Posts Tagged Liverpool

TRIGGER AT THE ADELPHI, LIVERPOOL, MARCH, 1954

Posted by David Selzer in Poetry on October 29th, 2011

For Alex Cox

This is the year Dien Bien Phu falls,

Algeria rises, segregation is

ruled illegal in the USA,

the first kidney is transplanted and UK

wartime food rationing finally ends.

Lime Street was filled with thousands of boys and girls,

gathered to greet the singing, celluloid,

Born Again cowpoke, Roy Rogers (erstwhile

Leonard Slye), and his entourage – combining

a promo tour with a Billy Graham

crusade. The youngsters, pinched with cold on that

blitzed and windy street, clutched their copies

of the Roy Rogers Cowboy Annual.

Those with seafaring dads – and there were ships

filling the Mersey then and its docks –

had something from the Sears catalogue

of Roy Rogers Gifts: boots, guitar, holster,

ersatz buckskin fringed shirt. (Roy and his wife, Dale,

had been mobbed in London, fringes ripped from

the genuine article). But Roy and Dale

were in bed with ‘flu in their Adelphi suite –

so Trigger trotted the route alone,

climbed the hotel steps, made his mark at

reception, entered the residents’ lounge,

visited his master’s bedroom and appeared

at a first floor window for a photo op.

But was it Trigger or, his double,

Little Trigger? And which rears on its hind legs

stuffed in the Roy Rogers Museum,

Branson, Missouri, the ‘Show Me’ state’?

Or is either or both with Roy and Dale –

and Bullet, the dog, of course – alive, well and

moseying along on the moon’s dark side?

Adelphi Hotel, Algeria rises, bedroom, Billy Graham, blitzed, boots, Born Again, Branson, buckskin, Bullet, celluloid, cowpoke, Crusade, dark side, Dien Bien Phu, entourage, Ersatz, erstwhile, food rationing, fringed, guitar, holster, illegal, kidney transplant, Leonard Slye, Lime Street, Liverpool, London, Missouri, mobbed, moon, moseying, photo op., promo tour, reception, residents’ lounge, Roy Rogers, Roy Rogers Cowboy Annual, seafaring Mersey, Sears catalogue, segregation, suite, Trigger, UK, USA, wartime, ‘flu, ‘Show Me’ state

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TRIGGER AT THE ADELPHI HOTEL, LIVERPOOL, MARCH 1954

Posted by David Selzer in Poetry on December 18th, 2010

For Alex Cox

This is the year Dien Bien Phu falls,

Algeria rises, segregation is

ruled illegal in the USA,

the first kidney is transplanted and UK

wartime food rationing finally ends.

Lime Street was filled with thousands of boys and girls,

gathered to greet the singing, celluloid,

Born Again cowpoke, Roy Rogers (erstwhile

Leonard Slye), and his entourage – combining

a promo tour with a Billy Graham

crusade. The youngsters, pinched with cold on that

blitzed and windy street, clutched their copies

of the Roy Rogers Cowboy Annual.

Those with seafaring dads – and there were ships

filling the Mersey then and its docks –

had something from the Sears catalogue

of Roy Rogers’ Gifts: boots, guitar, holster,

ersatz buckskin fringed shirt. (Roy and his wife, Dale,

had been mobbed in London, fringes ripped from

the genuine article). But Roy and Dale

were in bed with ‘flu in their Adelphi suite –

so Trigger trotted the route alone,

climbed the hotel steps, made his mark at

reception, entered the residents’ lounge,

visited his master’s bedroom and appeared

at a first floor window for a photo op.

But was it Trigger or, his double,

Little Trigger? And which rears on its hind legs

stuffed in the Roy Rogers’ Museum,

Branson, Missouri, the ‘Show Me’ state?

Or is either or both with Roy and Dale –

and Bullet, the dog, of course – alive, well and

moseying along on the moon’s dark side?

2 Comments

Posted by David Selzer in Screenplays on September 13th, 2010

ALTOGETHER ELSEWHERE is a tragi-comedy of errors. The screenplay explores the parallel lives of two people born on the same day in 1953 on opposite sides of the Atlantic, focussing on key episodes in their lives from 1961 to 2002. The story, which takes its title from a line in W H Auden’s poem, ‘The Fall of Rome’, charts their lives from the ages of 8 to 50 and is set against a backdrop of the decline and fall of empires.

Annie from Liverpool and Dwight from Daytona grow up and begin their respective careers in the arts and the military – Annie becoming an acclaimed documentary and fashion photographer and Dwight a casualty of the Vietnam war eventually selling oranges by the roadside in Portugal. Their paths cross for the first time in Greece, when they are 27. Their lives become inextricably linked, not least through 9/11, though they never actually meet again until they are 50.

You can download this full length screenplay as a pdf: ALTOGETHER ELSEWHERE

'A Woman Killed With Kindness', 'Rock Around The Clock', 'See You Later Alligator', 'The Cherry Orchard', 'The Fall of Rome', Afghanistan, Algarve, Alton, Alvor, Arabic, Athens, Baghdad, Baragwanath, Bill Haley, Blundellsands, Brooklyn Heights, Cahokia, caliphate, Cape St Vincent, Chicago, Daytona, Delphi, Derby Road, diner, East St Louis, empires, Epidaurus, Falkner Street, Fortelaiza de Sagres, Hardman Street, Jimi Hendrix, Lime Street, Liverpool, Mafia, Moors, Moscow, Mycenae, New York, Norman Rockwell, Olympia, Orlando, Osama Bin Laden, Renshaw Street, Saracens, Scotland Road, Serpentine Road, Sheremetevo, Soweto, Sparrow Hills, St Louis, Stanley Road, Tate, The Acropolis, Toxteth Riots, tragi-comedy of errors, Twin Towers, Vietnam, Virgin Mary, W.H.Auden, West Virginia

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A LIFE

Posted by David Selzer in Poetry on February 22nd, 2010

Esther Philips, oldest of thirteen, came

from Liverpool, had tea with Buffalo

Bill and, having siblings and her mother,

a drunkard, to care for, refused an offer

to join a chorus line. When I knew her, she

had no teeth, wore the same two black dresses

and munched Quaker Oats between meals. She cried

when I played ‘La Fille Aux Cheveux De Lin’

on the upright in the back room. She outlived

two husbands and four of seven children -

and died saying that she knew how Jesus felt.

Buffalo Bill, chorus line, drunkard, Liverpool, Quaker Oats, ‘La Fille Aux Cheveux De Lin’

4 Comments

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST

Posted by admin in Poetry on April 24th, 2009

The hardback quarto exercise book opens
at ‘Funny Valentine’, an unfinished,
blank verse piece – full of Auden, Larkin, Yeats –
in thick-nib fountain pen on feint ruled lines.
Four decades old and more – and pristine:
‘Today, at best, brings scented, satin hearts,
Numb messengers of somebody’s desires…’

I can see the back room in the shared flat:
sagging bed, faded armchair, torn carpet,
wobbly table; I’d brought a large ashtray,
a glass fronted bookcase and a small, handmade
Chinese cabinet; a tv blared upstairs.
Through the sash window stuck fast with paint
was the littered garden – out of sight and
sound, all of Liverpool, swinging city.

I google Lorenz Hart’s lyrics – ‘Your looks
are laughable, unphotographable,
Yet you’re my favorite work of art’- and hear
Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald.
The cabinet – carved drawers filled now with years
of love – was a woman’s gift to a man
coming of age. But I was a boy, full
of fears and words. ‘Stay little valentine, stay…’
Borne on the leafy fretwork of the doors,
two gilded, lacquered kingfishers in flight,
sun catching on their iridescent wings,
fall together into oblivion.

Auden, Chinese, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, fretwork, gilded, handmade, iridescent, kingfishes, lacquered, Larkin, Liverpool, Lorenz Hart, lyrics, oblivion, swining city, tv, unphotographable, Valentine, Yeats

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David Selzer

Posts Tagged Liverpool

ALTOGETHER ELSEWHERE by David Selzer © 2008

A LIFE

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST

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