[Here is the second tranche of my ongoing long poem 17, consisting of three ‘Songs’ and two Sections (II and III), entitled Picnic and Gas respectively. Like 64, 17 contains a number of free-standing ‘songs’. But, unlike 64, in 17, these are clearly marked off as such and only very loosely connected with the sprawling main narrative of the poem. As is common in my work, all sections contain acts of violence (which I do not condone) recounted in a casual unsentimental or unconventional manner that some readers may find distressing or offensive.]

Song #1 The Ballad of Robin and RedCap

Robin, hoodied, rips the copper
piping out of the new starter homes
going up in the urban jungle and sells it on
for drugs for his merry band.
Little Red, brim of Man U baseball cap
pulled down over her mascaraed eyes,
is plied with magic mushrooms and raped in the woods by the gang.
The council pulls the travelers’ shacks and tents down in the night.
The police come round.
“Keep quiet about that,” Red’s Roma grandmother warns,
“or they’ll have you ’for good.’
“The wolf is always at the door.”
Red keeps mum,
as they tramp past the graves of Hansel and Gretel
and the rundown foreclosed gingerbread house on the way back home.

II Picnic

The place makes a nice spot for a picnic, amidst the buttercups,
on the old chase just outside the woods overlooking the stately home.
The blue and white checkered tablecloth is laid out over the grass
held down at four corners by salad bowls so the wind doesn’t blow it away.
Mum shouts at the kids disappearing into the woods,
as slices of egg and sausage meat pie set in aspic and pastry crust
are set out on the plates alongside spring onions, baby radishes, shredded iceberg lettuce,
a dollop of sweet pickle, scooped out from variously sized items of Tupperware;
wasps and ants flicked away.
Mum shouts out at the kids who have disappeared into the woods,
messing about.
The first shots ring out, bringing her to her knees.
Hans and Greta come back from the woods with cobnuts,
blackberries and sloes and the skeletons of a dead mole and bird
to show for their adventures, as mum lies
face down in the egg-salad, bullet-wound oozing out blood
blooming through her flower-patterned dress.
Radishes and spring onions and lettuce hearts wreathe her cadaver
and the crumbs of pork pies are wolfed up by blackbirds and stray neighboring dogs.
Sirens go up all around, as mum is zipped up in a body bag
and Hans and Greta go off into care.

Song # 2 Hansel and Gretel Duet Lament

Trashing the doll’s house was probably a bad idea, Hans thought.
Greta cried for hours but never breathed a word.
The oven-baked flour-paste homemade toy cups and plates and fruit laid out
on the doll’s house dining room table; beds neatly made;
the stiff wooden limbs stuffed in doll clothes of doll mum
and doll dad tucked up neatly in bed for the night, curtains drawn.
The fun idea was Action Man, on night ops, sneaking in
through the chimney top, like Santa Claus, for a spot of B&E vandalism:
lewd graffiti on the wallpaper, drawers emptied, and dresses
and panties strewn about. Just kids messing around.
Mum doll wakes up in a fit and Dad doll is shouting at her
to shut the fuck up and calm the fuck down and throwing his fists around.
Broken china cups and plates and a black eye. The front door left
wide open as he leaves. Greta shrieked when she saw the work of art
in the playroom in the morning and weeping carefully rearranged
everything exactly how it was before.
“Where’s Greta? Mum asks, as Hans gobbles down
his soggy cornflakes and tea. “Playing with her doll’s house, probably,”
Hans replies with an angelic twinkle and smirk.
“Picnic today!” mother smiles.
Hans and Greta punch each other on the back seat as Mum concentrates on the road.
The car winds around the forest roads. Greta coos over the grazing ponies.
Hans is bored and looking out of the window for road-kill.
*.
The care home looks like a hospital.
“Why can’t we just go home?” Greta wails.
Hans is silent and beats up on a younger boy as soon as they arrive.
Sobs himself to sleep; a baby bawling in a cot on the other side of the ward.
The girls are all round Greta, interested in her clothes.
The pair are let out for the funeral, Greta thrusting Hans’s comforting hand away
as colleagues and distant relatives toss clumps of earth onto the descending coffin.
“You trashed my doll’s house,’ she whispers hissingly into her brother’s ear.

III Gas

Mike screeches into the gas station like Marlon Brando.
He doesn’t say it is a stick-up. The gun is shaking
violently in his unsure grip and the Goth girl on the cash-register
has frozen and pissed herself. He legs it.
She is already on the blower to the cops.
They are no Bonnie and Clyde.

Song #3 Piper Alpha Gas Workers Requiem Chorus

—-“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit.” Psalm 51

We are the Piper Alpha crew.
We’re alphas to a man.
We pipe the gas out of the sea
and pump it to the land.

We are the alpha piper crew.
We hunt a microscopic prey,
for you to burn in homely hearths
to warm your winter days.

We take a boat from Aberdeen
across the cold gray sea.
Our muscles and tattoos are seen
by every lass we lay

Our bones are made of granite.
Our skin is soaked in tar.
We breathe a toxic fiery gas
that dragons all your cars.

We are Christ fallen
boring
into the underworld
and coming up
with stolen fire,
to quicken your dreary days.

We are the dead who died
for your sins,
not for pleasure or for pay,
not some poor sods on a sunken cruise-ship off on holiday.
We live in Sodom and Gomorrah
with salt sea all around.
We mine a prehistoric wood
to fuel your luxury.

We go out in a blaze of glorious blinding light,
the cold sea
and the carcass of a rig
our only grave,
as body bags are flown
by helicopter to Valhalla by Valkyries.

We are the ghost pied pipers.
We crawl out of the deep
on hand and knee over the weed-strewn
moonlit sand
to entertain your children on the net.