Murder in the meadowland

Take a piece of grassland
Cover it all in concrete
Take a well heeled meadow
And march a thousand feet
and
squeeze perfect yellow lines
from the nozzle of nasty teat

those planners have a lot to answer for

those planners escape to sunny shores
on back handers
on ten granders
the cheat on wife non understanders
of bio diversity cambers
in the road
they are leeches
they are toads
fat on the profit
murdering the meadows
and killing the countryside

they ordered in the asphalt
orchestrated a monstrosity

Cue the motorist
Cue boy racer
Cue loud music tracer
Off the scrotes all firing off
Renault clio boom
On hp
Xr3I zoom 4 me
4 x 4 got no bloody room
to fit my head in

shopping trips
built where pond dips
where the norm
where clear water runs forlorn for cover
oh mother what have we done

The mums and filling the feeding troughs
Because they can
Because they have to
What happened to the corner shop
Why a man in rigger boots
With hard hat laying shoots
For his family
huge
And aspiring
Nature ignoring pile driving
Building
Dreams I don’t understand
they're
murdering meadowland

In the name of a car park

Or a pub
Or an office block
Or a jaw lock pizza hut blot
On the landscape
They Covered it in concrete

Go on cover it all in concrete!

And puke on it
And build a pub on it
And piss on it
And row on it
And drop litter on it
And screech on it
And scream on it
Stick chewing gum on it
And graze your knees on it
Lose your keys on it
Fit grids on it
Bang bin lids on it
stick burgers gherkins on it
bird shit on it
pecking paper bag litter patrol
enrol the moron robots
of McDonalds
And kings and queens
And buggers and dreams
Of schemes on it
And winning Asda team
Building on it
Team hugging tree bugging
Nightmare
Gone
Nothing
Wasteland
Supermarket
Pub cinema
Frankie and Benny
Lenny bloody henry comedy
Joking
Nut case
Aldi rat race cant face the facts
Grass verge and cut backs
Where’s the countryside
Going
Going
gone

Describes mankind infecting his surround percectly.

great read

Phil

This is brilliant, Pete.

It makes a valid point in a forthright and very rhythmical way.

I love the rhythm of this and would love to hear it performed. I could almost hear you in my head as I read this.

I really enjoyed this.

Hi Sophie

I agree with your criticisms on this poem

I have no idea at why I put Lenny Henry in there, I think its because he annoys me as much as the meadowland being bulldozed. However that is another story.

The corner shop bit is twee and awful.

The poem would benefit from a clean up, in its present form it is untidy.

It does perform very well though.
Its really interesting to see how a stream of conciousness develops and whilst it does not have to make sense, there is a craft in inserting nonsense to make it palatable. I am not sure I have grasped this craft.

that aside with some minor mods I'll be definately having this one on my regular set list.

It is a return to the more ranting form.

I have found that for noisy audience this works well, Love poems seem more appreciated when the room is quiet.

Hi Sophie

How are you today

Hey no, I am so pleased that your honesty review is there for me to read.

I agree with the points.
Sometimes If I write a poem with a rant performance in mind I will throw in words that make no sense as it underlines the rant. Sometimes if we shout at someone or have a row have you ever noticed you may just blurt out something obscure but with a deeper subconcious meaning?

like some of the freaudian slips?

in respect to my poem, the lenny henry bit was a few things.
hes good but he annoys me! dont know why!

also the black asphalt connection had undertones of a racial element in the poem ('fear of black planet ' song etc)

concrete can be an invasion, like say the Nazis mentioned the plans to 'eliminate the english motherland' they were advocates of concrete and the 'new vision' (take hitlers concrete holiday park on that little island)

so the feeling of invasion may have been on my mind in terms of refugees / political correctness etc.

also there is a comedy when you see what the developers get up to in order to beat planning laws, they will fudge eco reports, bribe people etc to get the black stuff down (tarmac)

(gonna write a poem called TARMAC ADAM ! )

so Lenny Henry MAY have popped in my mind because of the connotations.

so it depends.

the corner shop bit I agree is way to obviuos