The living day

 Give me, let me take

Or give in the taking,

Let me live in the winning light

And during the dying dark of shade

Let me lay, waylaid, newly made

In the hay,

Let me live, in the living day

Hold my light in the bushel

Far from where the wolves whistle and bay

For my blood, oh let me love

Let me love in the living day

And all the houses are swaying, and the ponies neigh

And the Mouses are playing down in Mousel bay

So let me live, let me love, lord let me die and let me play

Let me make love,

Let me make love in the living day

Moth to the light

 She said you've got mothballs

You look into the light

In this a dark world

Where we walk through the night

She said your moth calls

Draws you into the night

Just another mother

Left to wander the night

It's like soft ball

You've to bat to win

But when the bat calls

You've got to fly into the wind

And I know oft the stalls

Are empty within

But full of moth balls

When the breads getting thin

The face that launched a thousand buses

 She had the face that launched a thousand buses

Mrs T and her entourage of Big Brew Nurses

Rehearsing the flag pole march of the trusses

She came from Mars with her drink of Champions

And all you need is two dozen teas a day

The Doyens of the tea drinking fraternity say

But oh brother these sisters will have their way

So drink up your cup on the national day

They'll drop a penny down the wishing well

And care for you like you care to tell

So champion the weak, make them strong as hell

And drink your cuppa up as you say farewell

I came to see the giants of industry

And their towering ships of commerce stand

Around Bristol docks like Captains of business

But then you let go of my hand

I fell behind in the swell of the crowd

I was swept up in the riots that flowed down the street

And they toppled old giants that fell at their hands

And rolled like Ozymandias down at their feet

Then one pulled me up to my full stature

She gave me a tea to revive me and capture

The spirit of old times as the nation's bells chimed

From the cathedral on old college green

She said here's a picture of all you have seen

Here's an old record cover of the yellow submarine

And here is another mother in the city streets so mean

But then I saw buses, then I saw buses race round my head

I heard beauty birds twitter, I heard voices that said

This is the face that launched a thousand buses

This is the hand that picked me up when I was down

And this is the drink that will help you recover

So donate your money now to the charitable gown

Come spend your pennies in old Bristol town

The Quality of Hair is not strained

 The quality of hair is not strained

It falleth equal to uth the leftith and to the rightth

It falleth equal on men and womenuth

It is not strained

In some it does grow frizzy, in others it rearrange

But is not strained

The lord giveth and the lord taketh away

For those baldy or lacking in the folical department

Should look no further than the Greys

The greys, the greys, the greys have it

Yes the greys

But the quality of hair is not strained

It falleth equal on left as on right

It cometh not for the dogs that bite

For the hair of the dog, is that which's not right

And if you miss your hair,

Then miss it only by a hair's breadth

For the quality of hair is not strained

It shall grow again my friends, my friends

It shall grow again, my friends!

Hair today and gone tomorrow

But on this day, on this day...Saint Hairy's Day

We shall know the truth of hair sorrow!

The way the seasons change

The bee on the clover

The white cliffs of dover

Oh, how the seasons change

 

The feathers in the fields

float as I feel,

The heathers on the hills

Hail out their shrill rills,

 

The spiders webbed catch,

The rain drops and thatch,

Their eggs which hatch,

Their plan

And this is the way, though it may seem strange,

Yes, this is the way the seasons do change,

 

The buttercups and the daisies lie round all quite lazy

They flop, and they fillet and fidget Miss Maisy,

Who walks in the fields and feels the chills,

Of Springtime and Summer draw near

The Winter so far off, yet spinning its jar of

Strawberry jam and rhubarb conserve

 

The dance glades are glancing, the grass blades are dancing,

The dragon flies lancing, the ladybirds lay,

The roses are chancing, as France is romancing,

The meadow so sweet in the smell of your clothes

And Summer is trancing, entrancing and glancing,

The snakes so slicing, sliding and gliding away,

The sunbathers are bathing, in new sun they're savouring,

And ages are wavering through the waves of the day,

And oh, it seems strange to you, 

But this is the way the seasons change they do,

 

And the fathers are fathering, and feathering, tarring and tethering,

And lathering and lithering and clowning and clawing

And the silage has been mown, and the mowers have been sewn,

And the beans are sprouting, and the seeds are grown,

The furrows are furrowing, deep in the burrowing,

the rabbits are tunnelling under the crows,

Who are squawking and talking in parliaments walking,

and gawking at all of those they know

 

And we are so baffled by spring's nature raffles

And summers they trifled and truffled in troves

And everything's glancing, the new season's dancing,

The midsummer's tower has toppled in throes,

Down it shall fall again to Autumn's dark wall again,

But too soon to those shadows and shades that they've known,

In every springtime a hint of the winter,

In every winter day a new summer grows

And it may seem strange, but that is the way the seasons change,

 

The grasses are flopping, and the thorn bushes popping,

The grasshoppers hop-hopping in the long summer shows,

And the clover is bursting and the bees they are thirsting,

For a flower supper and nectar cuppa in rainbows

And it may seem strange, but this is the way,

The seasons do change.

Weary all

 We are so weary,

Weary, weary all

Too tired and weary to get home

Weary of it all

Weary, weary

Weary so weary so weary all

We climbed that old hill

Scaled the mountain blue

Just to get a glimpse of the otherside

Where the grass is always greener

And our dreams they do reside

But we are so weary

Since the giants got meaner

And the Holy Thorn in a murder died

Weary, weary, weary all

Weary all hill

Won't you fill us with your reviving

Energies?

Won't you try to tame us, reclaim us, re-name us

Won't you like the lions

Lie down with our pride?

And take away the blame from us

By those who try to shame us

To cover up their own shortcomings

In the rising waters of the tide

And won't those waters surround us

Abound  us and confound us

But in your immortal energies 

You will see how hard we've tried

Yet we are so weary, so weary, so weary

And on your gentle flanks now

We must lay down by your side 

The Strawberry line

 Strawberry line

Two tracks infront

Always one step behind

Like a camel threads

Through the eye of a needle

So too must I thread on a treadle

Of yarn,

And spin my web,

In the ebb and flow of

The Bristol estuary

That awaits all wrecks

Of land and sea

The end of the tracks

Run down to the beach

And launch the great Iron hulk

On her maiden voyage

Steam ship of the channel

Fruit picked, picking its way through

orchards of apples

And row upon row of strawberries

Two tracks in front

Still one step behind

Out of sink in the blink of an eye

Replaced by the steel horses

That race or fly

As the horse was replaced by the bicycle

And I will be replaced by someone younger

More fitting to an age of enlightenment

Or else as it ran over

fields

It now is run over

By men and women on two wheels

Not forgotten, but marvelled at

Like walking through the rib cage cavity 

Of a dinosaur or Blue Whale

A leviathon of the past

That men and women some how constructed

On will wit and ingenuity

And the endurance of living

on a island, and wanting to get to the sea

Or wanting to sell their strawberries

Two tracks infront

But always one step behind

And the destination doesn't matter

As much as the journey

The climb is a trial,

But it is earning a living

It is living your earning

And it is working your body

Like the steam trains steel limbs

Shunting and shoving and hissing and spurting

forth steam, sliding on their greasy poles and rails

Pistons bobbing up and down, back and forth, driving iron wheels

Around and around

Much like the bicycles

We have trained out selves to be machine like

To be repetitive and determined

And strong

And tuned our limbs, muscles and tendons

For what though? May I ask?

To be able to sleep at night?

Or to be able to compete with what we see on adverts

Or perhaps simply to occupy our leisure time

Two tracks in front

Always one step behind