After Oscar Wilde
"Civilisation is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt."
URSULA: The poets are still discussing poor Barry's disappearance.
MABEL: I should have thought they'd have got tired of that by now.
URSULA: Poets! Tired! It's the poetry of the tired and the tired writing poems -
MABEL: May dear Ursula, they have only been talking about it for the last two weeks. Since he stormed out after his big performance - he could have been famous, he could have had it all!
URSULA: It's an odd thing, but everyone who disappears is said to be seen in The Harvey.
MABEL: It's a delightful pub, and possesses all the attractions of the Hard Rock Cafe.
URSULA: What do you think has happened to Barry?
MABEL: I have not the slightest idea! If Barry chooses to hide himself, it is no business of mine.
URSULA: If he is dead, I don't want to think about him. Death terrifies me - that's it.
MABEL: Death and vulgarity are the best two things one can look forward to in Swindon.
URSULA: Let's take a sherry together up at The Harvey. You can read your latest poem.
MABEL: OK. I shall get my coat (sighs) Poor Barry, I was very fond of him.
URSULA: This house is so lonely without him. Of course he is merely a habit, a bad habit. But then one regrets the loss of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most.
MABEL: Ursula, has it occurred to you that Barry may have been murdered?
URSULA: Barry is very popular and always wears Hi-Viz. He'd be difficult to murder. Why should he have been murdered? He was not clever enough to have enemies.
MABEL: Roy?
URSULA: Roy doesn't count. He is really dull and not up to any murdering.
MABEL: He writes poems, he could also murder. He told me years ago, that he had a wild adoration for you, that you were the dominant motive of his poems.
URSULA: I am fond of Roy. But he is not clever, or civilised.
MABEL: I know there are dreadful places in Swindon, and Barry was the sort of person to go to them.
URSULA: Crime belongs exclusively to the lower orders. I don't blame them, but Roy is above that.
MABEL: I don't think Barry would have done much more good work any how. His poems were going off a bit.
URSULA: When you and he ceased to be great friends. He ceased to be a great poet. It's a habit bores have.
MABEL: Oh Barry was never boring,
"Like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart"
URSULA: Yes, that is what it was like! (laughing) How grave you are. Don't be so serious.
Domestic Cherry 4
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WITHOUT POSTAGE
For overseas postage please see HERE
DOMESTIC CHERRY 3
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WITH POSTAGE
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WITHOUT POSTAGE
Billy Bob, Poet?
I wasn’t sure if you were
the body builder Billy Bob or
THE POET.
A foul-mouthed hatred
that stunk out the Poetry
Book Society: all your dirty
frothing and filth to tell
the truth? Billy Bob – your insult
beginning with Rocky
Horror on your wall will kill
us, Dammit Billy Bob!
us, Dammit Billy Bob!
We can’t all be ugly and clever
from Oxford waving a PHD and
a terrible poem , or two (yourself).
My advice, like your advice,
is stop! This car-park
scuffling with poetry is not
necessary
or dangerous. It is Tesco
on a bad day
with all the cup-cakes sold out.
Mrs Hongo
Mrs Hongo is a poet and horse rider from Devon. She was disappointed not to be included in the Next Generation list, after her collection, Elvis Lives in a Honolulu Anagram was published in 2011, but she wishes all on the list well! 'What a top list!' she cried. Mrs Hongo blogs HERE, sometimes.
Domestic Cherry has its own list. Let poets eat cake we say: CAKES
Mrs Hongo is a poet and horse rider from Devon. She was disappointed not to be included in the Next Generation list, after her collection, Elvis Lives in a Honolulu Anagram was published in 2011, but she wishes all on the list well! 'What a top list!' she cried. Mrs Hongo blogs HERE, sometimes.
Domestic Cherry has its own list. Let poets eat cake we say: CAKES
Advice page for sour poets: MAKE IT REAL
Cakes
Domestic Cherry's top ten cakes to dominate the sweet
bread-like treat landscape over the next ten years. You can find all of these
cakes at www.tesco.com/cakes/topten
Angel Cake: Mr Kipling
Battenburg: Lyons
Bakewell Slice: Mr Kipling
Carrot Cake: Marks and Spencer's
Jamaica Ginger Cake: McVities
French Fancies: Mr Kipling
Viennese Whirls: Mr Kipling
Chocolate Mini Rolls: Cadburys
Banana Lunch Box Loaves: Soreen
Lemon Layer Slices: Mr Kipling
A Woman Can Cross Dress: The end of Mabel and the beinning of Barry
See Part 1 HERE
"It’s something useless, sudden, violent; something that costs a life; red, blue, purple; a spirit; a splash; like those hyacinths (she was passing a fine bed of them); free from taint, dependence, soilure of humanity or care for one’s kind; something rash, ridiculous... ecstasy..." Virginia Woolf
Summary of part one: Mabel asks Barry for a kiss. Barry refuses. Mabel won't take 'No' for an answer (she's the editor of the greatest Int. poetry magazine: Domestic Cherry). Barry still refuses, poetry is poetry, there are no queens. Mabel faints. Barry slaps Mabel and leaves her to pick up some skips. Mabel pretends to be Cynthia and orders a skip. Barry delivers the skip to Cynthia's house. Mabel chases Barry. Barry is run down by a truck. Barry is dead.
"It’s something useless, sudden, violent; something that costs a life; red, blue, purple; a spirit; a splash; like those hyacinths (she was passing a fine bed of them); free from taint, dependence, soilure of humanity or care for one’s kind; something rash, ridiculous... ecstasy..." Virginia Woolf
Summary of part one: Mabel asks Barry for a kiss. Barry refuses. Mabel won't take 'No' for an answer (she's the editor of the greatest Int. poetry magazine: Domestic Cherry). Barry still refuses, poetry is poetry, there are no queens. Mabel faints. Barry slaps Mabel and leaves her to pick up some skips. Mabel pretends to be Cynthia and orders a skip. Barry delivers the skip to Cynthia's house. Mabel chases Barry. Barry is run down by a truck. Barry is dead.
Part 2:
Mabel takes the hi-viz jerkin off Barry’s dead body and runs to Ursula’s house. She collapses on Ursula’s front porch, clutching Barry’s jerkin. Ursula finds Mabel and tucks her into bed. Time makes a crinkly shape in the sky, and a strange noise.
Mabel takes the hi-viz jerkin off Barry’s dead body and runs to Ursula’s house. She collapses on Ursula’s front porch, clutching Barry’s jerkin. Ursula finds Mabel and tucks her into bed. Time makes a crinkly shape in the sky, and a strange noise.
100
years later
She stretched herself. She rose. She stood
upright in complete nakedness before us, and while the trumpets peeled Truth!
Truth! Truth! we have no choice left but to confess − she was a man. She was Mr. Barry
Dicks.
To be continued:
The launch of Domestic Cherry 4 with performance artist Diane Torr on Sunday 5th October, 2014. Meet Mabel as Barry. A Drag King Poetry Night with Mabel Watson, Clare Shaw and Myfanwy Fox! Music from the wonderful Faye Rogers.
www.swindonfestivalofpoetry.co.uk for tickets, residential weekend, and festival passes. Don Share of Poetry Magazine will be with us for the entire festival.
To be continued:
The launch of Domestic Cherry 4 with performance artist Diane Torr on Sunday 5th October, 2014. Meet Mabel as Barry. A Drag King Poetry Night with Mabel Watson, Clare Shaw and Myfanwy Fox! Music from the wonderful Faye Rogers.
www.swindonfestivalofpoetry.co.uk for tickets, residential weekend, and festival passes. Don Share of Poetry Magazine will be with us for the entire festival.
The end of Barry, the beginning of Mabel (Or Venus and Adonis in Swindon)
After Shakespeare (Venus and Adonis)
BARRY: I wish the sun would come out. It's looking rather purple out there. Makes me weep!
MABEL: You are late for collecting the skips today. I've already done three loads of washing.
BARRY: Why always compare us Mabel? I'll go when I'm ready. It was a late one up at the Harvey and those poets kept coming.
MABEL: I went home at 9pm Barry. You are so much better than myself, and I began to have unnecessary feelings for you during your recital of 'The Visible Man'. I wondered about you giving me a kiss!
BARRY: (Palms sweating) Now Mabel! Don't start this kissing thing again. I'm working ... and Ursula will object.
MABEL: Here! Come and sit ... I'll smother you with kisses. (Pulling Barry by the sweaty palm towards her)
BARRY: You are a lusty horse woman! Go and sit on your twin tub and think of Dickens!
MABEL: Oh you are a dull boy today Barry (Takes Barry under her arm, paddle agitator in the other). Come on, I'll be quick.
Mabel pushes Barry to the ground, strokes his cheek and purses her lips for kissing.
BARRY: (Pouting and frowning) You know the worst thing about this Mabel? The worst thing is that paddle agitator in my ribs.
MABEL: (Disappointed. Lips sulking) Why chide me like this Barry? (Crying)
BARRY: Ok Love. Come on. Let's kiss. (Offers up his lips)
As Mabel brings her lips to Barry. Barry takes his teeth out and grins.
MABEL: All I want is a bit of kissing. Why can't you oblige me just this once? Don't be coy. Touch my lips with those tough lips of yours. Look in my eye-balls, there your visibility lies.
BARRY: Look, no more of this love! The paddle agitator does break my ribs. I must remove.
MABEL: Your truck has more lust in it. You have taken my heart Barry.
BARRY: Now, this melancholic malcontent won't be helping anyone. And I need to be working, so let it drop Mabel. I've missed the bus now and it's your fault, keeping me with all your weird love stuff. I don't recognise you.
A war of looks is exchanged between them
MABEL: Why not stay then Barry? I'll make some tea.
BARRY: I know your kind of tea.
MABEL: Just imagine us naked in the bed - whiter than white! I don't know why you can't take advantage of this tea and lust I offer you.
BARRY: I just want to get to work Mabel, pick up a few skips, have a rummage. That's my love. You hurt my head with your whingeing; let us part, and leave this idle theme, this bootless chat: ope the door and let me get the bus.
MABEL: I have done my load , now it's press'd. How your looks and words kill me Barry (Mabel collapses in her lust and rejection)
Barry slaps Mabel's cheeks to revive her, believing she is dead. He wrings her nose, he strikes her on the cheeks, he bends her fingers, holds her pulses hard, he chafes her lips; a thousand ways he seeks to mend the hurt that his unkindness marr'd: he kisses her; and she, by her good will, will never rise, so he will kiss her still.
Suddenly she wakes and Barry and Mabel enjoy some loving.
Some hours later.
BARRY: Now I really must go. I have a skip to collect at 1pm and you have kept me far too long.
MABEL: And tomorrow? Tell me, Barry love, shall we meet to-morrow? Say, shall we? shall we?
BARRY: No; to-morrow I intends to collect more skips with certain of my friends.
MABEL: Those skips! I know you take Ursula with you (Going a sudden pale, trembles, throws her arms around his neck: sinks down, still hanging by his neck. Barry falls down upon Mabel's belly. Mabel covers him in more kisses)
BARRY: Now now! Let me go. You are crushing me.
MABEL: Oh do stay the night instead Barry. The skips can wait!
BARRY: I am going off you Mabel. I like you worse and worse. No, lady, no; my heart longs not to groan,
but soundly sleeps, while now it sleeps alone. (Exit Barry breaking out of Mabel's embrace)
Mabel's tedious woeful ditty:
How love makes young men thrall and old men dote;
How love is wise in folly, foolish-witty:
Her heavy anthem still concludes in woe,
And still the choir of echoes answer so.
Mabel takes a bus to Cynthia's house and uses her phone with a fake voice, the plastic mouth of it against her sore pale lips. She calls Barry, orders a skip, in a fake voice, to Cynthia's address, scowling. The world's poor people looking on from the street as Mabel stands and waits for Barry's skip.
How love is wise in folly, foolish-witty:
Her heavy anthem still concludes in woe,
And still the choir of echoes answer so.
Mabel takes a bus to Cynthia's house and uses her phone with a fake voice, the plastic mouth of it against her sore pale lips. She calls Barry, orders a skip, in a fake voice, to Cynthia's address, scowling. The world's poor people looking on from the street as Mabel stands and waits for Barry's skip.
MABEL: (Screaming in the street) Hard-favour'd tyrant, ugly, meagre, lean, hateful divorce of love,
grim-grinning ghost, earth's worm.
As the skip arrives with Barry at the wheel, he sees Mabel and flees from the truck into an on- coming car and is severely wounded.
As the skip arrives with Barry at the wheel, he sees Mabel and flees from the truck into an on- coming car and is severely wounded.
MABEL: (Running towards the death scene) Alas, poor world, what treasure hast thou lost!
With this, she falleth in the place she stood,
And stains her face with his congealed blood.
With this, she falleth in the place she stood,
And stains her face with his congealed blood.
CURTAIN
You can enjoy the Lucky Fin production of Venus and Adonis at the Swindon Festival of Poetry on Sunday 5th October at 6pm. See HERE for full details.
You can enjoy the Lucky Fin production of Venus and Adonis at the Swindon Festival of Poetry on Sunday 5th October at 6pm. See HERE for full details.
.
Men and Masters
After Dickens
BARRY: Well Mabel (in a windy manner). What's this I hear about Roy, refusing to be Mr. Tuttle's friend on Facebook, because he is friends with me?
MABEL: You know he is very sore Barry. And his book ... less said the better. He can be a pest, you are better off without him.
BARRY: I have reported him to the powers that be at Facebook management. He's a cyber bully!
MABEL: I wouldn't go that far. Just a bid sad.
BARRY: He has blackened my name to Mr. Tuttle. I didn't get my free bus pass last week, had to pay £2.45 to get to Lidl. Many cyberstalkers try to damage the reputation of their victim and turn other people against them.
MABEL: You should ask him to speak up for himself, like a man, since he is a man. Is he man?
BARRY: Ursula should know. There's history there.
MABEL: What kind of history?
BARRY: Just, history, his words not mine. I presume he means the history of some kind of sin. A wide-open comment. I am unsure, but he is certainly wary of me and lets the general public know. He is lowering my good name, or at least, that is his intent. Which is bullying in my book. He described me as a 'mischievous stranger' when I first met Ursula, this was on Twitter.
MABEL: He's just a mere specimen going in the wrong direction. Whereas you Barry. A man to be marvelled at. It can't be easy for Roy.
BARRY: His back-handed comments need to stop. He de-friended Murial Sparks when she wished me happy birthday on my wall and told her that anyone who wishes me happy birthday is no friend of his.
MABEL: Now that's something to complain of. Look how we live, and in what numbers, and by what chances, and with what sameness; and look how the twin-tub is always a going: death!
BARRY: Look how he considers us, and writes of us, and talks of us, and goes up with your deputations to the Poetry Society about us, and how he is always right, and how I is always wrong, and I never had a reason to sin, or write erotic Man-Lit! What planet is he on?
All the events, characters, and situations on this blog are a work of fiction. Any connection to real-life events is purely a coincidence and the writer takes no responsibility for the shame you might feel.
BARRY: Well Mabel (in a windy manner). What's this I hear about Roy, refusing to be Mr. Tuttle's friend on Facebook, because he is friends with me?
MABEL: You know he is very sore Barry. And his book ... less said the better. He can be a pest, you are better off without him.
BARRY: I have reported him to the powers that be at Facebook management. He's a cyber bully!
MABEL: I wouldn't go that far. Just a bid sad.
BARRY: He has blackened my name to Mr. Tuttle. I didn't get my free bus pass last week, had to pay £2.45 to get to Lidl. Many cyberstalkers try to damage the reputation of their victim and turn other people against them.
MABEL: You should ask him to speak up for himself, like a man, since he is a man. Is he man?
BARRY: Ursula should know. There's history there.
MABEL: What kind of history?
BARRY: Just, history, his words not mine. I presume he means the history of some kind of sin. A wide-open comment. I am unsure, but he is certainly wary of me and lets the general public know. He is lowering my good name, or at least, that is his intent. Which is bullying in my book. He described me as a 'mischievous stranger' when I first met Ursula, this was on Twitter.
MABEL: He's just a mere specimen going in the wrong direction. Whereas you Barry. A man to be marvelled at. It can't be easy for Roy.
BARRY: His back-handed comments need to stop. He de-friended Murial Sparks when she wished me happy birthday on my wall and told her that anyone who wishes me happy birthday is no friend of his.
MABEL: Now that's something to complain of. Look how we live, and in what numbers, and by what chances, and with what sameness; and look how the twin-tub is always a going: death!
BARRY: Look how he considers us, and writes of us, and talks of us, and goes up with your deputations to the Poetry Society about us, and how he is always right, and how I is always wrong, and I never had a reason to sin, or write erotic Man-Lit! What planet is he on?
All the events, characters, and situations on this blog are a work of fiction. Any connection to real-life events is purely a coincidence and the writer takes no responsibility for the shame you might feel.
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