To those who would see me burn

 I do not want your towers of Babel

I do not need your

Street cars of desire

Your news paper cuttings

On coffee table mornings

Or friends keeping distance

In the supermarket mourning

The loss of a good friend

It's a shot in the dark

But I want life

That no computer screen can spark

I'm sick of the zoom calls

The death on the skype

The fifty yard high walls

Of Microsoft teams is a lark

Who ever enters a room of fifty people

and really gives a shit

What the tart at the front barks?

I want the intimacy of closed spaces

Cafes with small faces

And shop thieves at large

I want the risk that someone might rob my wallet

Then I can stop it

And feel cool as a shark

I want the loss, and I want the gain

Don't give me the dross

Of Microsoft window panes

I don't need their figures their statistics

Their frame

Their constant approval,

Their constant fame

Give me something real

I can write about that stuff

When people do unpredictable things

And fuck off

Or say damn it I've just had enough

Because I have of this virtual existence

Bugger off

I can already tell the kind of feminist tosh that will spout from the mouth of that

Crass oxbridge toff

Or she was brought up up in Surrey

And raised over in Spain

And now has enough nouce to run down my drain

I don't need her opinions

I don't need her high shame

Of slavery passed down through generations

I'm not playing that game

They are all pretenders

To massage their egos

But underneath it are machinations

That would equal Iago's

You can call me the moor, Desdemona's my maid

But at least when I look in my soul

It's home-made

And I shall not forsake the tribe of my nation

Who has given me my pride

In a certain fascination

With things that are green and alive

And last long

And are not just the passing fancies of

Babylon 

Funny Ha ha

 Now I'd like to say that you were cool

Like cucumber 

But more a tool

With an itch to get her number

Don't be a snitch

It's way past slumber

This party's over

Like an over boiled egg

It's turned hard 

And I'm going to bed

I must be up at the crack of dawn

Oh that's a funny one

A Brazilian, like a pussy that's shorn

Well sheep shaggers aside

You really took me for a ride

I spent far more

Than my beer budget can abide

And now I've installed your bloody fridge

Some bastard from America

Is gonna use it for his bridge

Damn it I'm drunk and that doesn't rhyme

But anyway

Life's like that

I fucks it up time, after time

And if you haven't a penny

A hapenny will do

And if you haven't

A hapenny, then boy

You are screwed

Love in the afternoon

 love, love in the morning, love in the afternoon

Love, love like a steam train whistle that's blowing

Love like the face of the moon

Love on the island, love on the bridge

Love in the aisle and the supermarket fridge

Love in the fountain, love in the mist

And love on the mountain where we first kissed

Love going down and coming up soon

Love in the afternoon

Are you going my way, walking across the room

Hiding in the shadows, in the dark gloom

Come out from the curtain, put down the broom

Cinderella on the highway sweeping over my tomb

Well the ball is still rolling but it'll be midnight soon

Love never goes my way, still there's love in the afternoon

Love like a joker, changing his clothes

Love like a smoker holding his nose

Can't stand the waiting for the summer in june

Love in the autumn wearing red shoes

Love like the falling leaves on sand dune

Love could be late to blossom, but soon it will bloom

Love in the flotsam, in the jettsam like a melody's tune

floating like a harmony, love in the afternoon

Love can be weak, love can be strong

love cheek to cheek, love's a love song

Love let's you speak, but doesn't need words

Love's what you seek, when you listen to the birds

Love is so sure and love is so soon

Love stands in your door, like a charm or a boon

Oh love, love in the afternoon

Laughing at bricks

 I'm going on holiday

A holiday in the car park

Well I know that crime doesn't pay

But a supermarket trolley can make a good lark

I sit in it and I joy ride

All through the parking bays

My friends hitch me up to the bumper of a truck

And Whoa! away we go

Sometimes I wonder about sunlight

If it is real or just in my dreams

Is it something I can touch

Is it a malleable thing?

If I put it in my fridge at night

Will it light up my Spring beans

Oh sometimes I wonder about sunlight

And what on earth it all means!

Sometimes I like to lay bricks

I like to sit and set stones

It gives me enormous satisfaction

To know that they all have a home

And that each is interlocking

Or can make a good path

Or it could be that they are all joking

And it takes a good brick to make me laugh

A cobble stone is not well known

One looks just like another

To be a famous cobble, you must be shined to a nobble

Like an elbow after a wrestle with a long-kneed giraffe

Oh but nothing can bend me over double

Nor give me a stitch in my carf

No nothing can make my knees wobble

Quite like brick can make me laugh

Sometimes I just have to see it sitting in the corner of a house

And I think to myself what a predicament, 

to be stuck firm as cheese block in the mouth of a mouse

Or like a crack (craic) in a pavement

No nothing can start the joggle of

The old jelly roll or make my belly toll

Like a church bell rung by an April fool

Or split my sides quite in half

Quite like a good brick can make me laugh

Boogie Bay

 Jezebelle the nun she cooks the books

She looks down the rifle sight

At words in her book

And each letter is like a light

She forgets to remember to write

When they come in the night

To seek out her quarters

And I have missed my train

I have kissed the rain

I have handed over my money

In the short haul plane

And they are tying on my parachute

So I may fall again

Now I hope 

That I land on my feet like a cat

And not head first into pain

The boogie nights

Of silent street

Rolling days of hilly sleep

That are gained in increments

Like slow orchestral movements

Let me take you to Boogie bay

And the starving

Staple of stolen care

Let me take you to boogie bay

We'll run our own kettle shop

And shine shoes there

We'll perform brain surgery

And give you a new heart

They'll take away your kidneys

And replace them with kid art

They'll shave your Jerico

And topple your Jeronimo

And Domino your diamonds

Through doorways in the dark

They'll break the crust of parkland

In a following

And their dialectics will make you fall apart

In dialogues eclectic, or electric like her smart

She'll click her fingers

Yes she will, she'll hurl you

From the apple cart

And stake a claim in corruptibles

Like a razor blade dart

And shore enough the sea will scoff

At all your glimmering jewels

She'll roll them til their edges scuff

And shine them like your shoes

So let me take you to boogie bay

Where the whales have the time

And they keep it in their tails

Where the mermaids do recline

And fat and folding sailors who

Have spent too long on land

Will look out of their sea side windows

And begin to make their plans

Let me take you to boogie bay

It cannot be more than a day away

And we will score our good time there

And we will hold aloft a flame

And flax and flecks

And shocks of seals will still be making play

When we go down hand in hand

To the sands of Boogie Bay

Still frames

 It was as I suspected the just desserts have been served

They let the cat out the bag

And the donkey in the manger

The roller disco, rollercoaster 

Of storytime is over

And its now the darkness of dusk

Creeping in

The shadows are falling all around the garden

And bathwater runs down the drain

Sirens are calling

Down streets never ending

In a heat that is lending

Confusion to a maze

But now the temperatures is dropping 

And the giant is returning back up the stairs

To his castle keep

The eagle's nest

Where they hatch the eggs

Of unrealism, in surrealist

Dadaeist jest

And floating along with Barbie 

In a parachute who falls

And floats in a kaleidoscopic test

I can see the television crews leading out their cables

Diners sitting down to tables,

Turning lights out

The call of the outside,

Some humming engines

Some slippery scudding of shoes

Some where a boar is snuffling a truffle

And somewhere a deer is bounding

I see the frame like a distant memory

Like a slow train coming

Round the mountain again

And I'm on the platform

Thinking I can remember you

Feeling all the hope falling through my fingers

Watching the rain water run down the drain

It is cold on the mountain, and lights are barely burning

But I must be strong to remember my name

And I think I answered all of your questions

But the one that lingers is why I snuffed out our flame

Elephant time/ elephantine

 

Doing my best in a shortfall, to be gone in a can of

Cortisol and hair spray

In tooth decay in nominal equities

And innumerable beauties

And telegraphic controversies of hook liners

That shape the turtle dove into some angelic being

And give her a golden egg imbibed with meaning

And when in actualness the forecast looked grim

Because high above antennae rooftops swam the peregrine

 

And even if these wolves are called the sea, and gems are not cut by diamond dromedary

Then the lump she was concealing in her peacock pouch

Was gemlike glistening

Heraldic and fizzling to be close to social exclusion 

And far from some happy place

To see in isolation solace

And yet to laugh in loneliness’s face

If that were the attainable state

I shouldn't care where the pendulum swings

And if I am a free bear

Then this forest of time

Should not be thickets of problems,

I should see the wood for the trees,

But slowly I see the hunter stalking me

Through the long grass

With his elephant in his spy glass

The elephant in the room

No one is talking about him

Just the way he likes it

He likes to be left alone

An elephant is always solitary when he's far from home

Though this doesn't mean he's made of stone

It just means he's packed his trunk is on his way

To where I could not say,

To what time or place

can you find him pining for the forest again

For the memory of ivory is like the scent of burning wood

And bonfires of his vanities,

And tusks of really doing good

And ears of imperfection for to listen

To malapropisms and feet like starved mosquitoes

Spread-eagled and flattened without blood

Pachyderm

The thermal tongue that licks the peanuts

And the snake bark skin

Like a tree trunk, gnarled and thick, as the crusts of earth

On which his feet are treading.

The Queen of the Aquamarine

 She's such a middle class mermaid

She shops in Ocean and aquarium tanks

She thanks

Her postman for the letters from the blue lagoon

And swims into the underwater banks

Now I saw you had dated her too

She lost a few of her scales to you

With me I think she piled on the pounds

But in the end she was landed by a fisherman from France

Whatever became of her famous tail?

It glimmered in the sun, and in the

Fish market sale

When I asked the fishmonger to remove

Tail and the head, 

I think he must have misunderstood what I said

Because now my mermaid is dead

She was a middle class mermaid

From the blue lagoon

But she hadn't been back there in a blue moon

She had a mum and dad, and a sister too

Who was so jealous she could swim

With the Penguins at the zoo

Well I loved her then,

And she became my wife

But I never did know how she would change my life

You she told me once the sea was waving at me

But I never realized this meant she wanted to be free

And I stole away in a yellow submarine

To track her down, the Queen of Aquamarine

Then I saw she'd found her promised land

Down beneath the waves in the arms of Aquaman

Well she was middleclass mermaid

With the sea breeze hair, that blew with fresh mint

Smell in the air

And her toothpaste soul, it was so clean

That beautful girl, the Queen of the Aquamarine

Who Knew?

 Princes and paupers, skivvies and skanks

One road down skint street another

Day in the worm field of pout

Porous as Jesus on the Sermon

On the mount

Serpico in trousers

And a snake in a mexican hat

And sheepskin corruption

In the belly of the crow

Crawling in lower orders of

skid row

And I see in the lights

That are beginning to glow

My reflection in the eyes

Of those I used to know

What are these cathedrals of doubt

That grow

Up from the sewers

Where trout eggs sew

And uncertain notes

On their organs blow

Around the city drain pipes

For surely this is the one place

That's left

A crescent on a jacket

A sin of lifelessness

A cordon-bleu accompaniment

To swordfish stew

Whom the unicorns have been cooking

Well who knew?

The Walrus in the dental church is checking out the labour

And counting all the costs

Of being a super-saver

And if you can't save the whales

THen Aquaman needs you

To be his PA and keep his filing cabinet

In good working order

I charged you up like a light sabour and shone you through the dark

And it met with many of the stars

Whose wars were not with me but with the skylark

Who sang to St Luke in his hot bath

Who raised cold lazarus from his bed of damp bark

And sent him off on his midnight

Canoe

Down the milky river, but again who knew?

Who knew of hercules and his labour too

Or of the midwfe whose breath was over due

And bank balances weighed

And babies in carts

And supermarket slaves

And children who swim with sharks

And the kettle is boiling over

Because its been filled to the brim

Now the tea has to brew

And every patience is a virtue

who knew?

I met a man with a can of worms down by the railroad edge

He said I've been down every road in the world

But I've never broken my pledge

But the roads have broken

And the cart wheels

The chariot charities are tokens

Of deal or no deal

And if you believe what was spoken 

Then it forces you to steal

What was never yours to take in the first place

Who knew?

Like dogs in the park

Where the homeless man slept

And he is in abject dejection

And my own parle with ennui

Amounts to a certain British-Russian defection

Someone wishes me dead he said

Then talked to a dog on the bone

He licked his chops

Then smacked his lips and said

Now I think I'll go home

But it was the case of the spy who loved me,

And she would never let him win

He may take diamonds, he may take pearls

But he'll take the heart of the girl

What a sin!

To love a foreign man from a foreign clime

And bend to the whim or rule of the crime

It's a moral defection

And inbred introspection

That leaves Frankestein's monster

Scratching his chin

Who knew?

Maglodi ut

 I'm in the land where they walk down straight

The dogs are the gods behind the garden gate

And I'm in a condo with a bottle full of hate

The dogs in the farm yard

They double up late

Calling us angels, calling

Pigeons on the lamposts

Carex in the garden

Tumble down Hungarian

buildings that stand on

Their last legs

Well I went to walk where

the dead don't talk

And the living all are sighing

And the breeze like chalk

Cut in circles and forks

Around the ones who were crying

They said you're a marked man

We have you in our sights

I said "I am what I am, now don't

forget the plan-

I won't go down without a fight"

But then the tombstones baulked

Under their ivy leaf storks

At all their words that were dying

It's a living language, a honey tongue

And the bears are off fighting with the dragons

In the grit on the dirt road lying

with butterfly wings and dead acacia blossoms

 

I see the Roma women calling to their husbands

Convicts inside the prison

And they call back darling what I lack

Is the eyes for you to be seeing

"Your children are here, come on shout to your daddy

Don't you know that he is your Father

And you are his sons

Though many horizons

Have set while he's been in prison

The children are well, another says with a yell

We love you the mother prompts the little boy 

To holla'

He he cries back, I love ya, though the lack

Of seeing is like I'm dying

In this living hell, where everyday gels into

The next and the next one

And it's all just a rap

I've been caught in the trap

Of being a young gypsy man caught in the system

It's the same as well for those who ring the bell

The prison yard bell it is chiming

And their crawling along the floors

Their rapping at the doors

And those prison walls they are climbing

But the bell still tolls for one and all

The bells of freedom are a ringing

One day the siren calls, will not herald what befalls

Every young gypsy man in the system 

They come out again, the family, this time

Another young boy is with them, he is getting

bored and restless sitting on the grass

Scuffing his feet in the gravel

Sending up a shower of angry stones

To heaven

On my way back after they are gone

I see they have scrawled with pink and blue chalk

We love you Apa (father) on the side walk

While I hardly dare look or listen, but I must

To the sounds the men make in the prison

As the daylight dims on a hot Sunday evening

And they face another night in the cell

Without his family, whose graffiti on the pavement

Is the inverse of his own howling sentiments

To the government

This is justice, this is the consequence

For the criminal all life is denied

Outside visiting times, if there are any,

And the high prison wall that keeps him

Mightier than thou

 Mightier than thou

I really do not know

Mightier than thou

Coming on so slow

Well I hear it when you talk

Like the winds do blow

You are so Mightier than thou

Outside my window

Whistle for me honey

I'd like to hear a tune

Whistle for me honey

By the light of the big full moon

Well Magnolia in the swamps

And the hanging vines and broom

They're so mightier than thou

On a Summer's afternoon

French fry me baby

Give me a liquorice spoon

Let me take your medicine

I'll be coming home so soon

I can even taste it, clear as I hear the loon

Who goes crying in grapes

And howling at your moon

Who chose you baby, to stand for right or wrong

Whose needle did you crotchet for it to turn out bad?

I've been to the desert and I've sung my desert song

But now I'm returning to the table lands

And for that I should be glad

Monday

 There's that time in the city, when it all stops

When the fury of the hour is over

When it looks like the day will relinquish

Its headlock hold, and the penny drops

Then the wind stirs in the trees

The hammer blows continue

Deep rumblings of trucks

Are heard again

Engines start

And drills brrrr into walls

And voices continue to chatter

Like a thread in the stitching of the universe is dropped

And we all stare at the dark matter

Has the creator a synaptic gap

That's a little too far to leap?

Or has he or she simply taken a nap

Had 40 winks or a sleep?

Whatever the answer it's Monday today

And here comes that start the week feeling

I should have washed the sheets over the weekend

I should dusted the walls or ironed the ceiling

But it is a loss I'm afraid my good friend

Time has crept up on us again

There's more to be done under the sun

More of interest that this start the week squealing

Wandering

 And Mercury came suddenly,

And Saturday did sluice

Into the old rapsodies

Of a summer and its juice

Through the water melon gateways

Rolled the conquered goose

Ridden by an elf or a goblin anyways

He didn't suffer any fools

I should have held you like a candle

A loft as a guiding light

Instead I let you be my handle

And turn my days to night

I had to escape your clutches

I had to escape your farm

Get away from Chiken hutches

And women doing me harm

I know we all harbour

Our good intentions

To rest

But what becomes of the forest farmer

When his words

Fail in  lifelessness?

He must move on to pastures new

He must plough the green highways

There is more to do under the sun

Than stay put at home anyways

So I am off I make a beginning

I venture

Where others have roamed

But it's all not the same

To be in the game

You must wander far from your home 

The rise and fall of the clown

 He was so high

As high as a clown

But from being so far up

The only way is down

And he slipped on miss buttercup

And a banana skin on the ground

And he fell from the trapeze

And caught the disease of the drowned

Don't you tell me he didn't love the highs and lows

As he swung through the crowd

On his finger tips he did go

Tip toeing like a ballerina

Then growling like a bear

Ferocious as a Hyena

Then as sweet as a lover's care

Oh he had the crowd in the palm of his hand

They were lapping it up

They were begging for more

And he kept them titilated on the edge of their seats

He was hansel, then Gretel,

Then the old witch with the sweets

He led them up the garden path

And they were baying at the door

Howling like the Hungry wolf

Who cries out for her lair

And just when they felt they'd had enough

He let his act fall

He played his hand like a maestro stands

As the audience applauds

But that was all then he thought

Now nothing's like before

Now I am in Neverland

And they've gone and closed the stable door

My horse has bolted

And I forgot to climb on board

It will all go unnoticed

Like a shadow in a darkened land

I am abandoned and forlorn

I call out to the prairie and

A lone coyote answers my call

And I am left singing kareoke stanzas

To my shadow on the wall

Tell Tale heart

 Oh you have a telltale heart

Yes you have a telltale heart

I can hear it beat in the dark

Oh your tell tale heart

Bring me down to the old canal

Where the dockers work

And farmers pull the plough

Show me life in the here and now

Listen to your tell-tale heart

Show me up on the face of the moon

Let me see you in the reflection of a spoon

It is all about the cruel art

Of your tell-tale heart

The deception has gone

In old Babylon, the stone that spoke its part

Well the blood was dripping from the Stone of Scone

And it bled like your tell tale heart

The war rages on

And your thoughts may belong

To the lover and his arrow dart

Or is he the assassin with weapons of passion

That kill your tell tale heart

When the sheep bleat

You must discover your art

Yes to have a tell tale heart

The Journey underground -Jack in the box part 4

Bringing the skull on my shoulder

As I walk over the hills

Crossed rivers filled with boulders

Candles lit in windowsils

People stayed at home

But I walked the edge of the knife

Walking though never alone

Half way between death and life

Two heads are better than one they say

And this skull he was no exception

As day after day he guided me on

Night upon night gave me direction

Soon we came to a gully, with moss, and

grain on the ground

I followed a  trail that led like a snail

To a small house standing unsound

"The keeper of this Tavern", he said

"He will know where they buried the dead"

And I looked up at the sign hanging aloft

The Magician's rest was flashing on and off

It was too late now, I was stepping over the threshold

Would this be the test of the story the skull had told?

I decided in a flash, to conceal my bony stash

And tucked him under my arm in a headhold

What have you got there, the inn keeper spoke

As I approached the bar, my anticipation broke

Oh just a skull I am carrying, to reunite it with it's body

The whole company turned and faced me, I felt bashful in it's scrutiny

"A body, ye say?", "Aye", said I

"One without a head, have ye heard of it? " My accent I could but try

"Neigh", said the publican, and crestfallen was I

Even my skull companion, looked more ashen in complexion

Until a rosy cheeked jug swiller, piped up from his stupor

"You must be talking of the bodiless head of Spencer Hall!"

"The very same, my good man", and I fixed him with my gaze

The skull, who was disheartened, soon found his mirth raised

"Except", I said, "it be the headless body for which I am a-searchin"

"Yep that be the one," he said, "I can take ye to it," he said, swayin' and lurchin'

I surreptiously placed the Skull on the bar, in order to have consultation

The bar tender, looked a little quizzical from afar, but still served us with the usual salutation

"What do you think?", I spoke under my breath

"I say he looks trustworthy enough, come on drink up or you'll soon catch your death

At that he drained his cup, but it didn't go as smoothly as some stuff

Come on I said, tucking him under my arm, I think you've had enough

And this pub has lost its charm

I collared the pretender, waved the bartender

And we left in a dramatic whirl

The pub buzzing behind us, my head in a swirl

At the same time we were followed by a girl

The uncouth one, whom we followed, he led

Moved confidently through the forest

So with torches we sped

The land it seemed was property of an old lord

Who went by the name of Spencer

His family had lived here since the 15th Century

It was said he was a dramatic contender

So spoke our guide, as he wound his way

Through briar thick clumps, deadly nightshades

Until at last we came to a woodland glade

Running along beside were orchids in purple shade

And then it opened to a clearing

Where a mausoleum stood

Strangely ancient hidden in the wood

Cracked, fissured, enambled and marbled

A wood chuck chuckled, a song thrush warbled

And darkness grew and the moon like tempered steel

Shimmered,

A dog in the distance barked, and from a hillside

A house light glimmered

And we had to huddle closer not from the cold

But the natural inclination in a darkening wood

To stir our heart to be bold

The mausolem was lit from outside by candles

But no door was there just a stone slab cracked and man-handled

Behind though it was noticed that a track ran up a hill

The ground there of seemed recently disturbed by footsteps

And evidence was there still

As we ventured round the ancient looming ruin

We could hear the sound of some singing

And smell the scent of something brewin'

Light there was also, but a strange and gloomy hue

As if the earth had opened up and let out purple smoke from a flue

The bravest among us - the skull, knew exactly what to do

We must venture up this winding trail, then he said "after you!"

Knowing then that here must be the end to all our earthly searchin's

I tremolously stepped up to that road where the nightly ghouls were lurkin'

I saw in one glance, after passing many a way crossing branch

That what we had stumbled upon in the Zenith of its carry-on

Was somekind of a witches coven

I will describe the scene. In the foreground was a clearing

To the rear was a deep black cave upon whose walls three shadows were learing

In the middle was where a tree stump smouldered

And all around large smooth rocks bouldered

And these gave amplification to their crooked demonic wailing

A man was there also one of fine dandyish attire

And in the centre a giant Centaur with a wooden spoon stoking the fire

I leapt back upon the sight and hid myself in the undergrowth

But the skull still wished to watch some more and so we crawled closer both

Upon our closer inspection we noticed another body slumped

But horrifyingly it seemed a skeleton instead of a head a pumpkin lump

The witches they were travelling all around the cauldron

That bubbled and that boiled in its fiery witchy oven

Who is the man do you think? I whispered to the skull

He is Lord Spencer the First Earl of this Manor Spencer Hall

But how can that be in flesh and bone, he must be over 300 years old

Three hundred and seventy one all being told

I knew him when he was thirty two

Then what could he want with a skeleton there?

And what of those old hags with the greasy hair?

What has happened is what I have long suspected

That the young Lord wishing never to be rejected

Made vanity his key vice in life, and learnt the occult ways of human sacrifice

To pay the price that the devil asks so he may forever wear youth's mask

Oh my gosh, I exclaimed aghast, and whose skeleton is that there

That watches the task?

That my kind Sir, is yours truly, it is Miklos Kundra's body

reassembled duly

"Yours, but how, how can that be?"

"Because, my boy, my body was invested with a magic quality

A spell I once cast near the fountain of youth

Gave me beauty and long life and there is the proof

He is the one, who rigged my box to break, he is the undoer of my mortal fate

And under him all cruelty made a darker turn

He twisted my magic to a devilish burn

And these witches you see, were once his sisters three

And they must rejuvenate also like he 

"And how, I ask tremolously again, will they do that?

They must seize young flesh and boil it in their vat"

"That is disgusting! We must flee right away!"

"But we cannot do that" said skull, "or I will not rest til judgement day

You my dear friend, must help me reclaim,

The body that belongs to me, and restore my good name"

"How said I do you propose we can recapture what was stolen

And now we hold in rapture?"

"I say we need to make a distraction"

We therefore asked the young girl if she would

Mind doing a twirl in front of the witches coven

She soon concurred, and then it occurred that they threw her

Inside of their oven

It burns, it burns she started to cry

And then the witches they started to cackle

"Now is our chance" spoke the skull with a glance

To see now their backs were turned they were easier to tackle

I saw a hauser and picked it up on my run,

And swung with the passion of glory

Knowing not which way to turn, the witches three

Did learn never to turn their backs on an unfinished story

With another fell swoop, I had cut down the loop

That tied fast the oven door, and the sweltering girl

Could return to fresh world, now with a story or more

Turning about I saw the skull had dealt a body blow

To the skeleton- the two were now one, and the ceremony was done

All but for the remortification

No wait said I, "That was not part of the deal

All you wanted was to find eternal rest"

"Well, what can I say I'd prefer to feel real

In a mans body, which I now have to test

This damned fool Spencer here will do

He owes me a few hundred years

Having been the maker of my fate before

Now he can lend me his ears and more!"

Spencer looked mortified at the reanimated corpse

That now stood dancing before him

He buckled at the knees, and then he did freeze

As the skull bore down upon him

"I cannot sanction a further horror show"

I spoke with renewed indignation

This has gone easily far enough now

"And you must return to your own mausoleum"

The Skeleton now bowed, but snatched up my hauser

And pushed me back while I tore my trouser

But a bigger tear was being ripped right there

As he hewed the weapon through Spencer's bone lair

And chopped down the lord with a stroke of his sword

Then fed the pieces to the cauldron

"You blood thirsty Hungarian Magician!",  I cried

"Why can't you see you have already died

And enough blood has been spilt already on your account

Your poor wife, your son, these witches and now Spencer on this mount!"

He answered "Every life has its price some are cheap and some like dice

Can only be measured once they are rolled twice

Thus my own I will live again following this human sacrifice"

I could not argue with his logic, it all seemed sound

But the moral reasoning by which he came to it

Did not follow strict Kantian ground

So I asked him "Are you a believer in the categorical virtues?

The Golden Rule or the law of moral curfews

Karma, or justice or the moral law

For what you have now broken my good dignity must abhore

I cannot turn a blind eye to this deed, to know you have done

Wrong since by my hand you were freed

It seems up to me to settle the score"

He cried "That may be so, and it may be thus

That you do what you know and you do what you must

Though you be minded to remember my name

Magician so don't imagine I won't have a trick that still remains"

With that he disappeared in a flash of light 

And the cauldron too with him into the dead of night

It was black then and only the centaur and me

Stood staring at one another and I could not believe

That he too had not been stirred into some kind of action

Then I realized he was but a wax work maniquin

And so I then left him melting by the dying fire's embers

And I thought on Miklos Kundra and the things one remembers