Avalon Marshes Sculpture trail Poems

Wells Cathedral Blues

To the Apostles and Saints on the Cathedral Walls

All you Bishops and crowned kings

Come down from off the palisade where you watch

Come walk with me on the green today

Come open the twenty second catch

All day long, you keep the walls

Like shadows ever shifting

The sun comes up then fades away

Like our hearts we are ever lifting

Come down you rooks from your castle

Come step off your Cathedral Carousel

(We all may find so many things to keep busy

But take time out by the spring and the well)

Come down and bring your gift-parcel

Of Christian scroll to tell

I wish your watch were not so long

I wish it were safe for you to descend

I fear the world has moved along

Beyond where your merry-go-round ends

Come step off your stone plinths

Stand your weary feet down

Lay on the grass your batholiths

Lay down your heavy crown

The people on the green are not made of stone

Our hearts beat and break in time

There’s no sense spending eternity alone

To remain up there is a crime

The Saints and Apostles go stepping in time

The Cathedral Walls are weeping

Shine on their light in a shade of lime

While below on the green, their disciples are sleeping

Does this sound familiar

Poet’s Corner

We wait we wonder

We wonder and we wait

He is sat in the corner

Staring up at Heaven’s Gate

Saint Peter was a Poet

The Poet’s shuffle, reassemble

Like Penguins until a new one of their number

Is in the corner

The warmest part for to create

We shall speak in tongues

With the Ouija-board the muse we shall summon

Come speak to us from the other side

Oh Muse of the other world

Spirit from the dark side of the moon

Is it Monday? A bold but confused Poet name Henry Hymn

Prophesized

The day of the mons, the Monads

The Moaners and the Mona Lisas

Who leased her? Who Owns her?

This spirit of the wind of breath?

Her Mongrel Gods barked the Major Dog

The King of Canis over the Caspian Sea

Who hung his jowls on the table top

His Moustache bristling with the Confidence

Of the Landed and free

What phantoms have called you here?

Do these walls have ears?

Only in the corners spoke the old guy from behind his beer

Only in the corners do the Poets hear

The muse

She whispers through mouse holes

As soft as mice squeak

As clean as a ski slope under drifted snow

As dry as a desert island

Said Saint Thomas the retired Priest

 Haling back his Hale to heaven

Each present gift of manna

A hail stone in the eye of the muse

Like David and Goliath

He draws his sling while enemies

Surround him

The promised land is within him

And She walks in his pastures green

Where he lays down with her

And Jesus looks on saying this

Is not what He had in mind

Beyond this at the end of the evening Adam turns up with

His Apple half chewed

And Eve is already there

Saying I’ve been waiting for you with my muse

Is Poetry what you intended by your fall

Temptation was just over the garden Wall

No said Adam I admit I walked out

Of Eden’s gates

Poetry is not the lost key, its just another way back

But it for now will have to do 

The Painter

The Painter

He was a crazy painter

Making crazy paving of the pavements

He painted crazy brushstokes

Of the crazy government

Who left him empty pockets

In his crazy pants

He filled his hands with bristling brushes

Like the mazy rushes of his random rants

The Lazy Lazarus street which lays half dead

At his feet,

He brings back to life with his dancing soles

His shoeless taps that run through his pictures

And drain his paints are the street’s life blood

He wandered the zodiac circles around the platz

Meeting bears abating, Dogs who were a mating

And bulls dancing on their heels

Archers hunting ghosts

He drew looks from city goers

Painted their eyes like diamond stars

Stuffy old ladies in thatched hats

Whose opinions he dissolved into

Linseed oil and turpentine jars

Their prejudice like jaundice

Yellows their features

Whose roots were in the bitterness

Over beauty they had lost

He gave them it back in his pictures

And all was beautiful again

On Lazarus street

As he walked there

leaving his frames in the square

Resting on the shoe trodden floor

Under foot his masterpieces

Are obscured

Wires

Wires

Blackbirds sit on a wire

Gulls on a rooftop do too

Scan the horizon until of it they tire

Return to the Sea Lochside view

Men in chain gangs walk the high street

They are prisoners of the pub-crawl

But are left in the rain to hang on a fence wire

With sad dog tired faces all in a drawl

The buses hug hills like the beetles

Buzz like bees to their stops

With feet stuck full of pollen people

They search another flower head where their pollen they drop

Nature tends towards patterns

People by nature are dots

Someone draws lines between us

Joins us together whether we like it or not

All I see around me are wires

Electrical fences what not

Sometimes the lines are cold frozen

Sometimes they buzz like their hot

We, like the birds, sit on fences that are broken

Watching skylight horizons

It may be but a cheap token

But I like it all the same as if it is not

Morning

Morning, morning, morning

The morning of our lives

Here the steep hill is swollen

Like a mother with child

The burning morning, the moaning borning

Of Anti-auntie archipelagos

Be of good wife, oh life, oh life

The coroner Coriolis effect 

Sunrise of the mind

The mellow, yellow morning mightiness

Of dirty kettle sunshine

Taken are the heliotropes

The switches are swished

Fall the nettle heads

Beside a barbed wire ditch

And the kitches of kitchener

March to the warehouse Drum

Beside ear phone shop

Who listen to the dark men come

Oh morning, morning

The steel brush of salty heaven due

In exhaustible fatwa of merciful Father Pew

Painstaking needles in a Pine forest hill

Who can hear a pin drop has no need of fire drill

All this absorption and none of it real

All I have to give is what I can feel

River Lundy

River Lundy

I miss the Lundy

The river of Lun

I miss the Summer

Funny Honey Bun

I miss the Blue Sky

The Lazy haze

And I miss Lundy and You

Mardi was a fine day

Mecredi too

Jeudi was okay

Vendredi was Blue

Still I miss the Lundy and You

All day I wonder

Oh what can I do?

I walk the dusty streets

Feed animals at the zoo

Each night I see shooting stars

Quite beautiful is true

Yet I may as well live on Mars

For still I miss the Lundy and You

The seals are singing alone in the bay

Sweet gulls are winging above a mermaid serenade

No more Ghosts are appearing

I’m not afraid of the shade

But I still miss one thing or maybe two

I miss the Lundy and You

Love is on the lips

Of lovers who kiss

Black bird is on the Rosehips

But there are still somethings I miss it is true

Yes I miss the Lundy and You

Aonach Mor

Aonach Mor

Northern lights that are amazing

Like a green fire that’s blazing

Above the Mountain hearth beneath the sky

Jagged skyline like rows of teeth

 Rising up from those soft gums beneath

Always pushing, stirring, nudging

The sky not budging

Pilgrim clouds are rushing turning

To be nearer their destination

In the cold of Mountain heights

The stars come out like diamond kites

Twinkling, shimmering in silver sprinkling

Like star dust glimmering

Shining down

And then the cold air

That’s blaring, sneering, snarling

Staring hard down

The wind which bustles, hustles, rustles

Rampaging tussles of heathery ground

In its stampede, walkers impede

Deer hunker into the hollow some more

When they arise the mornings bright

With frost that bites

Before it thaws

And the air it fills with steam

From the nostrils of the stag

As he stands beside the stream

Drinks its cool water from off a crag

And his harem of does that follow

Tread lightly, nimbly through the fallow grass

As winter grips into his hollow

His antlers stand hard, as a guard stands fast

Ever battling the coming storm

Built of granite, Mountain born

Open hands of thorns inviting

Call down rains from Heaven’s fountain

Implore the Gods of the grey peaks whitening

To keep his coat of fur from lightening

That keeps his strong heart warm

Clouds

Clouds

Clouds are pilgrims ever travelling

Round the winding world unravelling

Tying up and letting go

As the spool while the seamstresses sew

And their thread

Is the winding wind

Which blows this way

Then back again

And the clouds are like carrier freight

With their cargo of water

They cannot be late

‘Always hurrying to the next mountain

Like ghosts who cannot rest

Who must keep going as if un-blest

And yet some holy pilgrimage

Keeps them travelling on

As if they knew that somehow

Their time shall not be long

Ghost Town

Ghost Town

This town, this town

Like a carousel turns around

Faces in the circus

Each a kind of clown

Painted skin and staircases

Draped in Adam’s Ale

All will turn to Ice Castles

Come the Wind and Hail

Fortress, stronghold, bearer of the monk

Shed loads of lotteries

Every Murder investigation sunk

All because you don’t belong

They say under hushed tones

Concealing garments of Arab beans

Around necklaces of crushed bones

All escalators jar on the snow peppered Mountain tops

They heave their sighs

In heave hoes

Between the goes

And stops

Even the Avalanche will eventually lose control

And then all the helpless victims

Will be released from frozen snow

Here is where the clock ticks

But nobody counts the days

Each are blended today in tomorrow

As billiards knock, kick and part in sorrow

This Haunted place of Ghosts

No wonder Clansmen die

From the painted Motherwell

To the long lost spear of Mackie

Shaken are the frigid hands

That turn to write the page

All are white who can call fright

Back to the Scottish Stage

Macbeth is in is Torpor

The Lady runs blood down the drain

The Wind windmills the wheelie Bins

And it never ceases to rain

The figures in this Chrysalis

The Winter Queen has stilled

Are as the knaves whom at Fairies hands

Will find their life bloods chilled

Some say ghosts are breeding

Some say darkness walks

Hand in hand with feeding

As the Stag’s Head talks

Too many deaths have bleached the ground

Too much blood has soaked its moss

And in these Clan destined days

The wedding sounds drowned out

By the voices of loss

Who here was a Cameron?

Who there a Jacobite who rose?

Who Frames the accursed James

Now lays himself where the thistle grows

Fort William, this town, Onich and Corpach

Bring out your dead

Lay out their bodies

But their souls to here come back

Give them six feet to lay in

Give them a horse’s span

Leave them hands to hold them

They will hold them if they can

Each a living member

Each a tie to Earth

The Mountain Glen

Does remember what its men

In death are truly worth

Living life must cling here

Enter and hang in the air

Each torpid wind-blown vapour

Remembers each wisp of hair

Heavy is the fog now

Heavy on the Pine

Heavy the heave ho, the tug-o-war

And heavy on the Mountain line

Train tracks through the hollow

Deer tracks on the snow

Under the earthen grave so shallow

In the rivers wake they tow

Remember this Fort’s fighting

Remember Romans, English, Danes and Picts

Celts fought in the Mountain Belts

All fought over land

With hands or sticks

Remember said the Winter King

To the Summer Wren

The Season’s change,

But, I remain

Ruler over Men

The Robin flies off from the Holly

The boys beat the bounds sounding jolly

And Winter skins the leafless trees

As the lone figure stands in the folly

Remember when,

The voices ken,

Resound, resound

Within the Glen

Remember me when the Ghosts are Gone

From this Ghost Town

Fort William

Red Sky

Red Sky At Night

The village stood as if damned

Corrosive in illusions of the mind

A water boy was running

To fetch the fire brigade

And the torpedo manufacturer

Had corked his finest wine

A magical dragon

Then curtailed the wagon

And bit off one of its wheels

Gosh Golly said the madam

Drinking from a flagon

That warehouse is making eyes at me

Well how does it make you feel?

To know an empty field

Said the farmer

In his hand was a potato peel

The last crop of last year

Since war with Mars

All our spuds have been nicked

Yet I chased a Martian with a Spatula

And it felt quite spectacular

To know that  a fly on Mars

Can flatten me

You don’t drive your car on Mars?

Said the lollipop lady

Who had filled her mouth with Candy

From all the helpless babies

She helped to cross the road

You must be crazy

Said the Martian

We all hover on Space beams

And gravity don’t pull you down so hard

He ain’t Heavy, man the life buoy

He’s floating away

Oh Brother why did you have to go and live on Mars?

My brother he was happy

Wearing the Martian Hood

He felt Einstein was the only one

Who truly understood

But the Milky way was curdling

And his journey would be long

Jet set let’s go

Now I’m going to where I must belong

The rocket ship fired

Its engines burst into flames

The little skid mark from tyres

Left single tracks across our brains

And in a gush of gasoline

And a whoosh of rocket fuel

This ship crossed the boundary line

Of the imagination and what’s possible

Out beyond the stars

Above a barren sands

To another Red Rocky plane

To be caught in Martian hands

Like a paper aeroplane

Sent across a class in school

Its message met the Martian eyes

As if a guided cotton spool

The thread as in the labyrinths

In jet trails out to Space

Yet in their air, it was so vacant

The origin difficult to trace

The burning ship set down

Its fires quenched by the Red sand

Like blood the red horizon foretold delight

At shepherds hands

But Martian sheep can bound for miles

And a shepherd here must have a sense of humour

The only time he’s without his smiles

Is when he sees a Martian Puma

They prey upon his flock of sheep made

In part of aluminium

And sink their tin opening mouths

That shine in some illumine

These chases take place soon after dark

While the tin sheep start to rust

And by the morning they’ve shed themselves

Of a hundred fillings of red dust

The Zinc/Magnesium clad Pumas agitate

And set themselves in bold

Shining like a fire

In the starry Martian cold

It all seems like a miracle

It all seems so well planned

But the shepherd he rises on a spiracle

Of unearthly breath he has manned

For no man ever went there

None who from earth were born

None before my brother Peter

Who rode in on a cob of blazing corn

He landed and a maze field, began springing into life

All the Martian cried that’s amazing

No more worries or agricultural strife

We can all give up steel sheep grazing

And opt for an easier life

So glad were they he came there

They called him star man from the East

For with him Sunlight, blue skies and rain

Which drove out the wild Red beast

The Red dust which fed him had fallen from grazing sheep

And now without red rust it led him

To retreat into the planet’s deep

Out went the warders and keepers of the Red

Out the damn spot back to its hole

Now they’re all living underground

Now the Martian’s can have a soul

On went the planting of the corn and the wheat
New grew the bread and the patter of green feet

The Green giants stood at eight feet tall
Every earthman was a midget 
To these men of the Red Ball
But the Red dust had not gone away
It was hidden in the basement
And buried in the hay
Waitin for the right time
When night replaced the day

Then at that moment when night broke out instead
The Red Martian's came out their holes
And began killing the Green ones dead 
To and fro they wrestled for what seemed fifty years
Until a final truce was settled
Which left the Green ones quite in tears

The Greens would be left in peace
If they helped the Red Barons with a War
They wanted their dogs of war unleashed 

Upon the hated earth they swore

For an Earthling had come some years ago
And changed the fine balance of power
The Reds had lost face that day when to their holes they'd cowered

The Reds would stand no more for earth
With Its lights of leading minds
They wanted to extinguish all its candles
Bring back the dark times

The Green Martians disagreed
But what else could they do?
If they didn't want more bloodshed

They knew they must subdue

And so a pact was made to ally against the Earth
The Red blood was mixed with Green in Oath
And each knew what blood was worth

The Invasion came one Wednesday
Following a Blood Red Dawn

The people of Earth felt hazy
As if tired of just being born

And if this was to be the World's end
Then what an end it would be
While the Martians rode in on Fountain Pens
And scribbled on the Sky
We are Free

So as I say
There came a day
When Mars did Earth Invade
And after much bloodshed
Both red and green of Martian Vein
And Earth's blood that was red
The Earthlings realised a thing
Like knowledge from a dream
That it was the red not the green
Who did the War-waging
Though it cost the Greens their souls

And the Great minds on Earth perceived
That when the first earthling who was on Mars received
The place was a desert made of Red
From the rusty sheep
And they saw if only stainless steel sheep
Could be persuaded to live there instead
The Red dust would be gone
Just as a Body which is dead
Decays to dust and bone
Nothing else could be left
To the Red Army which they might call home

So the plan became to drop
These steel wool parachutes
As if a ticking hand grenade
In that when they moult
As will a sheep
Only stainless steel wool would be laid
And the Red Planet who wages war
Would instead become a silver ball
A harmless brother to the moon

A crack team of Shepherds set out
Into the Red of Night
And dropped their ticking bombs of wool
Under wooly cover out of sight
The next months proved decisive
As the New Martian sheep did Moult
It left no rust for Red dust to mine
Like it grinds the pepper and salt
The Reds soon had no choice
but to retreat to underground
And even now you can hear the faint voice
Of the Red Dust drilling sound

But so long as Green is Green
And the stainless steel sheep do munch the pasture
The Red dust will settle out of scene
The Greens will still be master

So don't think the Grass is always Greener
On the other side of the road
Just think of this tale when you see a Red Sky at Night
And be Glad the Earth is your abode



  

Ben Nevis

Sitting on the over ground

Under ground flows over rock

The voice from under is a trickle a babble

Of life where for it to be found

Is like a shock

Old familiar burn is friend to traveller of weary feet

Once you’ve climbed to mountain peak

It serves you a cool refreshment stop

Red burn flowing from a thousand fathoms deep

Who knows where it comes from?

How or why the Red Giant sleeps

Like a Lazy reptile

Its fish flesh rests

Easing in the water

Sliding smooth granite slab over slab

Like intercostals of its heaving rib cage

Breathing algae and moss

Wet lichen sponges, the ages that pass

And then the Red Giant shifts

Raises his leviathan bulk

Skip sized boulders

Roll off his great shoulders

And then he settles again

And the Red Burn off his orange, silver grey body

Rolls as if his blood

But though his bones creak

He still lives under rain flood

Or baking blue skies

Heights

Up high it is grey cold stone

A graveyard of broken tombs

Fallen base of sky

The barren boulder field

Crumbled moon rock pie

Adamantine Hardness of earth

Protrusion reaching so far up

One of Mother Nature’s most promising children

Turned to stone by an angry God

What did it do to warrant such a punishment?

Did it like the Titans of old try to reclaim Eden?

Made themselves Lord and Master of all they survey

But oh what disaster ahead of them lay

They boiled in righteous indignation, in their own impotency did rage

Their molten vibrancy of action lay like monuments that last an age

Their only crime self realisation that in God’s image were they made

And yet in this pride was their downfall from their Mighty Stage