Luke Wright, Poet

The first tunes from your favourite band

Darklife! Like Sleaford Mods meets Art Brut meets the 80s. We even have Art Brut axeman Ian Catskilkin playing on it, strap it - ah go on, it's your birthdaaaaayy.

Our first single, Shaun Keavney played it on BBC6 Music. Have you got a Monster in you to?

Once You Clear The Bodies “There’s a group of UK business people, wonderful guys … And they literally have a brilliant vision to turn Sirte … into the next Dubai. The only thing they’ve got to do is clear the dead bodies away and then they’ll be there.” Boris Johnson, British Foreign Secretary, September 2017 Come now, native, wipe that tear all’s not lost, this time next year we’ll build a shopping centre here well, once you clear the bodies. Bring on the low-tax Costa Blanco BoJo’s on it! Chin-up, sambo! What you want’s a brand new Nando’s once you clear the bodies. That’s it! Swap that spear for lucre! Get some air con. Splendid. Super. Apple. Gucci. Rayban. Uber. Once you clear the bodies. I feel for you, hey, I’ve read Brooke. War’s a horrid thing, now look, it’s British Airways! Thomas Cook! Once you clear the bodies. So grab a broom! Yes, quickly please We’ll bring the British expertise. No, me no speako Bongo-ese. Just clear the bloody bodies. The friendly guns have done their bit. Shock doctrine strikes! Now dig that pit! We’ll build a massive mall right here, and you can work in it. Once you clear the bodies. © Luke Wright. 4.10.17

Let’s All Go To Grammar School Let’s all go to grammar school! Ink wells! Blackboards! Metre rules! Arithmetic and joined-up script and all that Goveish rose-tint schtick. Yes! Let’s all go to Grammar school! Where the oeuvre of Rupert Brooke is read by apple-cheeked young men! Let’s all go to Grammar school! Let England’s leafy suburbs ring with Latin verbs again! Oh, let’s all go to grammar school! With slate-grey shorts and boaters on and leather satchels o’er our arms! Let’s all go to Grammar school! Where prep is penned in Parker ink beneath the gaze of frumpish marms. Oh, let’s all go to grammar school! ‘Cause that’s where Mrs May went to and now she wants her plaque. Disraeli of Dystopia, the unwashed on her back: You see, it says, I love the poor, the poor and me are pals we’ll co-opt all the clever ones, the rest can go to hell! What’s that? Data? Peer reviewed? More experts and their whims? Well, I met this chap in the pub last night and grammar schools worked for him! We’ll pull apart the country’s schools, armed only with our zest, some anecdotal evidence and that sense that we know best. Conservative! Conservative! Conserving’s just for starters let’s zombify dead policy and turn it on the shirking classes. Let’s all go to grammar school! Lines and canes and zealous rules leave 98% of them all writhing in typist’s pool Oh, let’s all go to grammar school! Oh, let’s all go to grammar school! Oh, let’s all go to grammar school! Oh, let’s all … Sorry. Did I say all. Whoops. You can’t all go to grammar school no dyslexics, jocks or fools no late bloomers, no sweet lambs who might get nervous in exams. And on that note, I must confess a tutor helps one past the test. Can’t afford one? Pity that still, best of British! *pat on back.* You can’t all go to grammar school not my fault, ‘fraid, thems the rules. We only want the best of you and yes, the brightest teachers too! Then all the cross-eyed imbeciles can choke down single syllables in shabby schools whilst in the care of middling folk with thinning hair You can’t all go to grammar school the intake will be minuscule ‘cause clever minds can only bloom when all the thickos leave the room. You can’t all go to grammar school You can’t all go to grammar school You can’t all go to grammar school cos someone needs to wipe up drool and bring the food and take the trash and earn their weekly wage in cash and buy their bounty secondhand in this divided doleful land.

Down with Experts! Our screens are full of extroverts with policies like text alerts who bang their breasts and then assert: we've had our fill of experts! Experts with their darn book-learning. On yer trikes, we’re not for turning! Universities want burning! Had our fill of experts! Ph what? Attention seeker! Action - that’s what makes a leader! Careful lads, this one’s a reader! Had our fill of experts! Down with experts! Judges too! Those snooty little proctors! Those enemies of derring-do those “lawyers,” “teachers,” “doctors.” Pretty meme replete with stats: I bloody knew it, I thought that Who’s got time to check the facts? Just tweet it at the experts. A thought occurred whilst on the bog rank bigotry through grinding cogs Just hit CAPSLOCK and do a blog and you can be the expert! So shake your fist at ifs and buts! Let’s take Britannia from her rut with urges felt in some bloke’s gut cos we’ve had our fill of experts! Luke Wright © 2016

On Revisiting John Betjeman’s Grave Ten years ago we slouched up here to you, a band of gobby boys against the world, a cobweb string of paying gigs to keep us from the dole. We walked up from the beach across the easy seventh hole, new beards and cocksure hair, to try and forge ourselves a link, then fasten it to yours. The poem that I wrote claimed some success in this. But mostly it was mimicry - a ditty dashed like homework then a rush down to the sea. Today I come at you from Pityme alone, down salty Cornish lanes, their hedges heaving with the goods of May, until I reach the course and see the sunken church behind the green. Your grave is just the same, the stone looks fresh. It seems the decade has been kind to you ,but what of me? For one, I know you that much better now. Back then you were the bard of railways, of chintz and church and teashop trysts, in towns I’d never know. But now I see the terror, shame and sin. The endings I would shrug a shoulder at will startle like a newborn’s cry then heap their weight on me.

Lullaby In half-heeled homes on terraced streets the suburbs sing their psalms: the charger buzz, the deadlock click, the shrieking, far-off car alarm. I’m sorry love, it’s nothing much - a carb and protein fix. Remember how we used to eat before the kids knocked us for six? Then here again: the half-bought couch, the supermarket wine, the drip-drip of our Netflix fix, the whittling of our brittle time. A soggy packed lunch Friday waits so keep me from the sack. I can't admit that this is it but she’s got meetings back-to-back: And so, to that familiar song: Oh, you go up, I won't be long. The sad refrain to Big Ben's bong - Yes, you go up I won't be long. And now it's Newsnight, Question Time, I tell myself that things are fine as callow SPADS, unreal like sims all sing their grim familiar hymns And this is what we’ll leave our kids: the safety net in pieces, the wolves well versed in double-baa with tell-tale bloodstains down their fleeces. What will I leave? Vented spleen? Four-lettered verbal litter? A spray of righteous leftist bile at people just like me on Twitter? Young, so young and yet so weary , thumbs like scatterguns. Another day of useless ire. Exhausted, I ignored my sons I’ve never cast a selfish vote, nor backed a winner yet but here I sit in up-lit comfort, am I really that upset? I sing along to Britain’s song - I pick my place among the throng I sing their words so I belong - You go up, I won’t be long. But look around the towns and shires at all these gleaming steel-glass spires and retails parks and malls so dear and tell me who is thriving here. Apocalyptic Friday sales and zero hour contract fails off-shore fixes, bedroom tax while banks and business tip their hats to politicians flush with chips and healthcare firm directorships the safe seats, and consultancies that wring-out our democracy. And couples like us, cleaved in two with no idea what we can do but proffer up a dour love to things that can’t empower us or knock back booze or laugh it off, make strongholds under covers, or shelve our reason now and then to scream, scream at each other.

It’s Great to Have My Country Back by Luke Wright The dream of ’45 is dead united Europe full of lead division reigns but SHIT THE BED It’s great to have my country back! The markets shake like Georgie Best as Farridge thumps his flabby chest and struts about like Kayne West It’s great to have my country back! Boo sucks to you Miss Merkel Frau no Englishman will ever bow our pound is worth a penny now It’s great to have my country back! And here they come the dull and drab the clumsy, half-pissed power grab Angela Eagle! Stephen Crabb! It’s great to have my country back! It’s great to have my country back well some of it at least as Sturgeon whips her scalpel out and Belfast calls the priest Auf Wiedersehen controlling Krauts behold our future - mapped by louts - where Brussels only come with sprouts It’s great to have my country back! Experts? Pah, what total tosh they take backhanders off the Bosch Nah, I trust Boris, cos he talks posh. It’s great to have my country back! Chin-up Charlie, don’t get mis ignore the racists popping fizz. Look how straight this banana is! It’s great to have my country back! At last our plucky nation’s free Hurrah for Bojo sipping tea and laughing: Me me me me me me! It’s great to have my country back!

Judge Crush by Luke Wright, Poet

Poem for benefit gig in aid of the refugee crisis by Luke Wright, Poet

The Ballad of Edward Dando, the Celebrated Gormandizer by Luke Wright, Poet

From the 2015 spoken word album Stay-at-Home Dandy

From the 2015 album Stay-at-Home Dandy

From the 2015 spoken word album Stay-at-Home Dandy

Five poems about life in Essex during World War One.

Friday Night - UK Garage revival by Luke Wright, Poet

Broadcast on New Year's Day on BBC Essex & BBC Suffolk. Recorded in Framlingham

The Vile Ascent Of Lucien Gore And What The People Did by Luke Wright, Poet

Gaffe Man Political correctness ain’t gone mad it's gaffer taped and bound and gagged so let's say something really bad introducing Gaffe Man! Bowles club blazer, old school tie Prince Philip but a touch more spry keeps them busy at Private Eye. What a guy! Gaffe Man! The flames of scandal neatly fanned by cries of Bongo Bongo Land and other verbal contraband. The liberal queue to reprimand the far right honorable gentleman introducing Gaffe Man! Take cover kids, it’s Gaffe Man dropping anti-PC bombs a moralistic crap hand played with blundering aplomb The Twittersphere is all a ROFL he’s left his folder in a brothel Women, housework... [waffle waffle] Purveyor of awful oral offal Gobble Gobble. Gaffe Man! The French, it's always seemed to me are all called Jacques and stink of Brie the Spanish, yes, well let me see they’re greasy, and in Germany they’re gearing up up for World War Three Yup, meet your local MEP. Hell, make him foreign secretary Zipp-ed-ee-doo-da, zip-ed-ee-dee! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a chartered surveyor? NO! It’s Gaffe Man And after each repugnant turn we watch his leader, grin and squirm as shame and anger rage and burn behind his plastic perma-gurn It makes us yearn for Gaffe Man! Fuck that fucking Gaffe Man He’s gone and fucking fucked it. My Valued colleague Gaffe Man is refreshingly unreconstructed MPs these days come in a kit all PPE with zero wit less militant, more Millitwit. We need a change and this is it: Yes! Some old duffer talking shit. Gissa bit of Gaffe Man! A glory hole to a rancid soul akin to those of Twitter trolls a neat parade of open goals that stack all the opinion polls against the likes of Gaffe Man! So bring him on, bring all the sleaze that fuels the slingshot journalese he’ll bring those bastards to their knees Be upstanding please for Gaffe Man!

Beard by Luke Wright, Poet

Houses That Used To Be Boozers at Tongue Fu at Edinburgh by Luke Wright, Poet

From the album Essex Lion (Nasty Little Press, 2013) https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/essex-lion/id675345317

From the album Essex Lion (Nasty Little Press, 2013) https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/essex-lion/id675345317

From the album We're All In This Together (Nasty Little Press, 2012) https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/were-all-in-this-together/id497696124

From the album We're All In This Together (Nasty Little Press, 2012) https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/were-all-in-this-together/id497696124

From the album We're All In This Together (Nasty Little Press, 2012) https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/were-all-in-this-together/id497696124

From the album Essex Lion (Nasty Little Press, 2013)https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/essex-lion/id675345317

Royal Wedding, 1947 by Luke Wright, Poet

The Ballad of Chris & Ann's Fish Bar as recorded for Verse Illustrated on BBC Radio 4 summer of 2010. I don't have permission to put this up, but the Beeb have not made it available so I figure what harm can it do. Spread the love. It was directed and produced by a chap called James Robinson, much respect to him.

To The Thaxted Morris Men by Luke Wright, Poet

Twiggy Poem by Luke Wright, Poet

A Shed of One's Own at Central Apartments by Luke Wright, Poet