John Whitworth: Two Poems

The Bad Banker’s Confessions to Good Granny Birdseed

From my eyrie in the City I spy schoolgirls playing games

And I lust through every lunchtime as they gambol.

The biplane of my enemy is going down in flames;

I rejoice without concealment or preamble.

My solicitors advise me to refuse outstanding claims.

I am busy annotating all the works of Henry James.

They have stolen all my Rembrandts; I have nothing but the frames.

It’s a mystery no headwork can unscramble.

Every Sunday in Saint Paul’s there sings a choirboy so sublime

He would tempt a very saint to acts of thuggery.

The Archdeacon and the Dean have both embraced a life of crime,

And their boats are well and truly burned to buggery.

They’re locked (God is not mocked) into a parlous paradigm,

For the serpent has arisen from the old primeval slime,

And it’s my belief it won’t be long before they’re doing time

For sexual malfeasance and skulduggery.

All the dead have quit the boneyards in their robes of dust and ashes

And they’re marching in a phalanx past my door.

I started robbing banks because the banks are where the cash is,

And I found I needed money more and more.

So I preen myself at functions where the heroin and hash is,

And I’m regularly off my face at whisky-swilling bashes,

And I wear dundreary whiskers and long mexican moustaches,

I’m a recreant and rotten to the core.

In our brazen towers we bankers dine on foie gras and champagne,

While you peasantry are huddled in your hovels.

Your singlets and your reach-me-downs are sodden with the rain

And you’re cooking rats and turnips on your shovels.

Yes, the filthy rich are targeting the filthy poor again;

As the taxes and the rents go up, hope slithers down the drain,

Like an electronic caterpillar boring through your brain,

Like a scorpion at a parliament of devils.

Bricks-and-mortar, Granny Birdseed, that’s the bank to keep your money.

Treat all other banks with caution and distrust.

They’re the dens thieves and chancers, all emollience and honey,

Who will rob you blind and grind you in the dust.

We will swear upon our mother’s life the weather’s set to sunny.

‘It’s as solid as a Rock!’ It’s not – it’s viscous and it’s runny.

We will kiss you and caress you, whisper you’re our bestest bunny,

For we love you, Granny Birdseed, don’t we just? 

John Whitworth

Candyman

It was the cruel Candyman

Who came and took my child away.

He locked her in his transit van

And drove her from the joy of day

Into a sad and seeling night.

No moon or stars were in the sky,

He needed none, his eyes were bright,

They lent the light to steer him by.

His horrid hair was lank as rope,

And cold as fish his hangman’s hands.

He had no faith, he had no hope,

His life had run into the sand.

So scoured of humankindness, wild

With withering, he took my child.

Pitiless as a metronome,

He wrenched my darling from her home

To lie in some unfathomed combe.

But I will live, if God is good,

To flay his flesh and drink his blood

And grind his bones into the dust,

For that is right and that is just.

John Whitworth