Brain Stew
The ragged men with blistered feet Sell fleur-de-lys on Downhome Street With free sample confectionary Their whimsy most extraordinary And the Sadducees and Pharisees Sanhedrin in their dungarees Maximise the bottom line From the butter mountain smell the wine With palsied hand and broken nose Stranger than we can suppose A touch too much a touch of class Tuppence chews for sorted glass Make sharp the knives and seize the day Downtrodden wives come out to play Throw their hands up in the air For trainer socks a penny a pair There'll Be No Corned beef and hash today Mother We're dining on brain stew tonight There'll Be No Parnsips or brussel sprouts Mother We're dining on brain stew tonight The raggy men with worn out shoes Sell crumpled ham in faded news And thimblefulls of macaroon Come too late and gone too soon And the Pharisees in stocking soles Barter bread for curtain poles And stick on mats for ginger ale For pancake mixture three days stale With palsied hand and stuttered call A 'bid thee welcome one and all' Moving swift from door to door Trade the wares until no more Just ran out of safety pins Of odds and ends in baccy tins Sell to lost and sell to found Broken biscuits by the pound There'll Be No Corned beef and hash today Mother We're dining on brain stew tonight There'll Be No Parnsips or brussel sprouts Mother We're dining on brain stew tonight
Tremendous. The wordplay. The flow. Repetition. It all works.
The poem reads like stepping into a world that’s both chaotic and oddly familiar, as if you’ve wandered into a street where everything is slightly tilted. There’s a rough humour running through it, but it never hides the sense of struggle underneath. The traders, the biblical nods, the worn‑out shoes — they all feel like fragments of lives held together by sheer stubbornness. The refrain about “brain stew” lands with a kind of dark grin, the sort people use when they’re trying to laugh through the day. The rhythm keeps things moving, even when the images feel grimy or sad. You can almost hear the voices calling out their wares, trying to make the best of whatever they’ve got. There’s something tender in that, something very human. By the end, you’re left with this strange mix of amusement and sympathy. It’s messy, raw, and it feels like real people trying to get by.