Brown leaves

Brown leaves, brown leaves
Go walking down the street
The dead of the land
The wind will winnow and treat

Like people that stand
Like people that fall
Brown leaves, brown leaves
The wind will winnow them all

Brown leaves, brown leaves
And the fat of the land
The people will meet
But they won't understand
When the wind blows them down
They must try to stand
Brown leaves, brown leaves
Blown across this great land

Hear in the heart wood
The heart ache of the forest
Here every acre is living
On time it does borrow
Brown leaves in the field
By the river, in the hand
Green leaves today,
Will be brown leaves tomorrow

Summer nights

The Summer lights are going
The Winter nights are glowing
In this city
Harry Krishna tribes are singing
Who do you think you are?

You turn to me with that glazed look
Like your soul has been written
By my will
But that look
Like all your silver has been sold
And I'm the one
Who owes you gold
Who do you think you are

The alchemy of this situation
Is like a bowl of dust to me
Like a potter at a wheel
You've turned me
Around and around
To the shape you want me
Fired in your furnace of love
I'm like a fragile vase
For you to fill up
Who do you think you are

The long summer

Its time to look back
Now I'm not trying to compare
Nor even trying to understand
The things that I cannot bear
To even hold within my hands

It just leads to some despair
Of despots, generals, the common man
But if you tell me I will lead them
And together we can make a stand

Don't forget you owe me nobles
I borrowed your bottle
From the Arab sands
Where knights in white cloth
Ride full throttle
On their camels over land

Should you ask me for for their number
None will come when I feel number
Than a candle in a wax work tumbler
Rolling over rumplestiltskin

Last night I saw a ranger
Flying high above
The sea even looked
Stranger then
As if not the face I love
Autumn in Hungary
Warmth in the sunlit streets
Nobody moves out of your way
Nothing poetic to say about that

A bed of snow

Well the sun came down
Every step of the way
And Heaven seemed
Such a long long day

Paradise was lost
Along the way
But regained at great cost
To the ones who would pay

You see I saw the demise of the skies
That day
That fortune smiles on us guys
Down the blue highway
But in the end who wins
When nobody pays?
I've got golden luck
I'm sure
But its on a silver sideways

The more you see
The less you understand
Well that's just like me
My love when I show you my hand

Try and read the palms
They'll be blowing in the wind
To the sound of the Caribbean

An impostor has been sleeping my bed
He told me nothing when I asked him
What was inside his head
He was like an actor
Who had lost his script
The words come out
But he's no idea how they'd been writ

I ask why he needs to swallow his pride
He tells well its best to put those old things aside
I say from my standpoint we all look the same
He said they sure do when you're inside the game
Try looking at things from the outside
And so I started by removing his dark glasses
So I could tell when he lied

The London Rain is falling

I don't love you in the rain
No more, no more
I don't love you in the rain
Amore, Amore, Amore

I don't love you in the flood
No more, No more my blood
I don't love you in the flood
Amore amore, amore

I don't love you in the down pour
No more, no more
I don't love you in the down pour
Amore, amore, Amore

How about the tear drop fall
No more, no more
How do those tear drops fall
Amore, amore, amore

Give me buckets I'll fill them with love
No more, No more my Lady
Give me buckets filled with your love
Amore, amore, amore

when the lights go out

You'll see everything so clear
There'll be nothing to be a fear
When the light goes out

When the light goes out
There'll be nothing to shout
There'll be no wind about
When the light goes out

You may hear that thunder roll
You may fear you'll lose your soul
But don't doubt
He'll be standing on the roof top shoutin'
When the light goes out

Too many men have bought a pen
They write but they're not wrought
They've gone out and sought
What they ought
But they still doubt
When the light goes out

Don't be one of them
The sureness when
You're full
Can be a balm when you're near harm
When the light goes out

So humor me and let me see
You in the dome to come
Where figures in their Roman robes
Will beat upon a drum
And herald in the tribune
With the best of news
Who sees how things stand
In the desert sand
When the lights go out

Muscles and Molluscs

As I went paddling down the Duna
The trees were like a graceful dream
The river bank looked like a scene
From Autumn
All the leaves turning brown from green

As I went paddling down the Duna
The young men passed me in their boats
Athletic bodies
Muscles bulging
While I in my own craft
Tried hard to stay afloat

As I went paddling down the Duna
All the birds flew over head
There were Cormorants
Passing in Vee forms
ducks parading in the shallows
The Autumn chill had risen
To the clouds
And dissolved into sun shadows

As I went paddling down the Duna
Suddenly a quiet stretch
I saw a crow playing a game
like fetch
It would pick up this shell
And in its beak fly a few meters up
Then next it dropped it onto the pebbles
As if to smash the shellfish guy

As I went paddling down the Duna
I turned my boat around just there
So I could watch this little miracle
Of evolution everywhere
On the fifth attempt
He'd cracked it
This crow could pull out
The mollusc
And so happy I could have shouted
Well done Crow, what a clever Guy!

Hoopoe

James saw a Hoopoe
Flying high above
Funny to be on an island
And not to feel love

He caught it on his I phone
Him phone Her phone
He and She
This Hoopoe was caught
In a net whoopee!

James saw a Hoopoe
This is all I can say
It was many years ago
From here an eternity away

I call back to my past
My bird song echoes
But it will not last
As all the love
That we must one day
Let go of

The Hoopoe
Was as transitory
As a cloud shadow

He picked out its dimensions
Zoomed into its pixels
Like some wanted fellow
A felon escaped from prison

But it had no talons to speak of
Only this strange head
And then of course a distinctive call
To recognize miles and miles
Above the island of the dead

How many skulls have reverberated
This sound?
Called out for another's answer
Thinking themselves
The only other Hoopoe around

How many wood pecker skulls
have hammered the tree
And cracked like nutshells
Before they can get free?

How many skulls hear the ringing bells
How many hear the poetry?
Just the Hoopoe
Just the Hoopoe?

Face of heaven

Somewhere under an eastern sky
I'm floating
I'm diving
I must survive
I'm swimming
And the stars are my guide

Homeward bound on the tide
The river is the determiner
the pull

Through

I look up
And I must remember to forget you

river blues

The stars are guiding me home
Its nothing political
I just don't know who I am
Somewhere between
Mother earth and
The horizon I span
A stretch of water
A River heard
The myriad waves
Like sheep I herd
With my oar
Collecting them only to
Ferry them away
Usher of tides
The coming war

What comes in I wonder
On the tides
What am I, flotsam?
Or jetsam?
From your ship
Where I was tied

Hauled anchor
Waylaid
Lied
And capsized
By the tempest
The Tsunami
The Temple bride
Of a watery world
Where I'm
Face down drowning
In space, I'd
Give my left arm for
A life buoy
She cried
And I swam to her rescue
The fescue starving waves
Of dissent
The mobs boil
Like shark infested water

Forgive me

Sand in my hands
I watch it fall
Towers that stand
I want them all
But then I sigh
On fortune's lie
Forgive me
Forgive me

The noble prince
Upon his steed
Rides across the land
Of the living dead
Book once wrote
That I have read
Turn their pages down
Turn them on their head

The colours drain
From the palace wall
Blood stains red
Empires will rise and fall
I cannot hold them in my hand
Forgive me that
Forgive me all

An angel treads
Outside your gate
She draws the line
Between love and hate
I hold my pen
Keep you in my mind
Then when I write
The Farm yard hen
The cuckold's fight
Forgive me
Forgive me

What strange days
Are these that past
Keep ringing the bells
Of freedom's cast
You hear them ring
From hill to hill
What is this love
That they do kill
A love like a swollen
belly's fill
Of the meal
Ever grateful

The autumn leaves turn brown and fall
The questions hang
Their answers call
In the dead of night
In the days enthrall
I watch them all
Forgive me them
Forgive me all

It's a backwards world

Dreamt of seeing a fox swimming
Then it became a cat, then it got out
Then a fox chasing a cat, and then it was a cat with a dog in its mouth it had caught
But it was still alive apparently underwater
The fox was duped by a chicken
Who had become the sliest of farmyard animals
Convening in corners
Brewing up schemes
Running cartels like the Mafia

Nothing seems to make sense anymore

Cats chase dogs
Cats like swimming
So much that the English Channel
Is full of them doing breast stroke

Dogs hang about on fences and walls
Balancing carefully
Or sunning themselves on window sills

The world is backwards
The birds are rowing in fishing boats
And the fish are flying above in the clouds

Moths tuck themselves up in bed at night
Catholics never have any guilt


Sheep chase wolves through the forest
Ferocious sheep stalk the hills

And Shepherds wear armour to protect
Themselves

Cats chase off Tigers

Wolves are family pets
Lions are nannies
And children keep sharks
In fish tanks

Children are in charge
Little Napoleons
And Churchills
And the politicians are in the play pens
Tossing about  hundred dollar Euro bills

The world is upside down

Back to front

Like a turtle with its shell
On the inside

The soul has hardened
The flesh is soft
Tree leaves grow to the shadows
And the roots sprout nuts

Buildings are falling over
And what lies down
Stands bolt upright

The Mountains melt like butter
In the morning sunlight

And Oceans freeze over
Where the camels now tread
While the deserts fill with water
Asleep in ruined cities
That were never made

Love's hide and seek

It should have been obvious
I should have cried
This love's an impostor
It cannot be denied
But did I turn and face the turning of the tide?
Of course I didn't
Truth hater
From her I run and hide

The cloak and dagger
Subterfuge
In the dead of night
The knife beneath the covers
That she slips into your side
Some where between the ribs
Just where the heart lies
Some spreading of the chest
That prises it wide

How I did not realize this when I was asleep
It must have been in a dream I missed
Or smuggled in a kiss
But it was carefully packaged
All the loose ends had been tied
But did I turn and face her
No of course I run and hide

There is a certain stealing
I am loathe to do
Steal the heart while undercover
But of course you pull me through
The black night of my shame
My guilt at having lied
But did I even name her
No, of course I run and hide

There will soon be no place
Where I can conceal my face
There soon will be no alley
Down which have not turned
Can there be a cross
I have not born or a prize
I have not sacrificed
Just the rag I have not burned
Which I hold over my eyes
But did I try to tame her
Of course I have not tried
It is just a game to her
In which I run and hide

Love is strange

Love is strange

It's a two faced thing

You stop it one day

The next day it begins

There's a stranger love than

This I'm sure

But it's just like a stranger

Who knocks at your door

Who does love know?

Does love know me?

Is it something I do

Or something I see

Has it tracked me down

To the quarters of this sea

Was it a crime of passion

Or being bored of the city

The Love detective will find you out

Lock you up, throw away the key

It'll leave you in the ball and chains

Bound in irons, they'll shackle thee

They tell you yes

But you say no

No one to impress

Nowhere to go

Loves a stranger in no man's land

Love will rearrange yer 

With her hands

Turn you into a different self

So you'll be a stranger

Like nobody else

Always wanting to make friends

Loves new in town

It doesn't know how it ends

Nobody's shown love the big picture

It just goes where it goes

It's happy to meet yer

Love answered honestly "I did not know that"

When in its heart it's already

Thrown in its hat 

But you know it doesn't like to boast

It isn't like that

Shifting scenes

Everything that happens
Happens for a reason
The happening, the occurrences
Of fate
The stars turn on a steel wheel
But who turns them
Are invisible forces
Of love
And possibly hate
Possibly an analogue of love
Or an antithesis
An absence of it
Like Space
The space between
Us

The digital of love
Are 0s and 1s
The binary dialogue
Between two people
Each quantifiable
In strings and characters
That make sense to some
Arcane programmer
Like God

But the analogue of love
Is in fractions of a dial
That is turned
Its in vibrations of energy
In a field around us
In waves it comes
Similar in its difference
To particles and waves
In the quantum field

We two are entangled forever
On a molecular level
Our atoms somehow merged
Their bonds somehow stretched
To encompass one another
And it has left us this feeling complex
Perplexed us
Nothing can be done but to breathe
Through it

There are negatives and positives in the universe
And all energy must keep in balance
So if love is destroyed at the same moment
Somewhere else it is created again
The universe will never run out of this stuff
It is the opposite of space
It is the filling in of the void
It is the feeling that can never be destroyed
And we will see each other again
I promise

Pinocchio

Pinocchio grew up
You knew would
He would have to
After he became a real boy
He became a real brat
In boarding school
Though how could that be?
With Jiminy cricket
And Geppetto's wooden stool
He learnt some honesty
And truth
Actually he saved up
Cobbling together some money
And went off to study
Psycho-analysis
In Vienna under Freud
Jung was his Mentor
He treated others for the good
He made them better
Those who believed they were
Made of wood
And had wooden hearts that would
Never feel
He turned them on his lathe
Chiseled away, until their slithers
Of wood peel
Began to bleed
And he knew he had touched a nerve
And finally they could feel

Others were so light headed
They were strung to the ceiling
They were puppets of another power
But one without moral feeling
And he made them walk up the wall
He made them stand
And he made them fall
Until Dr Pinocchio made the snip
With his knife
And circumcised they'd go
Back home to their wife

So he had a good racket going
This shrink of a boy man
The only thing that got his goat
Was to think of his toy woman
She was no fun anymore
And he felt deflated
Every time they went to bed
She was far from elated

Of all the men of this world
I had to marry one once made of wood
You jump when we sit by the fireside
You think you might catch light
And when we're in the pool
You never swim just float driftwood -like

But most of all in bed when I check your trunk
I find the tree has been fossilized
And like a petrified stone its sunk
So come on my woodsman
Show me what your made of

So things went on like this for some time
It happened to be lucky for Pinocchio
That he had married Cinderella
And that he had made her
Instead of a glass slipper
Wooden clogs
She became the dutch woman from the paintings
The happy wife
And it was all windmills and canals
When they moved to Holland

And that pesky Prince stopped chasing her
He remained in Denmark
Biting his finger nails
Still afraid of the dark
But that is why the pumpkin prince
Had to vanish at midnight
He had to feed his dog
That would howl for his bone
And he let his hound bark
Until he got home

So by and large Cinderella was
Happier with her new shoe
She stopped sweeping up the ashes
For now fires were a no no
Unfortunately ten years later
She was to fall in love again
With a dancer of the go go
And she went went
Because she can can

Clocking off

Catch the two o'clock train

The station stands but we are walking

It will be back again

No stalking

Like a tiger in the long grass

Marauding passersby

Passengers

The tiger of time watching

Each second like a tigers tooth biting

Each minute like a claw, clawing

Each hour like a jaw on bone gnawing

Rolling us over and over, skin flail, caterwauling

Hear time stops

In a relative way at the station

Mr light beam gets off

Several decade before Mrs Sound barrier

Breaks shore in her steamer

Though her waves continue to ripple on the water

Mr light beam has left his particles to scatter

And in a quantum cafe the waitress

Is trying to untangle her reality

She's stirring the protons and neutrons together

In an atomic latte

Mixing in electrons

And a scattering of gluons

She tops it off

With a smattering of quarks

And just when she is serving it to

Mr Schrödinger in a hat

Who keeps appearing and disappearing

At the table over her shoulder
Asking for more milk
For his cat

Time's gravitational wormhole

Opens up to an alternative reality

Where many parallel waitresses

Are having similar experiences

But in a way that would make you

Question their validity

And I sit there sipping my coffee
Thinking of all the pieces
That fit together
Because they have to
Fall apart because
They want that
And I look at my watch
And realize my train
Will soon depart
I return the time piece
To my breast pocket
And it ticks a little
out of time
Above the beating
Of my heart

I digress, and I should

As life is a digression

Or is it a regression

Into an infinity of mirrored doors

Never mind, behind one

A prize surely awaits

And we are all winners

In the cosmic game show

Known as reality

And here is your host

Mr Reality TV

On times past

I must be guilty of something
To be up at this hour
Like stealing the silver ware
Or stealing from the Gods
Their fire power
I must be
So bind me in irons
Leave me in dungeons of despair
I have no hope of a better tomorrow
Each passion is like a cage
Of care

Each love is like a tide in the dawning of the moon
Swallowed by a whale
I'll sail back to you soon
But not before Jonah
Has done God!s bidding
Not before the guests have been
Welcomed to our wedding

There was a time like a memory of a lane
Like an autumnal sequence
Where brown leaves fall like rain
And they feel so real
Wet with laughter
Drenched in pain
In the innocence of belonging
To that time again

I cast down my manhood
Lost in memory
I am running through the fields
Of a childhood fantasy
And it all seems so close
It is so hard to bear
That such love as these were
Our rights as children
Have everywhere

Mine were no different, though luckier than many
To be growing up in the countryside
Needing little more than a penny
Nothing to live or die for
Just the being in its essence
That was the quintessential part
Of its innocence

If I come back from that long stupor
That reverie of a time long past
Now my eyes are wet

My heart weaker
But to forget
Is only temporary
Like a kind of sleep
When perhaps where a person
Really lives
Is in his memory

Faces in the glass

I broke her heart
it'd never been broken before -
like a glass vase
I shattered the visage
I broke her eyes
And they shed tears
I broke my own face
For a thousand years
Since Helen of Troy
I never thought I would love again
And again this heart is a toy
To play with in the rain

Manana, manana

The mud is in the water,
But its getting clearer
The more you know
The less the river seems to flow


The more you know the stiller
Seems the water
The deeper seems
The thoughts of her
to whom I used to go

The more the river flows
The faster all the dreams
The bigger in the the microscope
Of un-imagined things

Then I step back from the bank
And see the fishermen throw
Their lines in a flank
They're all trying to catch
The impossible

All the muddy waters of tomorrow
Don't you know
What they say in old Spanyol?
Manana, manana
Let tomorrow look after
Itself

I know I've seen your face before

I've seen your face some place before
In some theatre maybe or city store
No now I remember you stood at my door
I knew I'd see your face before

I've seen your face some place before
You've got the kind I'd remember
Like a mocking bird
Calling out your name to me
But its something I ignored
I knew I'd seen your face before

I've seen your face some place before
Was it on a poster for ghosts
Was it nailed to a wanted post
Did it set ships a sail to Greece's shore?
I knew I'd see your face before

Was it in Paris?
Was it in Spring?
Now you seem embarrassed
Oh dear was it a fling?
Did we love in the moonlight
Under the Cyprus trees did we sing?
Oh tell, me tell me who you are?

When something reminds me
But I know not of who
Like the lip of a sandal
That a dog might chew
Like some piece of rag
That one discards
I'm trying to remember but it seems so hard
You're on the tip of my tongue
You're a vision out of place
Like on the edge of the horizon
The dawn of your bright face
But I have not the hands
To hold your burning sun
The stars are so myriad
Like out of a million you're the one

Just lay your lines down
Like experience in the sand
Draw up the ground water
From the depths of memories found
Some twinkle in your eye
Reminds me of someone I knew
But am I the one you found
Or did I find you?

Memories fade, they fall in the parade
But I want to remember you
I won't let you fall into shade
Now the sun has shone upon all that you've done
I can see it in your eyes
You've still got things to come
I can trace in your smile
The hard work of the Nile
That runs beneath the surface of your skin
Just tell me is your style
In your heart or your guile
Now tell me are you sure?
I knew I'd seen your face before

Scatter my ashes in the Danube

Scatter my ashes in the Danube
And I'll be there to follow you
Beneath the sky of blue

Scatter my ashes in the Danube
All the funeral guests
In their best black dress
Beneath a sky of blue

Scatter my ashes in the Danube
Let them mix
With the twigs and the sticks
From the nests of the crows that flew

Scatter my ashes in the Danube
And I won't come and bother you no more
I'll be too tied up with lapping at the shore
And if you want to forget me
Then be sure
Not to leave on the bank my shoes

Scatter my ashes in the Danube
Where the firework flashes
And greasy hands pass cashes
All covered by the waters that flow

Scatter my ashes in the Danube
Where the waters mask a multitude
Of sins
And if you have to ask then you
Won't be let in
To the Danube river party today

Scatter my ashes in the Danube
Let them join with the bodies
That flow to the Black sea
Just tip up the urn and forget about me
Like they do, like they do
With everybody
Beneath the sky of blue