*****

 Where, where are you *****

Where are you to see

I'd do anything for you *****

If only you'd be with me

I'd work all the hours you want me

I'd bring home the bacon

Just see

But it's only gonna work between us

If you also wanna be with me

There's a bench somewhere in a woodland

There's a walk round a park by the sea

There's a wonderful

House where you can be a mouse

And I'll be the cat chasing ye

There's some future I see us together

It can't be that my vision is dross

I've tried so many times

To live by the bells chimes

But it's always been to my loss

Oh ***** don't be a ghost

***** I've committed no crime

I've just loved you

From May to December

And each year I knew

You had to be mine

Shepton Gods and Shepton Sods

 Who holds the mallet?

The women hold the mallet

And who do they hammer?

They hammer on the men

And where do the men stammer?

With their heads ringing from the hammer

They stammer and stagger, like gamma and omega

Down to the Alpha male pub

And who do they rub as they ring in the pub?

As they ring the old bell in the pub

Well why can't you tell

They ring the women's bell

They ring it

And bring it and fight and they swell

Like the belly of gaia

In the omphalos of the night

They give birth to their titan children

Who bite and fight

And rip apart all the bells and whistles

Going at them tongs and hammer

They burn on the pyre the old pallets

And up in flames goes

Shepton Mallet

Shepherd's pie

 When it's nine o'clock in the evening in Shepton Mallet

And none obeys the speed limit

Or when you're driving on the road from Glastonbury

to West Pennard

They just use it like a speedway

When it's seven o'clock in the morning in Shepton Mallet

Oh nobody gives any quarter to anyone on the roads

All they do is act impatient to get to the work they don't 

want to do anyway

When it's four o'clock in the afternoon in Shepton Mallet

And they're all racing home

Yes nobody pays any attention to the speed limit

All they care about is getting home

All they care about is their little conservations

pigs in iron masks

 He cut  off his nose

To spite his face

It was as if a rose

Had taken his place

And The night grows

And the thorns replace

The bed that I know

And I can't sleep 

In this space

It's a guilty conscience

That killed my first love

That killed all curiosity

Of the cat with kid gloves

Book club

 I'm in the book club

I'm in the book club

There's the rub

There's mothers with rubbers

And cupboards with rulers

And Rulers with lovers

And lovers who fool us

There's single mum's

And double mums

There's bubble gums

And jingle bums

And triple chins

Single gins

And she's too thin

And it's her first baby

And she's in the gym

Don't worry about getting fat

And what do you do about the menopause

And do I know if it was really santa claus

Who got me up the duff

Or was it his brother's double bluff

Well who knows is the billy goat gruff

But he just appears in fairy tales and stuff

And we don't read that at the book club

But actually we do

We don't eschew the virtues

Of children's literature too

And anything you've never read

come read it and we'll discuss it

At the book club instead

Labyrinth

 I'm lying in the nettles again

And the land is a shining key

The summer it's nearly over my friend

No room for apology

The sand in your hair falls softly

And I can't bear the doom

I could have shot the marauding bear

But there was an elephant in my room

Hold me in the wooden stare

The machine is coveting me

When they wrote the ten commandments

They never left space for ai technology

There's always someone up

There's always someone down

If I shoot you a cup

Of Newcastle ale brown

Fixated on the stars

My head is stuck in bars

And towns

You can drown in machines

And the fears of mediocracy

There's a limit to lip service

But somebody must pay the bill

When you say that all that works these days

Is the mantra kindness kills

I've waited for a high priestess to tell me how to feel

But it's not as if I didn't know myself

I just never trust myself at the wheel

And you can be driven nearly mad 

If you listen to all the voices

It's not as if I never had

Control or made my choices

I wish I had explained my dad 

Was a ghost in my mother's memory

I always felt I owed her something

More than just an immigrant in her country

there's a fasting of the hands

There's a lasting in the legs

There's a step that turns out sad

So I must remember to leave a peg

And not go down that same maze

Where the minotaur snores

It would be easier with a ball of thread

To walk past all these open doors

The river it is an image

In an electric company's dream

someone's always trying to write their name

In your consciousness stream

Even El Nino

Is a marching wind

And the band will play their pipes

When they have the mind

England,my England

 Travel the ocean blue

Take a train to far off katmandu

There will be no place as True 

To you as old England

It will tell you what you want to hear

And what you cannot bear

There's nothing so far as is already near

To you as old England

Oh England will scold you like your mother's tongue

It will fold you like a paper airplane

And shoot you like a bullet from your father's gun

It will swear to you on the bible's pain

Swear the truth as a humble nun

Then it will lie to your face again

And blow up like bubblegum

You'll be in disgrace in England

With egg on your face or worse

When the shit hits the fan

It goes all over the place

And mud sticks that's the curse

You can try and run from Old England 

But she'll catch you in the end

Like nagging women tell you to better yourself

You are told from the mouth of the harridan

All that matters is your personal wealth

I don't wish to tarry in the details

For the devils he lives there

And I'm a sucker for entrails

That the old hags read in their lair

You know you've got to trust them

They tend to know their worth

They're threading the fates of our lives

Like the spinners of hate and mirth

I can't kiss their sharpened knives

I can't hold my hand in the heat

But in old England they hold you 

over the fire's hot sides

And roast you like you are a piece of meat