Voices

 Thanks 

give me True, true and the honey badgers

of destiny and the child of the sun

And the Empire of choices

Give me silence

Without voices,

But I did not ask for that

It just came

I am the town crier, big of heart

And girth hear me tell

My well trod tale

Down to the pitiless earth

I'll leave a few hair pins

Bends and turns

And twist like myrtle bushes

The thorn in the briar couldn't

Climb much higher

Than my story of which I birth

In corridors of power

Nameless towers

Where Hebrew nuns did shine

The walls they cower 

In shadows shower their lines

I wrote down on their spindly veins

Which mortal mortar could complain

And read the runes and bled the lanes

That brought me there to you

They follow fleeting folly

Like fellows bellows and swallows

Breathing pigeons

In harmonica halls

And crumbling churches and catapulting rules

Like books from school by be-brollied kids

As the rain fell down

It fell in spatters that greyed the town

Left black the tarmac pavements

And shined the dustbin lids

But the Crayfish gang came round

On their motorbike steer pikes

whaling it up and down

The Saint Peter and Paul street

Fly away said I, fly, away

Peter and Paul,

Where have they gone my patron saints

Come back Peter,

Come back Paul

Give us some guidance,

Paint thinner Saint sinner

They stole it

They stealed it, and pocketed it

And pilloried and picked it

Out my throat

Oh we're all in the same boat you say

This is democracy we all have a voice

Not me, taken, not my choice

But surely shocking though it is

To fight with kids over a crisp packet floating in the

Air, 

Who has it now? Crumbling tin

Sheep, and shops.

That's rat-ta tat-tat Mallet,

Chase that rat out-ta town

With a hammer swinging like

John the Baptist

At all the holy unholy ones

Who never live up

To what I have my mind

It takes ten years to learn to sing

To play anything creative

For the neurons to realign magnetically

I suppose

Like pigeon pose, like lay lines, 

We follow

Down a rabbit hole or wishing well

Playing get well, with speed well

And Cabbage whites in circles

Always the dance of Madam Butterfly

The dance of white butterflies

Except they took it to Mells

The Krayfish gang

On the night of the New Moon

And I was wearing

The Pajamas of peace

And wonders will never cease

When you wear the pajamas of peace

And even the police, will stop and decease

and mop up their mullets in Shepton Mallet

And serve their skullet hair cuts

And their cutlets in skillets, and perfect palettes of cheese

And please what's the matter officer?

What's the platter, pita patta of tiny breaded knees

And pudding, and price cut butter

And cease Electricity and gas

Wonders will never cease

When I wear my pajamas of peace

But they still took it,

My voice, It was locked away by the bad boys in chains

In voiceless town of Mells

They had no voice, I had no choice

Now they have mine

The Krayfish boys

You better watch out the Krayfish brothers

Out to revenge their Cuttle-fish mother

Who was picked and pecked by chickens and parrots

Who left her marooned in the Town of carrots

And mocked her voice

And repeated it still like a gravelly husk

That bent at her will

Parrot fashion, pigeon livin'

Slim pickin's in the forest of wills

So she lost it, they kept her in a cage

The family and every day they pecked her bones

And sharpened their own bills on her

So they could speak

But all they did was mimic what they heard

Parrot, fashion, parrot fashion, what a bird

But what a fish they say, could give up her day

And life at sea to be kept like a voiceless canary

In a cage and never to sing

So they stole mine and gave it to her

Now she's singing in Mells

Where the witches will stir the cauldron of Kells

And books of demure

And the looks and the smells of opening doors

To foreign lands where they don't hurt anymore

And are happy

Oh happiness now there is the cure

Or is it yet another illusion

Brought on by the Parrot delusion of copying

All what others would have you be

Find your voice sir

Find it buried under the sea

The river runs from here

Under the road and across the Frithfield

And down beneath  the prison walls

Just where the Krayfish gang used to be

Held tight like posterity Their 

posteriors pushed up against walls,

Somewhere beneath the river runs deep

And their voices call

All the imprisoned voices carried away

Down the wells

back to the heart of the Mendips

Back down

The slippery rocks of Croscombe

Joining the Sheppey at Bowie

Down the Cathedral at Wells

And it joins the Bishops Palace moat

And these sinners voices

Find absolution in their daily ablutions

In the rivers and Wells

And then they spring up again

Free you see to be drunk deep

By a citizen and spoken

For the river will carry all our voices away one day

From the children playing in the park

To the dogs' bark

From the ducks' quacks

To the squawk of the lesser black-backed gulls

And the shop assistant girls in Martin McColls

And the tills which ring out in shrill thrill

Of all the useless money they eat

And all the football louts in pubs

And rubber dub dub three men in a tub at Mells

All their voices are going down the plug hole

Even the witch of Wookey hole

But hey will be held lock and key, no not stole

Kept safe in the memory of water, whole

As one

On their way out to the sea, the Bristol Channel

Where they will be churned and turned

And broiled and mixed with the Welsh voices 

Of the Valleys and hills

The Brummie accents and yam yams of the black country

The dark Satanic Mills

And all the Irish voices floating in on the Irish sea

Swept around from Anglesey

And even the Scots

Who sail down the coast

And greedily spy the mainland

No voice is ever truly lost

It is drunk down again as rain

After the sea has sung it out in loss and pain

And in happiness has breathed it up to heaven

Where clouds are voice spirits come again

To reform and coalesce in a conference of words

And meanings and things spoken, or remembered

Of jokes told or cut short

Or lovers' whisperings

And they fall as rain in droplets on the land to be soaked up

To be felt on felt topped or broad brimmed hats

To be licked off the cheeks by thirsty tongues

To be drunk down deep, when the new day comes

And the mother turns on the taps

boils the kettle makes a cup of tea

And says to her child, how did you sleep?