Poem 196

The seminal Punch & Judy show I saw as a four or five year old obviously got in deep – the stressed out close-to-the-edge everyman oppressed by every layer of authority that society could muster, stalked by a crocodile, repeatedly losing his rag and feeding everyone through the mincer …

… I used the puppet parable as the framework for a third act of my play Jism which became surplus to the final two-act production … with the poem I’m trying to get inside the clogs of the modern self-centred and self-pitying about-to-snap Punch, framed by domestic violence and murder songs Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix and Patti Smith versions) and David Bowie’s Repetition …

( I like the mocking tone, the on edge claustrophobic nervous tension of it all, and the openness of the final image – is the sausage machine code for a better more virile lover, a clue that the roles might be reversed this time round leading to Mrs. Punch feeding him through the mincer, or a foreshadowing/reminder that his ultimate destination and that of everyone is the meat grinder, our lives no more distinct from each other than one sausage in a string … )

Punch

Mr. Punch is coming home from work
hey woodenhead
Mr. Punch skipped lunch
he had some things to sort out
in the office
                        now look here woodenhead …

Mr. Punch is hungry
he's going to eat his wife
he's going to eat his baby
he's going to eat that car
he loves all those chrome strips
hey woodenhead where you going with that
freemason handshake?

Mr. Punch he said to his wife
he said
fucking hell honey
it's like an aquarium out there
Mr. Punch said can't you hear those insects
those insects in the larval stage
chewing
I can't sleep for the sound of the splinters cracking
I got some sort of sinus problem
I got creosote breath
I keep finding scaly varnish on the shoulders
of my suit
yesterday I thought there was an alligator looking in the window
saying hey
woodenhead
hey woodenhead
I caught your wife messing around with that
sausage machine again ...