tuesday 8 December 2020
Doug Scott - d. December 7th 2020
I pray I'll see you up ahead,
tapping in pitons, belaying
the rope, pointing out
the favourable pitch, then
reaching down to haul me
up those final few feet.
Chuck Yeager - d. December 7th 2020
smouldering
in a burnt-out bullet,
barrel-rolled or broken
by unrecoverable spin,
demon grinning gleefully
as you hammer
on those titanium gates.
Sunday 6 December 2020
Peter Alliss - d. December 6th 2020
I hear that voice -
the amiable duffer,
unreconstructed,
every observation
underclubbed in an
overclubbed world.
Thursday 3 December 2020
Hugh Keays-Byrne - d. December 1st 2020
you cannot outrun,
even on the swiftest bike,
down the emptiest road.
I will remember you
when I look up
at the night sky.
Sunday 29 November 2020
David Prowse - d. November 28th 2020
I will see the black sentinel
shrugging off his cloak
shrugging off his cloak
revealing the hero in green
and white, who bids me stop,
looks left, right, left again,
then beckons me to cross.
Friday 27 November 2020
Luke Rhinehart - d. November 6th 2020
Two says dark ignominy
Three's merely a someone
Four is the fate of memory
Five's a critic's absolution
Six says you live in eternity
Wednesday 25 November 2020
Diego Maradona - d. November 25th 2020
the empty space
you swaggered through,
grass rippling in your wake,
a squat, lengthening shadow,
half angel, half devil,
hands and feet of a God
Sunday 15 November 2020
Des O'Connor - d. November 14th 2020
not once, but every night,
to be at one with the air,
to hold the note to the end,
leaving a smile like moonlight
shining on an empty chair.
Friday 6 November 2020
Geoffrey Palmer - d. November 6th 2020
on the being alive front.
I blame the Trotskyists,
Maoists, Guardian readers.
Bleeding hearts. The NHS.
Bloody foreign surgeons.
Bloodsuckers all.
Bloody disgrace.
Read about Geoffrey Palmer here
Tuesday 3 November 2020
John Sessions - d. November 2nd 2020
as singular as the heavy
tread of our voice. Find
another voice, find many:
a chorus of ghosts, sign
of a craft extraordinary.
Saturday 31 October 2020
Friday 30 October 2020
Nobby Stiles - d. October 30th 2020
for the spoilers, short
on skill, wit, physique,
whose call is to compete,
to urge, when all is lost.
Swing that rattle
for the tiny, toothless,
dancing destroyers.
Read about Nobby Stiles here
Thursday 29 October 2020
Bobby Ball - d. October 28th 2020
o Workingmens' smoke,
ole in tha kecks, Medlock
in tha veins, muck or nettles,
proper monkified, an ah sez
eeyafflaff, dunt yer?
Sunday 25 October 2020
Frank Bough - d. October 21st 2020
to you in five, Frank - ready?
Up to Eddie Waring in Oldham,
in the cold of the Watersheddings
where both hookers are called Bert
and the lines are just fresh paint.
Thursday 22 October 2020
James Randi - d. October 20th 2020
I won’t believe he’s really dead. Take
his pulse. Is he holding his breath? Fake.
A trick. Misdirection or suggestion. Wake
him up because I have questions. I’ll make
him talk. Look, he’s laughing, for God’s sake.
Thursday 15 October 2020
Herbert Kretzmer - d. October 14th 2020
that autumn brings
and those bitter tears,
heavy on my tongue,
I smile for you, when
I hear the people sing
your songs of yesterday,
when you were young.
Wednesday 7 October 2020
Bunny 'Striker' Lee - d. October 7th 2020
of the keys to the kingdom
of bass, that treasured isle.
Flying the flag of low-freq,
deep symbol of eternal echo,
striker of the sharpest snare,
now and forever be.
In Dub
Drum roll
keys
bass
Flying
cymbal echo
snare
rever b
Read about Bunny Lee here
Johnny Nash - d. October 6th 2020
stir up the sunshine?
Why does your song
pour sugar on me?
The more I find out
the less I know.
Eddie Van Halen - d. October 6th 2020
an eruption of magma,
power chords.
A figure stands alone
on molten rock,
fretboard aflame:
Frankenstrat's Monster.
Read about Eddie Van Halen here
Wednesday 30 September 2020
Helen Reddy - d. September 29th 2020
too impassioned to ignore,
how strong begets strong,
invincible, and more.
Tell the radio goodnight,
Mac Davis - September 29th 2020
a smart young man,
a singular pen among
the drunks and cheaters,
an unlikely conscience.
Friday 25 September 2020
Juliette Grèco - d. September 23rd 2020
une page avec un million de poèmes,
toute délicatesse, souplesse, doigteé,
la chanson qui brûle,
et le fera toujours.
Your voice is a wisp of smoke,
a page with a million poems,
all delicacy, suppleness, skill,
the song that burns,
and always will.
Read about Juliette Gréco here
Monday 21 September 2020
Michael Lonsdale - d. September 21st 2020
it is the draught that blows
through the unholy labyrinth,
the tyranny of empty space,
the harm that comes to all.
Wednesday 16 September 2020
Shere Hite - d. September 9th 2020
and the universe centres
on this place, this now.
You wrote freedom anew,
independence, adventure,
opened up the life to come.
Saturday 12 September 2020
Frederick 'Toots' Hibbert - d.11th September 2020
I do the right thing -
righteous rocksteady,
gospel style, pyramid
label, forty-five. That's
always been my number.
Thursday 10 September 2020
Diana Rigg - d. September 10th 2020
catsuited and a snug gun
down the boot. A hidden
tiger, an impossible girl
to find, even if you had all
the time in the world.
Ronald Bell - d. September 9th 2020
you had received your calling,
a column of dry ice,
mirrorball still spinning.
Good times, always,
a life to celebrate. Come on!
Wednesday 2 September 2020
David Bryant - d. August 27th 2020
feel the perfect line
from hand to jack, weigh
the bias of the world
in your soft palm,
draw to a hair's breadth,
then ascend in a haze
of grit and tobacco.
Monday 31 August 2020
Chadwick Boseman - d. August 28th 2020
hand in hand with Bast
and Sekhmet, across
the endless veld,
where beautiful men
drop to one knee, bow,
and are held up to the sky.
Wednesday 19 August 2020
Julian Bream - d. August 14th 2020
and still the strings,
the squeak of frets,
the brush of fingertips,
the memory of timbre:
all else is resonance.
Ben Cross - d. August 18th 2020
just ten lonely seconds
to justify your existence,
to take arrows of desire,
speed, passion, elegance,
and secure them in time.
Saturday 8 August 2020
Wayne Fontana - d. August 6th 2020
come the impossible years,
the impossible decades,
6-minute slots to deaf ears,
where groovy turns to gravy,
and yet, and yet, you were here.
Sunday 2 August 2020
C P Lee - d. July 25th 2020
in your mindless classroom -
you, fluent in every language
(except the serious ones), all
in sub-dialects of Mancunian,
words and music made bonkers,
blown like snuff into the world.
Friday 31 July 2020
Alan Parker - d. July 31st 2020
we sit in our own darkness,
waiting for someone to take us
where the dreamers go: versions
of hell, of history, of childhood,
the places, true and untrue,
beyond the cinema doors.
'Rollerball' Mark Rocco - d. July 30th 2020
There is a chapter
in the Grapple Manual
dedicated to brawlers
and pocket battleships.
Its pages are red and blue,
studded with white stars,
explosions of energy,
character, showmanship.
Sydney Lotterby - d. July 30th 2020
A ragged queue is forming
at your door; three old men,
grocer and boy, a brace of
supercilious civil servants,
an old lag. They say they're
waiting for you to come home.
I told them to naff orf.
Tuesday 28 July 2020
Denise Johnson - d. July 27th 2020
where streets are so wide
there are sister brothers
standing on every side,
every soul is 27 forever, and
Monday 27 July 2020
John Saxon - d. July 25th 2020
of strength and appetite,
shoulder to broad shoulder
with a long-dead dragon,
finally arriving at the point
that you will not go beyond.
Peter Green - d. July 25th 2020
The peerless broken blues,
the anxious nights so black,
the days that strummed you,
whispered through every bad trip
there must be more than this.
Sunday 26 July 2020
Olivia de Haviland - d. July 25th 2020
a snake pit draped in tinsel,
reinvent those old stories,
dress the set anew, check
the lens, stay on the face,
the heavy eyes now draining
into lonely black and white.
Friday 17 July 2020
Zizi Jeanmaire - d. July 17th 2020
et ne peuvent pas changer,
mais là où il y a mouvement,
il y a danger,
car qu'est-ce que la vie
si nous ne pouvons pas danser?
The steps are set and cannot change,
but where there is movement there is danger,
for what is life if we cannot dance?
Wednesday 15 July 2020
Maurice Röeves - d. July 15th 2020
heavy, or sergeant-major,
neither first name nor last.
Your act was to decöeve,
wear someone else’s story,
trust the watcher to belöeve.
Saturday 11 July 2020
Jack Charlton - d. July 10th 2020
to tell you of your own death.
The tranny hissed a commentary:
Italy vs Ireland. You shrugged,
blunt as a thigh-high tackle,
You disturbed me to tell me that?
Monday 6 July 2020
Ennio Morricone - d. July 6th 2020
of string, mariachi trumpet,
the sound of a desert on fire,
of gunshot, gulch and canyon,
the kind of music that people
make movies to accompany.
Earl Cameron - d. July 3rd 2020
a realist plot simmering
with a deeper history,
but someone had to be
the first to be cast,
the first in the credits.
Wednesday 1 July 2020
Carl Reiner - d. June 29th 2020
about a new show of shows,
confident
that you would enter, laughing.
They asked you
when will the scripts be ready?
I heard you say
In about two thousand years.
Thursday 25 June 2020
Margarita Pracatan - d. June 23rd 2020
could fete you: that would be wrong,
wrong as the memory
of melody you learned for too long,
rendered unsingable. We
mourn your approximation of song.
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