Which Report on Mens’ Underpants

Date: Some time in the late 1960s

I started writing poetry whilst still at art school, then they got buried away for over 50 years, never to see the light of day, until now. For some reason, I got the urge to dig them out recently and some seem to have stood the test of time. I’m very divided about editing them, after all, I’m not the same person I was in the 1960s or whenever they were written. This one I’ve transcribed pretty much verbatim, aside from spelling errors.

This poem was a request as it were by another poet, long since dead, Steve Piper and it was the very first attempt at writing poetry. We used to hang out in a pub called The Cricketers Arms on Trinity Road, opposite Wandsworth Common, in South London. Steve gave me the theme as it were. The Which Report was/is tested consumer products. I had to read it out in the pub. Very embarrassing.

All samples were were tested

to destruction

Out of the twenty-seven samples

submitted

three proved

electrically unsafe

two makes failed to

pass the erection test

seven were of foreign make

and all of these

could not match up to

the british makes for

bollock snugness and

cheek gripping

five makes made access

fore and aft difficult

shit stains proved difficult

to remove in twenty of the

samples

and sag proved to be a

serious obstacle

seven makes produced bad

rashes on the foreskin

eight makes tangled badly

with most types of pubic hair

nine of the samples tested are

good-byes