Nothing Important Lyrics - Nothing Important - Richard Dawson

I am born by Caesarian section at 9:30 AM 

in Princess Mary's Maternity Hospital 

on the 24th May, sixty years ago today, 

dangled by the ankle, smacked across the bum, 

swaddled in a blanket howling like a wheel. 

My big brother Iain on his tip-toes hisses 'I don't like him'. 

He's Maradona, I'm Peter Beardsley, chasing a ball through the mud 

followed by the kitchen window, bellowing through the fern: 

'Boys! Dinner's ready!' 

Dad is tuning in the telly beyond a heaving mountain of spaghetti hoops. 

I am nothing 

You are nothing 

Nothing important 

Death within a dream 

Petrified on the back of a pedallo in the Balearic Sea off Alcudia 

I can see the ghost of my uncle Derek waving to us from the beach, 

gently drifting out of reach, 

the telephone reciever swinging by its cord, 

a glass of broken beer expanding on the lino. 

My mam slips into the coffin 

a polaroid of his sweetheart 

Clutching Good-Luck Bear I peer gingerly over the side, 

press my nose up to the tide, 

and there behold a barracuda chewing on a chrysanthemum 

and a family of clownfish hovering in the corpse's hair. 

In the scullery of the cub-hut my clarinet falls 

into a sack of flour - a flurry of pins 

squashed into the leather handle 

a crescent moon of stricken fig-wasps. 

Drizzling my fingers with The Magic Sponge 

Dad says 'we'll probably have to chop them off'. 

He collapses like a canvas tent on the floodlit astroturf 

rent with a fibula guide-rod poking a hole through his shin 

There are teardrops in his moustache 

charging a flute of champagne 

down the aisle and out for a throw-in 

A St.John ambulance careers between the sugary pillars of the wedding cake 

A crystal spoon 

A pewter tankard 

these words inscribed upon the base: 

HAPPY RETIREMENT BEST GRANDDAD IN THE WORLD 

A toby jug filled to the brim with curtain hooks 

A sheepskin rug discoloured with tobacco smoke 

within it's braids concealed a rank 

of plastic soldiers set to burst underfoot 

Berwick in oils: a skiff on the swollen tweed 

cradling a false pearl 

a ceramic seraph 

with an ashtray for a brain 

- and I don't care about these things 

Why do they remain so clear while the faces of my loved ones disappear? 

A Rington's plate 

a forking hairline seam of superglue through the Black Gate 

a digital photoframe 

frozen on an blurry orange thumb 

I remember all these things 

Old karate trophies 

I am tethered by these things 

Thimbles and pesatas 

I remember all these things 

A roll of Woolworth's price stickers 

I can see all these things but 

where have all my people gone? 

In the end it wasn't meant to be. 

He was the most beautiful thing that I had ever seen. 

He survived for seven days 

before he slipped away