Swizzle Stick

A Great Big Shining Star

April 25: Music — write a(nother) poem in response to a particular song or larger musical work (or, alternatively, to a jukebox situation connected to “drunken barroom layabouts” to quote Harlow Flick)


I have seen Miss Clarietta
(in two dimensions, as a vision)
riding round on her lambretta

dancing to Miss Clarietta's Rag
reimagining cloth remnants in my bag
I would make Miss Clarietta

as a piece of naive sculpture
satin, kapok, chicken wire
with a great big shining star

to show her where you are
tinfoil, tinsel, isobar
lovely flowers of crepe paper

features of her stocking face
are painted on like make-up, lashy,
lips of carmine tart & trashy

dress of second-hand magenta
poet sleeves a-dripping lace
diamantes in the centre

nylon tresses, nests of hair
piled high, a tower, with messy spill
& pinned-in plastic flowers

she's the queen of mountain magic
on a ruby-red lambretta
please send her the love you've stored away

now that you've seen the queen, Miss Clarietta