THE HAVERSHAM FUNK

                                                       

 

           On Kirsty Allison: We are all the children at the temple of the burning sun – Unedited 02 

                                                         Poems for an album

 

 

 

If Miss Haversham had ever got 

                  To the disco 

 

She would have been kissed 

By fiancées 

 

And gifted them back

 

This starred book;

 

Kirsty Allison’s tome,

Which is words and web, string 

 

And echo,

Strung on high wires

 

That sting the inner eye

As it looks

 

On her poetry and her pose

At the starry edge

 

Of the chasm,

 

This tiny chapbook

That’s chatting

 

To the ghosts of both

Yeats and Plath.

 

Its smooth cover admits

A hand sewn poem diary

 

Charting her days in South London

Across the furthermost realms

 

Of love’s path.

 

Unedited One,

From which this hand crafted patchwork

 

Now shimmers,

Featured on a digital Hoarding

 

Above the Ace Hotel in Shoreditch.

A poetry first that crowned Allison’s

 

East End exodus and departure,

Each word patched from pavements

 

That rose to redress

What feels rich.

 

Luke Mclean designed there,

But this is a new Catalogue de la Kirsty,

 

With London/French chic and street stricture,

Blooming and burnt through each stitch.

 

I’m in a Lolita syndrome Universe

 

She declaims

 

 With 300 emails a day and bills I cannot pay

 

(Each word stains us)

 

And yet these exchanges

Across the lilac page

 

Incur wealth,

 

Poems for an album, (this is)

A kiss from her and Gil De Ray’s

 

Vagrant Lovers,

 

And beneath the touch of what’s printed

The music underneath

 

Strives through stealth.

It is in the design

 

And in the soft weave of image;

Portraits of the Girl

 

From West London

Who has travelled far

 

Into cool

 

A poet’s gallery

Framed from  Dr John Cooper Clarke

 

Back to Shelley,

Allison’s London Hauntings

Take each resonance back to school.

 

I don’t know when I started seeing ghosts

                             but the new ones all have cancer

 

She writes in The Ghosts of St. Leonards

And all at once there is vision

 

And the stirring of streams

Through the white.

 

Night terrors. Breached crypts.

Footsteps disappeared in vibrations.

 

In these lyrics and odes you hear basslines

Bedding lost lovers sighs as she writes.

 

Snapshots of the girl

In her one woman war on convention,

 

Ersatz French spikes tongues’ sister:

I’m on your case, debase moi  

 

Here, then are poems as prize

In this pamphlet as totem,

 

Its soft carress, like her kisses

Lays held in the clasp of life’s scar.

 

These are poems for an album she shares

With Gil De Ray her found lover,

 

Their vagrancy is position

In opposing the housing  codes of the day.

 

A Cold Lips exchange

Where the warmth within

 

Words and flowers

(these are used as verbs!)

 

And where the ashed veil is lifted

To rouse a ruined love from death’s sway.

 

These are the songs we can sing

Without string or pattern,

 

Without key or echo,

As they play valves of the mind, soul and heart,

 

And they bear the sharp imprint too

Of a found romance across ruin,

 

In which  ancient control and desire’s

Infernal database play their part.

 

Paradise burns.

Serpent rear and rise through each sentence.

 

Endangerment settles,

Then smears the angel’s wing

 

With wine stains.

Boughs are ‘scummed’ and reclaimed

 

By Kirsty’s sad skid row sailors.

Here is New York in a dream haze

 

And the Soho of the past and ‘Paree:’

Genet lingers closeby, lost on the docks,

 

And eager for cock, Cocteau blossoms,

Meanwhile the London glow glowers

 

In an astral entranced shadow maze.

 

The book blisters, then bloods,

Then heals as it dances

 

Across the crap in the cupboard,

Phantasmagorical crunch

 

Marks words’ way.

 

This is a small pamphlet of stars

Packed with a one woman cosmos.

 

It is the remains of life lifting

The ancient veil

 

For love’s say.

 

The Vagrant lovers astound.

And we are all vagrant lovers.

 

But in these words and writing

Even those who do not know they are lost

 

Have been found.

 

The sun burns.

Shadows splice.

 

But Kirsty Allison’s poems

Are words and thoughts

 

That refashion

 Our understanding

 

Of light:

 

 

Stay profound.

 

 

David Erdos 16th September 2019  
Photos: Carl Fox

 

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