Brighton & Hove poetry

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Poems written in response to the Brighton Naked Bike Ride.

Silly Streetniks

By Naomi Foyle

The Silly Streets Co-ordinator tips his top hat
to the Emperor of Empathy, who’s out on East St
in a purple Smurf suit, hugging everyone who needs him.
It’s a beautiful morning, the lamp posts tingly with dew
and soon the streets will be spinning
with spontaneous ridiculosity and random jolly trolleys.

Anarchic Action Annie, a slim battery of rebellion,
is planting pencils in the pavement, red twigs
she snapped up at the last branch of Woolies.
She’ll sprinkle them all day, with her green duck watering can,
until a memorial avenue of wood and lead
sprouts unpaid bills above her head.

At noon, the Naked Cyclists meet the Naked Speed Daters
at the Pier. No-one’s going tandem yet, but
getting a handle on un-spoken emotion, they rally,
two by two along the seafront, comparing comfy saddles,
writing poems in sun cream down each other’s arms,
and switching partners at the trill of a bell.

As for the non-acronym-inous, non-acrimonious
Vegetarian Smokers Support Group — not to be confused
with the South East Visigoth Elocution Network —
at two pm they’re setting up stocks outside City Hall
and nominating nine non-hypocritical members of the public
to pelt them with organic tomatoes.

All afternoon the Flash Fiction Flaneur
will be strolling North Laine, taking notes,
before stopping for tea in the Pavilion Gardens, where
at four o’clock, by the foxgloves and hollyhocks,
he’ll perform his latest postcard epics,
his black Mac billowing around him like a sail.

Of course there will be tight-rope treading violinists,
cream-pie wielding Buddhists, and Vicious Usherettes
in yellow Unhappy Face T-Shirts
selling ‘Life’s Not Funny’ buttons,
while Operation Chai Wallah will kettle the police
in its ‘Have another cuppa, copper?’ drag-net of St James’ Street.

And as the sky turns red and pink and orange
with the realisation it’s been made a bleeding fool of all day,
the Mad Maxi-Pad Scientists with their White Kotex Coats
and solar powered Sili-ometre, will officially report
on the ludicly ludicrous oscillyations sallying forth
from this crackpot little city into the Universe…

and if today’s extravaganza of eccentricity has set a new World record,
every single Silly Streetnik can go home and sleep
the sleep of the deeply dippy, dream the dreams of the amply absurd.

Poems by Mike Bliss

• the naked cyclist
• does my bum look big on this?
• awakening

Poems by Peter Glyn Jones

Protest song to the tune of the 'Teddy Bear's Picnic'