Ladles of Letters, Sandals of Sand

What light through adjacent window breaks?
Smother me in all your kisses speak
Of soft nothings in my ear
Gertrude was my love in all the wild west
My Wind in all the eves
She spoke as angels do from bed clothes
Irons the sheet music of  METAL DAWN
rOBOTS KNELT WHEN SHE OPENED
Her mouth to yawn
Yes she was queen bee to me

The moths and spiders knew her as Frank
They stole her ignition keys
St Agnes and Ignacio stank
Of the filthy knowledge they were rich in

And blue bottle flies sang her tune
Above a jazz city under a full moon
All interstate numbers were re-registered DOOM
As Columbus fingered the jury

He spoke without looking blind was his faith
His East was his West, phenomenologically obtuse
Dialectical materialism versus un-real proof
THat God is a sandwich and love is his roof

Because in the house of the sung out praise
All oil paintings are dripping with the last days
The sign of the times, The Zeds in a road
That Zig-Zag like a yellow brick trail to Oz

The Label of Love

Something in the blue slit of sky
Something there beneath the horses hoof
Trodden into the mud a foot print of proof
That love lives, in its many colours
In its perennial return as a weed in the garden of Eden
But who calls love a weed?
Most call it a rose, and tend to it nurture it
But is this passion?
This thorny crown of roses we grow
Is it this sex that pushes up all the daisies?
This unearthing of the forgotten death
We sweep under the carpet
Speak of in hushed breath
In quiet tones when we are alone
And face what passes for fear
Of ourselves

A time upon a storm

Who's fretting now
God disagrees,
His glorious vengeance reaped out on the seas
Who's fretting now
The tumble weed blows
The door creaks
Nobody speaks
And nobody knows

Who's fretting now in the light trees
Planted like tombs from heaven
Dropped like bombs from the grave
Of the Somme
Where someone died
One or other

It takes a certain kind of craziness to cut and run
Especially if there is nobody there pointing a gun
You choose your annihilation according to your will
Pick your poison that pill to kill
You swallow and you don't look back or if you do
It will be too late
Yes there's a time to love and a time to hate
A time to save a life
A time to kill
Whose gonna tell you when the time is right
Nobody at your back holding a knife
You just imagine the persecutor there
Before the open window
Taking in the air

Once upon a lightening storm
I was riding,
Rode through the shadows of my past
Flashing up in memories
Some distant remembered scene
Lightening in the brain
Life goes by so fast
It seems like only yesterday
You were riding with me
Stormy weather blowing cloud ships through the sky
Treading soft as angels
Broken glass in front of me
Cinderellas' slippers in the hall

Sitting in a glass house
A vast house, the last house
The last time some such a voice did call
God he had to disagree
Put an end to misery
And miserly collect the fall

Where do moths fly in lightening storms?

Pearls

Take me too the mountain top
Make it stop, make it stop
Make all this hurt and pain just stop

What is loving
What is it?
Is it salt is it grit
Is it that grain in the oysters shell
That's rolled around
Through years of hell
Discomfort and pain
To make what
Something vain?

To make what? A pearl
The most valuable gem in all the world
Just look at it possess it
Put it on a string and make a necklace
Hang it there with pride
Because you know love's many sides
Have made it smooth
Not golden but mysterious like the moon
Too delicate to touch
I want to hold you so much
But I can't let it go
I can't sell my soul
Or perhaps I can,
I already have
Now I live in a clam
Buffeted by the wave
I just have no sign of a grain of sand
To rub in my own wound
To coat in my own silver fish flesh
My own fish scale clothes
That I wear underwater
Where all the fish breath

All the world's your oyster
That's what they say
Only all I want to know is:
Where's my pearl today?

Bridgwater in the rain

I remember in bridgwater
road in the rain
All those bloody traffic jams
All those

I remember bridgwater in the rain
And the roads that flowed
Out
The forests on the verge
That never emerge
From the corners
Of your blinkered vision

I remember the turns
And the dips in the road
Of the little old track
That ran
Down past the willows
Down past the the peat centre
And the Marshes that lay
Asleep in our hands

Do they still run,
Do the rivers still flow
The way I remember them in my youth
Do the roads still subside
And dip and dive
Do those same Peat tractors
Still pull their black load?
I suppose
They do

But what if its changed
If the falling rain
Has washed all foot prints away?
What of the people, their voices
Their triumphs
What if their hearts couldn't stay?
What then for my hopes of returning
What then for the time of a life
that's kept burning?
What if the jack knifed
Lorry is blocking the road
And the hearts blood is pumping
Its heavy load
And its blood is black with the peat
That its knowed
And the rain washes all this blackness
Away, away

All in a day's work

The saluting general came by this way

Forgiving all the ink

He had his pig

He had his sway

He painted them all in pink

And nuts fell from the balding sky

Like hair down in the sink

And I asked - lord why must we die?

And he said why do you think?

I said I think the jelly

The jelly, what the hell?

I said yeah I think the Jelly

When it rolls you cannot tell

But when it rolls, you know you live

You know you don’t wanna die

So, keep them pennies falling from heaven

And in time the good saints will fly

What the frock!?

The finish day is only a step away

The rainbow only a broken corner on a hatful of godless churches

The reach is only a toilet stop and except for the models

The rain has stopped

They come and they go with their morrocan glance

The holy foot steps on the looking glass

It is only a step away from the past

Only a wish away

\\\\\\\\the neighbourhood rocks

\It falls from the glocks

From the glockenspiel sheep

The way out frocks

On the widows peaks

And clocks of the cocks

Who chime in the sun

When the morning comes up

And the new day is done

Jumping

I am a model of uncommon sense
It is not sensible to model yourselves on me
I am a frog who likes to hug trees
Do not leap into the dark like me

I am a turtle who hides in his shell
When the bombs start falling
And the world goes to hell
Do not do the same
Do not swim with sharks
You are likely to get bitten
once or twice you will not be shy
You'll die!

Do not be brave my friend you see
The whole wide ocean of discovery
Awaits outside your window for you
To be free
Do not follow me
Do not follow me

The land of milk and honey
Began to run quite runny
And the painter's palette slipped away
The Palestinian laughed
Because he could not telegraph
A penny saved is a penny halved
And all the witches took their scarves
And wrapped around them swathed and swayed

Just say the word

Thank you for the music,
When the fat lady sings
And you save my soul and lots of other things

Music is the gift that keeps us living
It is the reason to wake up in the morning
And put on your clothes
Or take them off in the evening
And go dancing
Being led by the nose
It is the thread that we follow
When we can see nothing
Even in our dreams

Just say the word eh?
Well you need not say a thing
Just sing a note
And I will float away
On the sea,
the endless ocean
And that will heal me

What I thought I knew about love

Love is digging,
it is not a tick,
It is not blood sucking
It is time to quit
What I thought I knew about it
Has been overthrown by a new suit

The kings and queens of the merry-go-round
Go-round, and around, and up and down
And they dance in their throws
They swirl in their gowns
But where is the jester? He cannot be found

What I thought I knew about love
I'm dumbfounded,
I think it is fitting but that thought is illfounded
I  thought it was sweet, but it is rotten meat
And it smells in the wells, in the day's heat

What I thought I knew about love is forgotten
I left it in the lake, it has sunk to the bottom
My haystacks of mistakes are burning beside me
But I can't see for looking through the smoke
Which misguides me

What I thought I knew about love is all sold
I wrote it in the magazine had my words printed in gold
But they are too thin for the story to be told
So I try not to give - in, just God let me be bold