On the premise that is permissible
for writers to make new poems
out of their own words
this poem is composed
entirely from the first lines
of previously written poems.
c&c welcome
ENGLAND'S FIRST LINES
a selection from the first lines of poems by Gerald England
A blackbird lands
A continued escalation of colliding steel
A good beer-barrel
A man sits in a cave knitting
A quarter of a century gone
A slogan a day
A theatre in Copenhagen
A thin layer of virgin-white snow
A two-foot long glass column
A white shadow shines through night cloud
Abask the sea-wall
After Mothers Day
Alice was demure and O
All the way to Bury
Amid the heather
Among the lupins
And after little suzie
And it was his grief that kept him travelling
And the baby miscarried
And the gulls woke me at half past
And the sick man's vomit was spat out
Apple bread, champagne dip, Easter egg,
As a clashing cymbal in the discordant darkness of the night
At the Bay at the Back of the Ocean
Bare midriffs above belt-like skirts
Bedraggled daffodils line the lanes
Belladonna is unlucky
Beyond the wooded embankment home
Big Irma
Child lost in big store
Come to our raveup in York they said
Damn the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation
Deeply Katy threw her dress open
Dementia patients ramble on the freeway of her face
Don't smother the fire, mother
Everyone's going to heaven
First catch your crow
Friendly face peeping
Gillamoor looked great that day
Going to Glimps Holm
Hair dressed up in curlers
Have you ever watched a snail
He, bold, brassy, Geordie
High tops streaked with snow
History books in which you are an elephant
I carry the weight of the world on my back
I do not like telephones
I got some tissues with my coffee yesterday
I knew of your visit to the blacksmith
I took my wife to a chinese restaurant to eat
I was a teenage werewolf
I was taking about Cleopatra
If God is dead
In the box there is a cat
Kettle on coal fire
Knickerless Nicola
Labelled with a sticker on our lapels
Leaving Oldham
Lesbian bodies take advantage of patient work
Life's mostly a game said the poor man
Lloyd George knew my granddad
Lost down country lanes
Moo
My son builds with his Lego
My wife is talking
Nodding drowsily against his winter habit
On the far side of Hope
One corner of the tarmaced field
Outside the X-ray
Overwhelmed like fish
Poor Peter
Possum roadkill
Queen Victoria
Real nude women mourned new ale
Re-listening to sixties' protest songs
Rent a bench
Reproduction strictly prohibited
Sat in the car on Royd Moor Lane
Sharing its route with slow canals
She is Mother England
Sheep suckle their lambs
Skin was slit like the opening of an envelope
Sleet at the window
So this is Brighton
Somewhere I saw a South-West wind
Sunday-morning sex
The Arrival of the Queen of Sheeba
The dog dodges puddles in the road
The fox comes nightly to her garden
The geese do not know which way to turn
The hitchhiker had bought a black tie
The ice is frozen in upon itself
The morning when the Queen came to town
The taps are dripping all over the city
The wind that whistles over Oldham Edge
The year that Patrick Sellar came to Strathnaver
There hadn't always been a rainbow
There were several entrances
This is a multi-part poem in MIME format
Through the windy pass
Two demented vultures
Up Ingleborough
Victims of the bottle
We had a very quiet Christmas
We were never lovers
When Margaret first met Malcolm
Why are your poems so full of country images
Yeah, yeah, I know what I said
You said you wanted to live
GERALD ENGLAND
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