Henry Graham

good luck to you kafka/you'll need it boss

the man from the finance company
came again today he wants to know
when i'm going to pay but what he won't say
is what it was i bought

one morning perhaps when i was high
on poetry and corned jock butties
i must have wandered threepartsmental
into a departmental store and bought something

a three piece suite for my sweet
a frigidaire to keep frozen my despair
a fitted carpet for the inside of my head

he just won't say what it was
and when i laugh he looks the other way
apparently i have only fourteen days left
he won't even say what happens then

i suppose they will come and take away my eyes
(which i know i haven't paid for)
or the words that live inside my head
or my surprise at raindrops or the use

of my legs or my love of bread
then again they just might forget
about me and go away / fat chance

When Allen Ginsberg visited Liverpool in 1965 he declared the city the centre of the consciousness of the human universe, or words to that effect because there are a variety of alternatives out there, and for those who doubt he actually said it, Brian Patten is quoted as observing I think Allen believed the centre of human consciousness to be wherever he was at the time.

This is by way of introducing Henry Graham who was a Liverpool painter and poet of this time, having attended that centre of cultural significance Liverpool College of Art. He didn't make The Mersey Beat selection, but he was a similar poet of that oeuvre. This book was published in 1969 and I acquired my copy in 1973. The appeal was obviously the poetic irreverence of the moment and the celebration of comic meaninglessness, or I guess I would have seen in this poem at that teenage time an anti-establishment sentiment, a mockery of the powers to be who would try to deprive us of the words that live inside our heads and a love of raindrops and so on. It was just fun.

I wrote plenty of immature gibberish trying to emulate this poetic hilarity. It's not as easy as it might seem. I'll post an example one day when I'm feeling very confessional.....