Fourteen and paper-round poor
Who can aspire to acquire a Gibson?
Do more than admire a high-definition
Glossy Gretsch brochure by mail?
The back-lit curvaceous air-brushed guitars
‘Tennessee Rose’ ‘Cadillac Green’ ‘Maple-Leaf Stain’
Desirously we passed them round in school
(Let non-players keep their Playboy)
Some ‘semi-pro’ iconoclasts
Claimed hollow-body Gretsch ‘feed-back’ and ‘scream’
On shared small stages ‘howl’ and ‘moan’
(Guitars are so prophetically inclined)
‘What you need is a natural blond
Telecaster easy to maintain –
Because cosmetics can deceive
Even serve to hide the inauthentic’
Most settled for a Hofner or a Hopf
A Framus or a Burns or Fenton-Weil l –
The Watkins Copycat
Box-of-tricks translated them to ‘wobble’
Sonic birdsong ‘warbled’ by tape-echo
The Selmer catalogue was green and brown –
Its factory-shade designed for ‘factory-fodder’
Escaping to beat-freedom on the Never-Never
All ‘promise’ made provisional on tick
‘Too loud for village halls’
Rain dripped from the Dannimacs
Headscarves over Vosene perms and sets
Their tense and tweedy farm-lads in white sox
And there shall be time…
Time enough to set aside
Rotating weekly Disc and Record Mirror
Clearasil cover for pop’s pantomime
A poet lifts the mask on many things
Delivers you whole from T.V. dreams
He does not drug you
When he ‘goes electric’
Hurling at the Internet
His democratic gauntlet
.
Bernard Saint
Illustration: Claire Palmer
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