The Poetry of
Spike Milligan
Manic Depression

The pain is too much
A thousand grim winters
   grow in my heqad.
In my ears
   the sound of the
   coming dead.
All seasons
All sane
All living
All pain.
No opiate to lock still
   my senses
Only left,
   the body locked tenses.
Myxomatosis

A baby rabbit
With eyes full of pus
Is the work of scientific us
The Children of Aberfan

And now they will go wandering
Away from coal black earth,
The clean white children,
   holy as the Easter rose,
Away from the empty sludge-filled         desks,
Away from the imprisoned spring
   that opened its mouth
   to breathe air
   and moved a black mountain
   to find it.
So,
Away they shall go-- the children,
   wandering-- wondering
   more loved
   more wanted
   than ever.
I don't burn coal any more.
Values '67

Pass by citizen
   don't look left or right
Keep those drip dry eyes straight ahead.
A tree?  Chop it down-- it's a danger
   to lightning!
Pansies calling for water,
   Let 'em die-- queer bastards--
Seek comfort in the scarlet, labour
   saving plastic rose
   Fresh with the fragrance of Daz!
Sunday!  Pray citizen;
   Pray no rain will fall
   On your newly polished
   Four wheeled
   God.

   Envoi.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Get it out with Optrex.
Oberon

The flowers in my garden grow down.
Their colour is pain
Their fragrance sorrow.
Into my eyes grow their roots
feeling for tears
To nourish the black
hopeless rose
within me.
Values '68

The Prince is dying
'Give him air'.
Headlines!  Crisis!
Kennedy Shot!
The assassin captured
Too late!  Kennedy dies!
THe telegrams flow
And bury the body in-- Arlington.
Somewhere in Meekong
A prince of battle
   is blown into bloody meat.
No headlines
No crisis
And only
One telegram.
Love Song

If I could write words
Like leavews on an Autumn Forest floor
What a bonfire my letters would make.
If I could speak words of water
You would drown when I said
'I love you'.
Opus III

Your lustrious face
   made me aware
   my incompleteness
In you,
   hidden,
   my sleeping other half.
Help me--
Help me be complete.
Goliath

They chop down 100ft trees
To make chairs
I bought one
I am six foot one inch.
When I sit in the chair
I'm four foot two.
Did they really chop down a 100ft tree
To make me look shorter?
Hope

Just when I had made my today
Secure with safe yesterdays
I see tomorrow coming with its pale
   glass star called hope.
It shatters on impact
And falls like splinters of cruel rain
And I see the red oil of olife
   running from my wrists
   onto tomorrow's headlines.
Ulster, Derry 1972


When the only colour is black--
   the only sound
   the broken bell
Then talk to me about why.
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