Sharp Cockneys

Everyone’s informing me I oughter be a geezer,
I should be Ebenezer the fracas-patois dealer,
not a touchy-feeler of Keats and Blake, for Ronnie’s sake, or a cheeky rapscallion,
but a dead-‘ard stallion whinnying medallioned maxims off a balcony,
until beer-sickness smacks him, about the secrets of alchemy.
They’re trying to blindfold me with my own tongue,
counting dropped aitches like we’re not on the same rung,
lecturing through shuttered eyes gutterised mucky lies:
You’re nothing unless you’re in with the tougher guys,
true caterpillars don’t become butterflies.
Well, hush up, listen and prepare to be debunked
or the Cockney accent, character and history are sunk
and the Artful Dodger can consider himself defunct.
Hello. My name is, my name is, my name is mongrel corn.
Not a lot of people know dat dis town’s being unborn.
Don’t throw bloody spurious “I is proper feral”
bull mastiff accents at me. Ignore me at your peril.

Sharp Cockneys recognise full-stops,
we muck out pigs, we plant the crops.
Screw your cliché-speak,
your ne’er-do-well chic,
some of us read more than jazz-mags and red-tops!

Now Britain’s as barren as Northern Siberia,
all that’s left is immaterial streetsy-imperial inferior opium for the
downer-with-the-kids-than-thou,
more-bullshit-than-the-holiest-cow,
cool streetsy streetsy cool denigrating denizens of cool,
mimicking gimmicks with the zeal of a cockatiel,
acidic as “Teddy Bears’ Picnic” on a glockenspiel.
I yawn as you jostle for this fossil of a format,
this “I represent every council house doormat”,
all navvyer-savvyer-chavvyer-sitting-on-the-lavvyer-than-thou,
all tackier-what’s-Czechoslovakia-my-rhymes-are-cackier-
where’s-my-baccyer-than-thou
as you make your suave passes at the crasser, suaver classes like there’s nothing to life but puffing on grass and glancing at underpasses through rosy-varnished glasses.
What a crock of rot!
You lot don’t care a jot for those who slave or beg or squat,
all this country trots out is “Look how generous we’ve got”
ignore-the-proles political correctness,
turn Tommy into a feckless gibbon in a necklace,
never look his way when he’s got something to say
apart from “Nice one! Sorted, geezer! Fair play!”

Sharp Cockneys don’t just trivialise,
we can think about things that might surprise.
We are anarchists,
we’re social-nationalists,
so open your gritty gritty gritty gritty eyes!

Oh, but now you say we’re all identical to each other
and that Kensington’s Peckham’s Hollywood’s Calcutta
so drape yourself in gold, guzzle perfume, scatter talc
until your torso’s whiter than one on a catafalque,
applaud classless raceless pointless chavs for talking dross,
of intellectual dossers who brand real artists tossers
as though they’re rowing love-boats that’ll always capsize
and are never to be found staring down at their jap’s eyes,
You can all Chandon and Moëtly jeer that poetry’s queer,
like Ian Dury only drank low alcohol beer.
Reasons to be fearful: the end’s approaching near
and all you can do is highfalute floppily against nothing that pollutes properly.
Flagless, you salute sloppily and you just
don’t
get it.

We know, we intelligent grafters,
not you bourgeois liberal piglet-shafters
with the truths you designed
in your empty wide-open minds,
howling “Fascist!” to the mock-Tudor rafters.