This is a poem written in 1970 by my best mate Pete Smith. He’s a genius by the way – Wild Science inventor, musician, teacher, explorer, songwriter, and general creator of chaos.
Back in the 1960s we shared a flat as students and generally put the world to rights, saw a lot of gigs and talked, and talked and talked, and wrote poems, did drawings and talked some more. Pete invented light-shows, polarised light projections and made strange musical instruments.
It was a time of expansion.
This was the height of the Cold War. We still expected to be wiped out any day. Britain was doing its best for the cause. We had Porten Down. They were secret laboratories that everyone knew about. They were developing wonderful antidotes to communism, and life in general. They were called chemical warfare and biological warfare. We could threaten people with them and only release them if we had to – or by accident.
We were quite concerned about this prospect.
Pete wrote a poem/song about it:
Death in a breath
We’ve got ……..
Red bloody death
And black spotty death
And they’ve both served their purpose well-o
Fried to a turn
Crisped, brown, burn
And lovely green gassy hell-o
But what we need
To kill with speed
And I’m sure you’ll all join me
In this creed
Is……..
The new yellow
Superkillerfragmentarygermicidal akshun
Superkillerorballisticonecankilla nashun
If you want to kill a lot
We’ve got
Something quite obnokshus
Superkillerportendownsowngallopingbrainrot poxshus
Oh yeah ………
Pete Smith 1970