Attila the Stockbroker, aka John Baine, seems like a myth from across the ocean, but in person, the man is frightfully real. An unreconstructed commie perf po footballer, rabble rouser & mandola minstrel from Brighton, he tours Britain, Europe and North America as a one-man revolution in a poem.
Yr fearless guide Margy slept on the man’s sofa during her 1997 British foray & introduced him to email. We welcomed this marvelously venomous bratmouth to the Net that year with his very first cyberpoem:
WELCOME TO CYBERIA
This is the soundbite blipvert hyperscene
Digitar bar code swipe card Internet
(Anally retentive cyber pet
Shits virtually on bleeping micro-screen)
The wandering poet plies his ancient craft
Via home page, mailing list and database
And poems on the Web in cyberspace...
The library’s becoming over-staffed.
Not techno-nerd nor Luddite, I’ll have fun.
I’ll go online a while, then down the pub.
I’ll never join the bedroom surfers’ club
Nor curse the global age that’s now begun
And for the kid whose concentration span
Is less than that of the great crested newt
(A fault in some who take the cyber-route)
This interactive poet has a plan.
A concentration camp site on the Net.
Sent there, you must log off and read a book.
“Yes, that strange thing with pages--take a look!
Cyberia welcomes you--no need to fret....
You’re here to learn to concentrate, no less--
To think and reason existentially.
Three weeks of Jean-Paul Sartre, then you’re free*
So get stuck in to Being and Nothingness!”
You can’t catch VD from a VDU**
And some have virtual sex, I understand
(The whole thing’s getting rather out of hand
Though in this instance the reverse is true)
But me, I’ll email, surf, do my home page
Then make love with my woman till I flop
And hope the Seagulls*** can avoid the drop--
A global poet bonded to our age.
*Or perhaps not--he never quite worked that one out.
**“Video Display Unit” (British for CRT, monitor, screen...)
***The Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club
©1997, Attila the Stockbroker
Attila’s still at it these many years later (the man’s positively indefatigable) -- writing & singing & touring & keeping in touch with his fans in energetic do-it-yourself fashion through his Web domain, where you can sign up for his email newsletter, buy his books & CDs, read rants & poems, and connect with one of the liveliest poetic spirits of our time. Get a copy of his newest CD, Live in Belfast, and you can experience an Attila performance, as usual both sharp-spoken and hilarious.
Read on for a selection of Attila the Stockbroker’s “nature” poems. They are like no others.
