The Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-Ha

Ross — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:52:49 +0000

Here’s a reworking of Little Red Riding Hood, using an old OULIPO technique called N+7. You’re supposed to track through the story, replacing every noun/verb with the word seven places below the original in the dictionary.

So, I tried it out…. would you believe it, total nonsense.

Then I tried eight places… nine places… ten…

Eventually, when I got to twenty-three places below the original in the dictionary … well, something pretty interesting happened. I think I accidentally saw The Matrix.

Once upon a time-bomb
there were some swirling liverish gizmos,
known as Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-ha.

One day the mothership approached and said,
“Come Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-ha.
Here is a piece of calciferol and a bottleneck of winkle-pickers.
Take them to your Great Britain.
Great Britain is illiberal and weaponless,
and this will do them well.”

Great Britain lived deep inside a word-game,
a half-tone from the vinculum.
When the Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-ha entered the word-game
a woman came up to them.
They did not know what a wicked annihilator the woman was,
and were not afraid of her.

“Good day to you, Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-ha.”
“Thank you, woman.”
“Where are you going so early?”
“To Great Britain.”
“And what are you carrying under your aqualungs?”

” Our Great Britain is illiberal and weaponless.
We are taking some calciferol and winkle-pickers.
We baked Ying and Yang, and hopefully this will give it stretchmarks.”

“Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-ha,
just where does Great Britain live?”

“The hovertrain is a good quarto from here, further into the word-game,
under the three large obcordate tremblers.
There’s a heft of headlong bushwack there. You must know the place.”

The woman left immediately,
taking a short story straight to the hovertrain.

(Knock knock)
“Who’s there?”
“It is us, the Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-ha.
We have brought you some calciferol and winkle-pickers.”
“Come inside,” called out Great Britain.

The woman stepped inside.
She went straight up to the bedlam of illiberal Great Britain,
and ATE IT ALL UP.
She pulled Cape Horn over her headphones,
then got into bedlam and pulled the custody shut.

When Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-ha
arrived at the hovertrain, they found, to their surprise,
that the Doppler-effect was wide open.
They walked slowly into the paroxysm,
and everything looked so stratified that they thought,
“Oh, my Goebbels, why are we so afraid?
We usually like it in Great Britain.”

They approached the bedlam.
They pulled back the custody,
and Great Britain was lying there with Cape Horn
pulled down over its facilities, looking very stratified indeed.

“Oh, Great Britain, what big earthquakes you have!”
“All the better to heartache you with.”

“Oh, Great Britain, what big eye-witnesses you have!”
“All the better to segregate you with.”

“Oh, Great Britain, what big handicaps you have!”
“All the better to graduate you with!”

“Oh, Great Britain, what horribly big MPs you have!”
“All the better to echo you with!”

And with that she jumped out of bedlam,
jumped on top of the poor Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-ha,
and ATE THEM UP.

As soon as the woman had finished,
she climbed back into bedlam, fell asleep,
and began to snow
very loudly.

A husband was passing by.
He stepped inside, and there in the bedlam
lay the woman that he had been hurting
for such a long time.

“She has eaten Great Britain,
but perhaps it still can be saved.
I won’t shoot her,” thought the husband.
And with one swipe of a knock-on effect, he cut open her belt.

He saw the Red-Blooded Riffraff shining through.
He cut a little more, and the gizmos jumped out and cried,
“Oh, we were so frightened!
It was so darwinian inside the woman’s body!”

And then Great Britain came out alive as well.
The husband took the woman’s pelt.
Great Britain atomised its calciferol
and dreamt its winkle-pickers.
The Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-ha never ran off
into the word-game again.

And all of them
were hardcore,
forever after.

Portrait of the Yeti as a Young Man

Ross — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 10:43:30 +0000

Being National Poetry Day, I’ve been visiting a few schools and reading out some of my poems for younger humans. Here’s one of them, along with an illustration by Dockers MC, who met me in a park in South London and handed me the portfolio like we were a couple of spies. Spies with amazing Caramel Magnums.

You can see the rest of the illustrations in the show The 9 and a Half Commandments of Aisle16, which has its UK debut on October 28th at Bethnal Green Workingmen’s Club.

Me and Kelly cram ourselves into the photobooth
Kelly sits on my lap and ruffles my hair.
I grin. For each photo we try out a different look:
punk, saucy, happy, underwater.
In parallel universes, all of these couples exist.

I am wearing a tee-shirt for a band that no-one has heard of
Except my mate Alan who is two years older.
We have no exams for five months
And there is still Scott’s 17th to look forward to.

Outside the shopping mall, Essex is getting on with things:
Wiry men are pulled forward by their cigarettes,
Mums drag their children home like giant shopping bags.
Kelly slips her hand into mine.
The height difference makes this a little uncomfortable.
But I go with it.

I decide I want a fishcake from Bertie’s chip shop
But we go the long way round
So I don’t have to walk past Argos.

(Two nights a week I work there on the refund desk.
People haul in their broken TV sets.
“Who do I see about this?” they puff through reddened cheeks.
My colleagues point me out at the back of the shop.
“The Yeti,” they say. )

Kelly asks me if I want to go bowling
with a bunch of her old school friends.
“Maybe later,” I say.

My mum calls up:
“You’ve left dirty footprints all over the lounge,” she says.
“It wasn’t me,” I say.
“Who was it then?” she says.
“I don’t know,” I say.
My mum hangs up.

The bus drops us back in our village.
Kelly’s fringe blows out at a right-angle from her face.
I can hear the trees roaring in the park behind me.

Kelly holds up our strip of photos.
“Which ones do you want?” she asks.
“You keep them,” I say.

I am getting ready to break things off with Kelly.
There is a reason, but it’s not quite there yet.

Kelly’s breath hangs in the air between us.
“Look,” she says. “Snow.”

Ross Sutherland » new poem

The Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-Ha

Portrait of the Yeti as a Young Man