Day One Rabbit
"Every time a rabbit comes out of its burrow, it is facing Vietnam the whole of its life ..." Allen Carr (R.I.P.)
they call me pirate dave just to piss me off i am the vietnam rabbit coming out of a hole out of a burrow blown to bits i am a rabbit coming out of my hole every day for the rest of my life it's vietnam i'm on pirate radio for twenty one days bury me face down so you can all kiss my arse i am a white rabbit on pirate radio this is my story don't call me dave i'm fragging myself i'm fire in a hole i'm a rabbit on fire in a hole it's vietnam on the radio pirates coaxing rabbits out of holes a memory of a bitumen street at home i was just dave no one bothered to check if that was okay by me well fuck you all i am a rabbit you can call me pirate dave i was watching tv when vietnam happened we were eating tv dinners in front of vietnam on a tv my father made himself from a kit it was his birthday when they rolled the dice & he was gone in a puff of smoke someone calls it magic i called it vietnam i got kicked out of the band because they had too many daves in the lineup already so i volunteered for chopper duty started smoking watching puffs of smoke from the relative luxury of some chinook in the sky i dreamed of rabbits in fluffy white cloud uniforms coming out of holes in the sky above vietnam we were all smiles for the tv i saw my mother's face in that camera's lens & blessed america dove into that hole full of pirates all named dave on tv daves pulled faces from barrells full of birthdays dad's was one of them off he went a puff of smoke cigarette dangling from his jazzy lip the tv stopped working the day he left i bought a magician's cape & started fooling around with mirrors magic dave they called me fuck them all i said what's your name pal he said richard nixon i said how about if i called you dickhead he said fine by me & disappeared in a puff of smoke that didn't come from a cigarette it came from vietnam where we smoke rabbits out of holes not just the white ones but the red and blue ones too i was colour blind as noah i had a rabbit his name was charlie he never called me dave just sat there smoking cigarettes day in day out listening to duke ellington driving me crazy with that stuff he was smoking charlie i said you ever meet richard nixon say what day's your birthday charlie never answered back just put those headphones on & ignored me my penitentiary was the graveyard shift insufficient wattage to spook charlie who never did dig the radio anyway stuck in his hole smoking cigarettes charlie started turning blue right in front of me started coughing up red gunk from his lungs started turning white as vietnam on a high school map that was the hole they said dave you gotta get into that hole you gotta save that rabbit & i said hey don't call me dave i'm vietnam i'm pirate radio & i am no fucking maggot i'm twenty one days of rumour control twenty one nights of vietnam smokes & rabbits coming out of my arse i had a hard on for radio jane fonda she's a foxy rabbit in a puff of smoke it all disappeared wiped those tapes couldn't bear to hear the loops winding over & over vietnam awol dave i am a pirate rabbit clambering out of the hole the grenades bounce off me as i yell fugazi or sebadoh running towards the px the depot every time a rabbit comes out of its burrow
Comments
nice work. nice, nice work.
it's a bit angry... i like it though.
did you bang it out in one sitting? with line breaks, or do they come after?
thanks for your comment. The poem does probably require a bit of an explanation - it was written in response to the death of anti-smoking guru Allen Carr, from whose book the quote is taken. It's also a response to the urban myth (recently verified) of the GI in Vietnam who went under the call-sign of White Rabbit (I think - I'm paraphrasing here) and who broadcast a pirate radio show from Saigon for three weeks during the war there. So yes, it is a bit angry, I guess ... but thanks for the props. I sometimes wonder whether explaining a piece destroys its meaning or mystery - but in this case, as I said, it's surely useful information for curious readers. Nice chickens, by the way.