A week of contrasts which began with the song 'Mama Says' lodged in my head.
Thankfully, I couldn't get rid of it.
The voices of Ibeyi haunted and possessed my imagination, the lead singer like Billie Holiday, so full of intense emotion, telling the sad tale of a mother left devastated because her man has either left her or died and the daughter can offer no consolation.
Despite the twins of Ibeyi (it means 'twins' in Yoruba) being Cuban, they sing in English and Yoruba, the language of the Nigerian slaves who were taken there.
I often wonder if everyone has such songs : ones which follow them every waking hour and , most likely, even speak to them in dreams.
And then , from the heights of a single song - precarious ridge looking down - I was soon brought falling by the sheer idiocy of local politicians.
The magazine 'Contact' is produced by Merthyr's Labour Council, circulated to every household and explains all the great things they are doing.
Its cover is obscene!
It depicts a scene on Penderyn Day, which took place in Penderyn Square in front of the Old Town Hall/ Redhouse over the summer.
Four men are dressed in the uniform of a British army regiment which played a major role in the events of the !831 Rising.
They are clutching their muskets with pride, as a little girl sits below them , gazing up cheerfully.
Just as a sanitized Keir Hardie impersonator was used to open Redhouse , so our Labour leaders have seen fit to glorify the very military who were directly responsible for the slaughter of at least 20 Merthyr citizens on that day in that very area of town.
Not one soldier was killed in that working-class uprising, despite reports that the people had seized weaponry ; people fighting against oppression seen as 'rioters'.
Needless to say, there was no enactment of those brutal events on Penderyn Day.
Indeed, there is no plaque or memorial to those who were killed there , in a bloody replay of what happened years before at Peterloo in Manchester.
Just as the memory of socialist republican Keir Hardie was insulted by the invitation to Carlo to open Redhouse, so the citizens of this town have been sold ( or given, should I say ) a lie in this cynical re-writing of history worthy of '1984'.
And so, I was looking forward to Red Poets anti-opencast event in support of UVAG at the Blast Furnace pub in Pontlottyn to lift the week.
It all started disastrously when the landlady told us there'd been complaints about swearing in poems a year before and would we refrain from 'bard language' in the readings!
I told her I didn't want censorship and she'd have to tell the poets herself.
Despite these strictures, the evening was packed with quips about swearing, with Barry Taylor asking if it only applied to English and I did a poem which consisted entirely of swear-words i.e. a minute of silence!
Jim Davies was the funniest, when he read a poem by Helen Burke including the 'bastards ' and 'bloody'. Afterwards he told me - 'Mike, I did leave out the 'fucking' .....I replace it with 'flipping'!'
Pity Tim Richards didn't launch into his signature poem 'Fuck Em'!
Later I learnt that two Englishmen at the bar had left in disgust, ostensibly because of Barry's Welsh republican song; though later it was suggested they were UKIPers generally appalled at our stuff.
I wonder what the likes of Andrew Bartz and Jazz would've made of the evening.
I can imagine Andrew's defiant swearing as heckles , or Jazz challenging the UKIPers to a duel outside.
It was still a really good evening, with plenty of great readings and songs.
As Jamie Bevan commented on Facebook, asking the Red Poets not to swear is a bit like asking the Pope not to talk about religion....or Farage not to mention the EC for that matter..... or Norman Tebbit to talk sense etc etc.
Next up for Red Poets is the Castle Hotel in Tredegar on November 26th and, as always, there'll be a big welcome there.
THE NAMELESS ONES
We are the nameless ones, history's forgotten.
We are here not for revenge
or to detract from that martyr
in this our town of martyrs ;
but for you to remember.
Here because you dress up those days
and make them into a pantomime ;
those townsfolk with their mock guns
posing with smiling children.
A plaque, a pub and a square,
magazine with soldiers looking stern ;
you have voted for these and we....
we died for the choice you've made.
'Caws a bara!' and 'I lawr a'r Brenin!'
under the red banner, a small insurrection ;
wages lopped like trunks and debt
a disease killing us like trees.
We're not claiming all innocence :
weapons and road-blocks, did what we could
to make this town ours not the ironmasters
or regiments sent to put us down.
Our blood - like that of the lamb
which stained the flag on the Waun -
is the sap, despite the downtrodden
frail leaf-like figures scattered around.
We are the forgotten ones.....give us names!
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