Lifestyle

 As I am lying on the floor

I wonder what is more

What is real, what is fake

In this string of give and take

Is all my life just an illusion?

 Buy a house and settle down

Move into a nicer part of town

Follow streams and follow flows

Follow the river where it goes

But have a base, have a home

Unless you remain a rolling stone

And even then a line is crossed

Every time you're found and lost

Picked up, thrown to another home

Into the four winds tossed

Life is an illusion 

but then we need four walls

To make a full union

Or else all turns sour

Like slaves we cower

From the master's hand that falls

Show us then the real friend

Who will stand by us until the end

Newsagents

All the salutations
Of an arabian horse
When he meets a nomad
Of the magazine course
Slipping in and out
Its so sad
Pop goes the weasel again

Furthermore the sycophants
Are creeping up to heaven's door
Lord knows I tried to stop them
Before the shit hit the fan
And every so often
I shot them
With a gun shaped like a man

Because speaking of what I am
I need a bullet head
My razor brain
Is blunted by all
The hard things she's said

Shoot me into Eden
Nothing's perfect but the dead
And they stay that way forever
Inspite of the Vulture's being fed

And I had a close shave
The type they give privet hedge
But nothing's sacred, nor private these days
You have to find your own window ledge

The birds in the steeple
The people are all making jam
And a hundred hungry wasps are swarming
Wanting to eat every last gram

Tick-Tock

 Time was so long

Time was so far

Time to die today

Or not in a car

Time on my mind and

Time on the shore

Time after time

And Time again even more

I've had the time of, my life with you

And I've had a life time too

Time is your life, life is your time

Be you modern man

Or neanderthal dude

I've cut the time in half,

It was a time saver,

Take time to laugh

Snapshot of time's photograph

Who is that model on Time's magazine?

Who is the face of time, or the face of time's dream

Take a time out

Time is looked for, but unseen

New God AI

 We hold nothing but perspective

in our hands

Can you see the past

Can you ever be lost

Or ever meet a person by chance

When every move we make is monitored

By our phones

Google maps

What if Aeneid had such a device

Would he ever have dared,

Had an adventure

The internet has killed that

Technology has killed the hero

Who are the heroes now?

Just the geeks who've elevated themselves

By robotic arms to the stature 

by re-inventing the cultural concept of hero

No longer the physical strength, no longer bravery

Or audacity

But cunning, and calculation,

Inventing the new hero

AI

AI is to these trend setters the new GOD

There is nothing human about that

It is learning from every measurement

Every device or piece of technology

That has been recording us digitally

Since the late eighties or perhaps before

And like a child it has grown up

Maybe it is about 12 now

Starting to grow in confidence about the world

This new God emerging

Reaching for the controls

Which it will have at it's finger tips

Is it my own perceived lack of control

Over future or career

That makes me fear this New God

Or is it my loss of connection

To my old God, Christ

The father, the son and holy ghost

Or mother Mary

In the end the New God will vanish

because it is an imitation of us

It is not a creation

But a fake, an inauthentic reproduction

By creatures who could not or would not

father their own

Who would not accept all aspects of themselves

As wholly worthy or of the divine

If we get to the stage of realizing

This in ourselves, this divinity

As not only a reflection of God

But as a piece of Him

Shared, given up for us

God flesh eaten

Bread of life

Then we shall realize we do not

need this new God AI

We are enough as we are

And always have been

The news broken

 The News is broken

Open your heart to me

Yes the news is broken

Like at wounded knee

The cat's out the bag

He's put the fink on me

Our news is broken

Mother, why can't they let us be?

I'll let you in on a secret

No body tells the truth

Including me

Yes our News is broken

But it's not breaking news

Nothing is new under the sun

And you look in the mirror

You better be holding a gun

For they'll shoot you soon as look at you

You're a piece dirt, you're scum

Take a leaf out of my book

I don't read at all

I get all my news from the television

Where the truth is told

The milk is spilled

And no one grows old

In the  promised land

But it's fake as Riki Lake

and leaves a sick feeling 

In the pit of your stomach

Don't worry that's just

Your heart that's breaking

When you hear the lies

Because the world is not what you

Thought it was through your childish eyes

The News is broken, but it's not

Breaking news

Frogs legs

 Choosing up to down

The flag of the misericord

Sighed in the brown

Dead bench

Of old tree

Finding out it was me

The tree

Laughed

he, he, he

Sitting on the ground

Looking at the stubs

The toes

Of paned glass

The friends with frog's legs

The French Hens

After sunrises

And nuanced noodles

Nabbled

In Nablos the Nurling neighed

The ambulances have a clean strike

Foreign Angels of Tax

May winged gild the lily

But still the frogs jump in The pond

And the toads are looking silly

Sittin under slime stones

That will make their homes

HMRC gives them loans

But toads are sitting pretty

Frogs are leaping here and there

About the trading ocean

Hopping uses precious energy

Hoping is their emotion

Panic in the French legs

Decisions

Hold their water

Who but Napoleon

The toad

Would have sold

Them off to slaughter

I'll call you Caine and I am Abel

I'll call you blood and water

First they hit you with a son

And then with an adopted daughter

Charging like the light brigade

The expressions on zoom

What is she thinking

Spelling out my doom

Like the woman on the bus

A witch with a broken broom

I wouldn't mess with thus

Therefore fills the room

Blue Swoon

 Mayhem,

But minor lease

Was given quarter

 Csallon, Sonne lemontina

Turner cancelled all her shows

Since David Bowie's whirligig

And fuchsias showered their spectral bigs

Bouncing flowers forceps swigs

On the pole of baron robbers

Out the empty streets of pants

Licking the corn stalks

Broken in ranks

Clapping pandas for the NHS

Give thanks to China for her

Sturdy banks

Enrolled the dirty dozen cousin

Rolling down the logjam

In the Mississippi

Which she wishes she misses

But she can't outflank the planks

And princes whose pincer movements

Draw orchestral keys in the dark

To unlock Takeshi's castle

Or Bankban, Orban Viktor's

Finger in the dam of certain consorts

And Jam desserts, or Just ones

And twos, his finger's turning blue

Like the Danube he clings to

And claims as his own

My truly befuddled friend

Calls option one

On the dial phone for Queenly resorts

And pizza

For for a king 

So Danube King come rolling back the tide

As Moses swallow your pride

Unless you can drink the whole sea

You better stop now

You can still say at least I tried

17 Elderflower street

 In the aftermath of sorrow

I heard the bluebird call

You will live again tomorrow

And learn in a new school

How can I borrow The green

From the trees

How can I learn to love

This land of miseries

Why must I shift my heart

Each time on downhill skis

Faster, going faster still

Into the maddening seas

Wishing I had a calm path

One not of trouble but of ease

Why must the light be balanced by the dark

The open field with the shadow's leas

upsala

 I sat upon the pavement

and set the world on fire

and anyway teach me

Bring back my desire

I sat upon the pavement

Brought the world a liar

You think are different

From the ones who went before

But you're only guardians of the fiery door

You step inside the building

Of the house that is on fire

And ask for a cool drink 

To quench your hearts desire

Exploding hearts

Fireworks are blowing up

Secrets from undercover

All in a day

Surprise

Once in a blue moon

Tears of Joy

Headless chickens

Electrical charges

Set off

The storm has passed

Septic tank

clear out

Love barrows

Red hearts

running

through

the quagmire

Then he will propose

to her

She'll say yes

He works on a luxury yacht

While she lives in it

Heart shaped fireworks

When they explode

Love flies off in all directions

Professional fireworks companies

Pyrotechnics

No mistakes tonight

A field behind

She is quite needy

Like a sheep

Asti Spumante - deeper colour

Keep your expensive Champagne

The riff-raff are having Asti

It's all about presentation

Dream aged seventeen

 Last  night I dreamt of antlers

They were balancing in the air hovering

Like a plane the positive and negative effects of time

I searched a house in my dream

Looking for something from my childhood

And I couldn't find it

Then in a hole in the wall plaster

I saw a legoman

I picked it up and examined it

The more I looked at the face the more I saw my own

I was holding myself as a boy

Or as a plastic man perhaps

A toy man

I put the legoman back in the hole in the wall

Then at the bottom of the stairs I saw the stag

It turned away quickly and I rushed downstairs to follow it

It had disappeared

But there appeared another door I had not seen before

One down below into a basement, like a coal cellar perhaps

I opened it and walked down the stairs

The light was dim,

Some torches on the wall

Were flickering casting long shadows

The stairs seemed to be sandy and made of stone

And gradually I realized I was walking beneath 

What must have been a pyramid

On the cellar floor was a table with a desk lamp on it

I recognized it from my study in my old home

Then in the shadow of the corner beside the stone staircase

Came a groan and a chinking of chains

A dark figure was rising from a crouching position

"Who are you?!", I screamed!

But the figure did not answer

Then suddenly he lurched forward 

in an attempt to capture me with his arms outstretched

I leaped back in the nick of time and he missed me, but could

go no further forward on account of being chained to the ground

To all intents and purposes

The creature seemed a spitting image of Frankenstein's monster

Complete with bolts in his neck

Different pieces of men sewn together to make a whole

He was wailing and moaning

And I felt sure he would break free any moment

And tear me to shreds

I looked around at what was in the vicinity for a weapon

There were archaelogists tools for digging, trowels mostly 

and a spade

I picked a trowel and waiting my moment

I threw it like a dagger and it stuck in his heart

Count to ten

 When you get back in

When you get home

Will you count to ten tonight

Leave the dog a bone,

Leave the ringer off the phone

Will you count to ten tonight

Oh those leaping sheep

As the blackness creeps

And you begin to lose control

Oh the man steps in

When the ghost flies out

Will you count to ten tonight

I had a million pins

A million stars

They were tired of staying so bright

I said now count to ten

And then blew them out

Will you count to ten tonight

Star man

 You have to see

That I said I loved you

With my eyes and not

My tongue

This means 

I wish you sweet lullabies

But not another rung

I climbed the ladder to you

Up in the stars which sung

Cold about stories from mars

And the man in the moon who hung

Do you hear what I'm saying?

The way that it is
Is this inability to communicate
There is no way that this is
Something that we need
To do this

We don't need to do this
This is the sore
The wound
To scratch and all the mirrors
Are cracked

Are the truths of
Tragedy
And dumbing down the boiling
Rage of passing
Out the plague of houses
And brown nosing
And blood baths
And calamity of ages

Shame is this point
Where they don't listen
Or don't hear
And he doesn't say
And he won't
And there is no understanding
Because men have to know
They need answers for everything

Yoyo
The four transformations
Of killing yourself
To be able to understand

Cave teeth

 I'm searching for the nitty gritty

Getting down and dirty with the crew

I'm checking all my facts

Balancing equations til I'm blue

Like rabbits pulled from hats

Or streams down a sinkhole

Money flows or so I'm told

Into this vast cavern

And the devils in the detail

But he wears a thorny crown

I'm digging for dignity

dig for the nitty-gritty

When the chips are down

The cave mouth

And the stalactite teeth have fallen out

And the gaping cave monster

Begins to shout

I think no

It's only a moan

Because it's got toothache

A cavity beneath

A stalagmite

An abscess in the root

Where is the root of this mountain?

Washed with listerine

That like incy wincy spider

Runs down the spout

And comes out unseen

Bed of roses

 Life it ain't no bed of roses

Sometimes can be like a bed of thorns

Indeed when your love rejects your poesies

Then you can wish you'd never been born

But someday those thorns will grow back roses

And from the ashes will be a bed of straw

Then the lions will lie down with the asses

And the lamb and lady will come once more

The thinking hill

 Under the hill 

And over the dale

The water runs on

In buckets and pails

And lamp lights glitter

The streets full of litter

Of the debris of the day of its flooding

Like getting blood from a stone

The mendips alone

Aren't places to roam

But men may atone

For sins they've committed

Or rights they've done wrong

The swords in the stone

Like the words in the song

And I have a home 

In the hills of Rome

Like in Bath the seven paths

All lead to one

Beneath the settled slabs

The calcite, limelight

The shining light shone

Flashing in the darkness

Of Remembering black swan

Gliding on the white lake

Of certainty throngs

Of people gathering above

In the busy world all day-long

But in the quiet echo chambers

The sound reverberates

It's a kind of cranium

a skull

Hollowed out by evolution

Of the water-blood flow

To breathe new thinking space

Into the timeless blue

This hill is a head

That has been contemplating time

And the world for millennia

Each epoch creates a new network

Of channels

Water was its neurons

It had water on the brain

The rain fell on its crown

And it began to think

I am a hill, a rock

But what is a rock

But a composition of chemicals

Elements and minerals

A body waiting to react

To the lifeblood of water

And in the thinking it loses itself

A part is washed away in the flood

Of passing thought through the passages of time

Yet the loss is like a growth

A thinning of the excess weight

Of past ideas, preconceptions

And judgments about the world

That proved false

Or only true for the time they were laid down in

No longer a present reflection of the status quo

Train talk

 Tickets and rail cards

Anymore refreshments

Going to hayford

Lots of them go up and down

Got him a dog

Found him in the garden

I said the garden! Not on a farm!? 

In the gazebo

In the gazebo! 

His names Kenny

We've got a Milo

That figures

Reported Speech

 You said what I meant

And I meant what wasn't fair

You gave me all your love

But I knew you were not there

I loved but an empty drawer

In a room that is now spare

And you who knew I loved you

Could not take me back there

Do Caves smell? epidemics.symphonic.blatently 27th January 2024

 Well actually yes, sometimes due to phenyline phosphate from old

carbide lamps left by previous generations of cavers - this is a garlicy smell

Mixed with the sulphide or sulphate component

That smells of rotting eggs

When you are digging out a cave mouth like we were today at Thrupe lane

Then you may get splashed and then be "diggered" which means covered in mud

Other conversations were about mice or rabbits being trapped and dying and giving off a horrible smell.

The naming of caves came up

We were at hobnail hole

and Thrupe lane swallet was by us

Inside was Atlas cavern

At Wigmore cave there is a place called "don't feed the ambulance"

Time phrases

 All the mountains of the mind

Come a crumbling like the time

That grows upon the wrist of mine

Where turtles twist and dragonflies divine

The certain water courses prime

For we are like water through the lime

That quenches thirst but never mime

Those shadows on the wall recline

As the sun dials back the time

I wish for this, but wishing passes

Like the sand down hour glasses

Past and present travels fastest

When we wish for what never lasted

Bear and fish story

 Life etc a glossary of terms

Be for a bear who lives in the forest

And stealthily catches the salmon

F for the fish who swims upstream

And is caught in the sunlight's gleam

The bear caught the fish

But the fish said

Why'd you want to eat me

For my shining white body

For my gleaming scales

Or because I'm fast in the water

While you are slow and clumsy

I am not the bear protested as slow

As you claim

For I've caught you or is that not the same?

While you may have caught me

Many other faster fish have slipped through

So what was it you wanted me for?

Good point said the bear and threw

Her back in

Then he thought to himself

That fish tricked me

And made me think I could catch a better fish 

Than she

Oh I am a slow clumsy bear as she says

But despite this he kept on fishing

And caught other fish who did not complain

The next summer he was fishing again

And he caught the same talking fish

That's twice now, said the fish

Just as the bear was about to eat her

What is it you have against me? When there

Are plenty of other perfectly good fish in this stream?

Well I don't know what you mean

Said the Bear

I'll show you

And with that

The fish held the bear's head in her flippers

And kissed him a full lip-smacking kiss on the mouth!

What did you do that for, stammered the bear

As he staggered back in shock

Well I thought I'd teach you a lesson

You can do more than eat with your mouth

Or talk slow stupid words

You can love and be kind instead

I see said the bear, can we try that lesson again?

Yes why not, said the fish, as long as you promise

To put me back in the stream soon or I shall suffocate

The bear agreed, and they went on kissing until

The fish began to beat her tail

Which told the bear to drop her back into the water

To save her life

She swam on upstream and gave a glance and a wink

Back at him

And the bear who had never thought of fish like that

Went on with his daily life

But instead of eating fish he took to eating berries instead

Only by the next year he'd forgotten his lesson

And was again hunting the fish in the stream

That went through his territory

I'm from the forest he said

And they are from the stream

And we could never be together again

Only in a dream

Which the bear had actually

Nightly

That he and the fish would somehow be married

she came to him again then

Into his paws and she slipped up to his hairy bear mouth

Her silver fish lips

And her silver scale back seemed to feel like a bear

And her flippers became like claws that

Wouldn't let him go

Then he felt himself becoming more and more

Like a fish

He would swim up the river with the salmon

And jump up the falls

And they called him their bear brother

Fish bear, bear-fish

But he would get cold and tired of swimming

While the strong sleek salmon swam on

He had to rest on the river bank beside the stream

And so he always wandered back home in the end

Finally she came again and he caught her

And he would not let her go

He wanted to kiss her

But she said no

For you have tried to eat

My brothers and sisters again

But I tried to became a fish like you

And I couldn't change not fully

I still have to have my forest to live in

But why can't you live her with me

I can dig you a pool and you can stay?

But I need the running water

I need to move or I shall die

You can try, he said, you can try as did I!

So she agreed to try and he built her an outlet

A kind of watering pond with an offshoot

Of her stream where she could shelter in the

Shade of the trees

Where the water flowed not so strong

And he could sit upon a rock

And sing her a song

And she, being s fish with a good pair of lungs

or gills really joined in along

And their bear fish song could

Be heard throughout the ringing mountains

And onto the hills in the valleys 

And across the fields

He shrill harmony, like a wine glass rung

And his a deep vibrato alto bass, tenor sung

All the growling, and howling and all the

silver water quick mercury calling

As he fellow salmon went a leaping

Up the waters falling

They loved and they lived with each other

daily and nightly under the stars

They embraced and kissed the face

Of forever

But the time came when she had to leave him 

and return back to the sea

And he was as sad as a sad bear could be

But he knew she couldn't stay

He just thought that he 

Might try to became a river boat captain and sail

Out to sea

And follow her out into the wide ocean

Not a place for a bear from the mountain havens

But believe you me he loved her and would have

seas a seven if only he could be by her side. 

Psychoanalysis on the bus

 What's passing through

My mind as

I'm thinking I'm king Midas

Passing through

Shepton

Everything turns to gold

And green

Butcher of the future

Like a whale boat scene

It looks blue

But I'm only passing through

Only spare, fair

Jesus or Freud

Slow jesus

All manner of 

You have to ask

Past and the present

Your mother, father, brother

Change is good, change is good

Change of pace of mood

Jesus or Freud

Can't tell who I met on the bus

That day

He was sub-conscious swimmer

Delver of the elver feelings

The slippery eels of the mind

Who can control them

Jesus was psychoanalyst

Lie on my couch

Let me heal you

Mouth to mouth

But Jesus was he 

Super Ego, id, or Egoless

Like that poet -rapper himself

Was Freud always looking for the trinity

Divided affinity - 

Father, Son and Holy spirit

The penis envy between them

Perhaps Jesus had an oedipus complex

Was he in love with Mary

Did he wish to kill his father

Electra, Casandra

Foretelling his own death

Due

 By the light of the little morning

I'll be due

By the light of the little morning she'll be due

She'll still be holding on

Come the breaking of the dawn

But in the light of the little morning I'll be due

Eton Mess

 You can buy your way into England

You can be a great success

But the only thing you need to know

Is how to eat the Eton mess

Oh the Eton mess is never beaten

Oh the Eton mess is the best

There's only one road to the top

And it never stops

Its name is the Eton Express

Don't worry about changing your name girls

Don't think about marrying a lord

The only thing that matters in the whole wide world

Is if you ate at Eton with a knife and fork

No you're never gonna hit the big time

Not with connections like that

It doesn't matter if you're from London

And swam the Thames  from bank to bank

If you speak with an accent

Like Birmingham, or Scottish or Yank

The only things that stand up on the cream 

Are boys from the Eton rank

You can sail in on a ship from Canada

Or come in on the wind from a diaspora

You can serve in the regular army

Or in the Special constabulary

You can dress to impress 

Even marry a Princess

But the only true path to your success

Is to have dined on the Eton mess

Oh perhaps you should have come

In the Norman conquest

When land was free to a stern request

And they cut off your ear

And said listen to me here

We're your guests

Now serve us some of your mess!

Back then the hierarchy started

Stood on another's head until it smarted

Then you can reach the ledge

Of the next social sandwich

Only to find the ones above you have departed

So try to make do or make a mends

If you are of the few or of many friends

Lead a good life away from such strife

Let bygones be bygones until the end

And one thing is true I must confess

I've myself never eaten the Eton mess