Ode To The ‘itcha Poem by Rod M.Peters

(to Noel Fielding)

Stirring rhymes can come your way
Billowing from unlikely quarters
Like whiffs of scented smoke
Floating through dank alleys.
For if the infamous cockney poet
That the natives of Bethnal Green
Dub simply as The ‘itcha,
Is not hitching a ride
From well-meaning motorcar drivers,
Telling them crazy stories
About his oversize green thumb
Being raped by an angry wasp,
He's happy to cuddle up to any old piano
To bang away one of his little tunes
And regale listeners with some of his
Bourgeois-blasting poetry.

Then it's hard not to be struck
By clashing feelings:
The urge to drown your hearing aid
In a glass of stout,
And the morbid fascination of entering
A lunatic asylum and not knowing
What will turn up ‘round the next bend.

Certain as the day of reckoning,
The sight of this unrepentant
Cut-throat singing about eels
In mad Victorian attire, jackboots
And undertaker's top-hat
Can easily make you wince,
But you're always left with snatches of his
Somewhat raunchy lyrics
Rattling in your mind like
Roasted chestnuts in a warm pocket,
And he sure can deliver poignant verses
About encroaching deafness
And his feeling of inadequacy
And alienation in a world
Grown cynic and intolerant
With any vestige of Victorian romanticism:
‘I woz obsolete,
I couldn't ‘ear the beat'
Staggering about
In me ol' man's feet'

Little did I know that before too long,
I too would be cast under the spell
Of his switch-blade rhymes
And poetic psycho-babble
Longing to hear his raspy voice
Singing once more through yellow teeth
Those deep-felt couplets
About the explosive power of words
And how poetry always reaches out
To touch a tender spot in us:

‘I'll letterbomb your anus (he sang….)
I'll letterbomb your anus: BANG-BANG! '

Though I can easily see
How this can be judged by some
As being just plain vulgar.