HEATHCOTE WILLIAMS

DEAR 

HEATHCOTE WILLIAMS

So sorry I met you so late

But better late than never

You’re now my new working class hero

Next to Noam Chomsky

And few others without names nor history

Your first ‘poem’ I read

Royal Babylon

Really blew me away

And then The Lord of the Drones and Forbidden Fruit

Every word hits the nail

And then my wife procured The Sacred Elephant

Your voice on CD

Perfect diction

With detached passion

All so true

Now I wait for your other works to arrive

And I read about you on Wikipedia

You did what with Jean Shrimpton and Marianne Faithful?

You’re quite a star in your own right

Talented in every medium

You’re 71 now, 6 years older than I am

Surely rich in experience and a few dollars

Well earned for a retirement you most probably don’t want

In a London that still swings from side to side

In an England that has produced the music to live by

What a shame you have to share it

With the Queen, the Tories and the Labour lorries

And all the people that kill the flies like Obama

And all the soldiers that massacre elephants and whales

Do you wish they’d migrate to another planet?

Why is everything as it is

When you know what everything should be?

Why can’t the average Englishman be like you?

Why do we die like your proverbial flies?

Please answer me and the Syrians still alive!

YOURS SINCERELY

COMFORTABLY NUMB