stormy night

 There's a baby crying in the storm

Crying save me Mama, I'm tired of being born

What is there in this whole world

Worth saving?

There's a man knowing,

Maybe thinking too much

Holding his woman

Away from his touch

Because, well half world is

Starving

And the storm blows on

And the baby's still crying

On a dark wet street

Where mother is trying

To give it comfort and heat

And she tells it hush don't cry

This world is dying

In these ruins you are lying

But you'll grow strong 

one day it won't be long

You'll build this world again

You'll do a better job than I

But I tried

And the storm blows on

And another baby in a another town

Is crying 

The Hurricane's day off

 The Hurricane's day off

Oh take a day off won't you?

Stop blowing, I'm tired of hearing your moaning

The Hurricane rested with a pina colada

Down in Bermuda or in the Bahamas

Brahms wrote his Hungarian dances

All the jiggling ceased

The palm trees stopped waving in the dusk

The wild boars slept in the forests

I throw out my feelings in disgust

The Hurricane blew in gusts

Almost perspiring

Just smoking

Like an iguana

Lazy lizard lounge

Hurricane took a day off

To lie in the ocean sun

 

Death Cafe two

 Joseph and Mary at the death cafe

Discussing how

Their child is faring

Ghandi and Martin Luther King

Thinking of a trial at the big

Board Spring

Who has the keys to democracy

Or who has the keys to suffering?

Who has the keys?

They're in authority

Superiority extreme

But do they come to the death cafe?

Let's talk about capitulation

Let's talk about capital punishment

Let's give death row

A swing

By

On our way

To better things

Let's walk in light

In the path of Jesus

Let's throw out the blanket

Even though it freezes us

For to be cold is better

Than the warmth of sin

Oh let's talk about death

And other things

Death cafes

 Turned away by death at the death cafe

As if death is a club that only some are welcome

Even death didn't want me

In their clique set

Don't die among us we are superior beings

Turned away by death

I'm gonna have to live forever

In your Stalinist bureaucracy

Of brutalist NHS workers

And elderly, old age home carers

Turned away by death

"Your time hasn't come yet

You have yet to reach the heights

That we would have wanted"

Perhaps when you do,

Will you let us know

Then we'll consider your petition

To be let in the doors of the Art bank

Where it's ruled

By indescretion

And the self destructive instinct of

The meek on the make 

who try and hold vigil with their later selves

In some phoney seances

Who claim to be so mystical, spiritual

Or marvellous

That their coy apprehensions

Don't mask their great pretensions

That they think themselves

Better than the average for

Placing retributions on their poor

patients who've they've somehow mishandled

These are the middle managers of 

The healthcare professions

They come down from Bristol or Brighton

Where their enlightened ideas

Glistened

And their ideas are meant to dazzle us

Into trusting their intuition

But they are the selfish slaves of a ruined institution

That NHS that just eats itself

And all who come into its revolutions

Like a planetary giant

Sucking hapless asteroids

And passing neutrons

But why lose sleep over those

idiots

It's best just to avoid doctors and the self-proclaimed healers

They are just avoiding the reality of death 

Like everyone else

Whether by television, drugs,

Alcohol

Or even walks in the countryside

Nothing bears witness

Like the soul in restitution

Just don't turn me away

From another bloody

Death cafe

ressurrection

Jewels

 The Great Heist

The Zeitgeist,

Walking the gallery corridors

Walking the faces

Looking a them through their bars

Prisoners in the Louvre museum

Take the jewels

Hanging from the necks of the mules

Hanging from the necks of the new Aristocracy

Was it the French Revolution?

Whose jewels were they?

When nothing is holding together democracy

When the threads of trust in humanity

Are breaking, rotting in the corruption of greed

Rotting in the complacency of money

What do these signs and icons of culture mean?

When culture is a society fraying at the seams

And what resonates are the drums of war

But war that is waged behind the scenes

And under the cover of a dark web

Of subterranean tunnels we've allowed them to burrow

Beneath our feet, within our homes, into our screens

We've creates these holes, this vacuum

No wonder them evil has grown 

in what nature abhors

In our crazy idea we could put the world on hold

When it was only the West that drove that myth

That it was greatest standing on the precipice

No wonder they stole the jewels from the museum

No one was guarding the national treasure

They complacently thought we live in a fluffy make-believe

There was no need to defend against evil

Conventional sinner

 I'm so conventional

It's not intentional

I'm a conventional sinner

Sit on the bench an all

Learning my French an all

I'm just a conventional sinner

I'm so conventional

Pick up my pension an all

Sit on the fence getting thinner

Nearly fall between bar stools

I can't hold my drink at all

And my conversation's all loser and winner

I just believe in what the last person said

That's the opinion that's stuck in my head

What does it matter if someone is dead

This is modern day Britain

Until they knock on my door

Asking for my signature

I'll be a conventional sinner

Holding my own counsel

With my four white walls

Oh I'm just a conventional sinner

Don't ask me if I think television is fair an all

If it truly represents our society

Or if it's all just engendered

Engineered false society

According to the narrative of the winner

They're the ones with the loudest voices,

Because that's how democracy works

It's not about fairness

Or some lies of equality

It's about shouting and strength and dominance

That's why I'm apolitical

call that conventional

I just don't see the point in invention

of winners

When we're all just sinners

Angel feet

 I sat there laughing

While you were sitting loving

And all of heaven fell

Like tears

And shattered like laughter

Around our feet

And I knew you to be an Angel

Who I did meet

And all was holy silent

Along the midnight street

Yet I sat there laughing

Not ready to believe

While you were sitting loving

Wearing my heart on your sleeve

I cried into my breakfast bowl

While you championed the weak

I swear that you had taken my soul

For I had forgotten how to speak

And all was loud and busy

Out on the daytime street

And I forgot what made me whole

While you had made ends meet

You were my Angel then

As I went on a midnight stroll

And future was only a figure of speech

And the past, a catching look

And the present some glimpse of my soul

I read about in books

How can you hold a candle

To me anymore? I burn

And low

The embers turn back to coal

And I can't think of you

No more

I heard an Angel's softly passing feet

 And I hid behind a door

To me my heart did beat

Maelstrom

 Well I fell down the maelstrom

Yes I followed you down

My ship was in a hail storm

Stronger than a cup of tea

And you were in a clipper

All the way from the China Sea

Well the maelstrom is a real big deal

It'll put hairs on your bum

And it'll make you feel

Like you don't have a mum

And you don't want a meal

So never come to the maelstrom

Now the female strum is of another order

It's like a collie so pet it but only the border

Because if you enter into that whirlpool

You'll never make it out alive

And you are a bloody fool

Now if you should succumb

Think only this of me

That there was some foreign whirlpool

Whipped up a writhing brothing sea

And into it went my log book

My sanity and me

Because you'll never be a shanty man

When you're a she shanty singer see

Yes she was a shanty man

She on the fence holding the can

Singing in her defence

I didn't lead you on

On down into the female strom

Get a hold of yourself

You bloody landlubber

And put back on the shelf

Your bloody soul rubber

The stars are all bucking

Because this ship is ducking

Down the rollicking rolling maelstrom

The Strawberry ship

 I used to work on the ship strawberry

A liner over from Cork

I would sit on the mainsail yard arm

And eat with my knife and fork

But since the wind's been a blowing

I think we've gone off course

It was a circumnavigation of the world

But now it seems like a race for one horse

Why do we follow the loudest

Like sheep in a valley we wail

Guide me home oh my shepherd

For I fear the blowing gale

But it's because we live in the bowels of the ship

And hardly have reason to rise

Above to the main deck

Where they say such we risk our neck

And will pay for it with our lives

It is the little gravity well

We must overcome

To escape the mouth of hell

And not be brought back into

Those shark infested waters

All invested by harlequins' daughters

Who think they're the Queens of the dell

Now our captain he got side tracked

He listened to the voice of the sirens

Who were calling to him back

Where they live  on their little island

Like stranded sheep he thought

I as their shepherd must rescue them

But it was a blood sport of course

And he ended up digesting them

And this indigestion brought him

Back to the strawberry liner

Where he was neither a finer captain

Nor a captain of liners

Only a tuner of tunes

Beyond hot air balloons

that look like submarine miners

Believe

 No, I don't think you should believe

In all the foreign lovers that you leave

The stars are a gate to a world unseen

No, I don't think you should believe in all you've seen

The penny drops but I can't believe

That you've opted for foreign leave

Since all the cops have buttoned sleeves

And all their tears make flowers sneeze

I should have stopped to wind the clocks

I should have held the nettle longer

I should have stopped in more docks

I should have been a fire brander

But colour me this way

Or paint me that

I'm just the ship's kettle or the ship's cat

Maybe I don't have the mettle

to swear or scat

But the lovers leave their answers

On my doormat

It's been hard to get going

And so hard to leave

But I can't believe it was snowing

On Adam and Eve

I can't believe where we're going

Is just a reprieve

I think the wind's blowing

And we are all just leaves

Missing in action

 I tried to make it as a lover

But all I became was a thief

It was like I volunteered for a war

But all I got was a peace

Can you show me the door

Or shall I take my own leave

I'm missing in action

I'm not a verb at all

Unless it's a lack of belief

The shadows fall on the wall

And I see your face in relief

It's like the sun cut its stall

Went off to join the police

For they are criminals all

These lovers who softly walk the streets

Am I the mad one alone

While they're the living beast?

I can't show you my scrawl

It would make any sense

I tried to draw them all

But I drew an offense

Because at the society ball

the crystal chandelier broke

And we're all in pieces on the floor

Where the bishop once spoke

I moved a king but he thought it a joke

I told a queen a sad tale and she began to choke

On the vodka martini that a rook left in her yoke

Well we all are the cattle

rising in the midnight smoke

A man Rhyming with Rev

 Oh he's a singing bar of chocolate

Oh he's a greasy spoon

He thinks that he's the fulcrum

Around which turns the room

And yes he's a crooner

You know he sometimes needs a tune

But you can't tell him sooner

Because his heads the size of a balloon

Yes his name rhymes with rev

And he's turning a screw

Mind out for your head

He'll try and knife you

He's all daggers and sycophantic

Grins at the women

He'll suck all their pearls

Off their necks as their swimming

There blows the blubber

He's a floating in the ocean

He thinks he's so musical

But he's devoid of emotion

He's just rude, yes he wishes he was jude

But he's obscure as his food

Wilderness part deux

 I'm watching Simon Reeves in the Congo jungle he's looking at Bonobos 

I'm happy to see them.

The jungle looks uncomfortable with biting insects

and swamps

Someone, a friend from Hungary

Said she'd gone to live in a rainforest

I volunteered today on a disused railway track near Shepton Mallet

It was a bit of a wilderness

Oak trees growing

Just nice to look at the trees with moss on them

We put up a dog fence to stop them running into the private forest

Which you can look at but not touch

I wonder if we create these private wildernesses

Here, where you need to have money to own or experience 

wilderness

For myself to have the privilege of experiencing it

I must volunteer for free

To build a road essentially for people to pass through the wilderness

Probably because we need to walk in nature

More than anything else

We need to do it

But essentially Wilderness in this country is privately owned

I think that essentially I'm part of a middle class attempt

To declassify the countryside

But really it is a reclamation

of an industrial road

It had a societal or manufactural function

It also had a commuter and tourist function

It brought communities together.

Whether there was any true wilderness there,

I don't know

It was probably all farmland for hundreds of years

what makes a wilderness?

That it has never been in contact with humans

Because certain tribes have contact with deep jungle territories

Therefore it is not wilderness

However, that it is not in contact with the wider world

Perhaps is more the point 

She's gone

 She's gone

The day is done

Who won?

Who lost?

 I've forgot

she's a ghost

It's just

I wish

I'd known

And was free from

repentance

Or guilt

She's gone

There's nothing more to lose

I saw a cloud

Pass by

And a trail in the sky

Say

I could choose

But it's not me

It's not my mind

It's my heart

And there's nothing

but the blues

She's gone

Now I have to 

turn her

loose

Marguerite

 Marguerite your light is so unique

You're like a beacon shining on mountain peak

Marguerite when I'm in darkness

Then it's your light I seek

Oh thank you from the bottom of my heart

Marguerite

I once was walking down a road

I didn't know my beginning

I didn't know where it goed

But I fell into the wayside

Like many a fellow before 

But you always pulled me up

And set me in good store

So thank you

Wilderness 2

 Trying to write about wilderness is like trying to look at your backside in a mirror

You know it is there somewhere, but you just can't seem to see it.

I think wilderness exists in the mind

It is the other

Sometimes the strangers of a town are the wilderness

Sometimes the people you know in a town

Are a wilderness too

But often we escape into nature to get away from society

A forest walk or along a hill top can be freeing

It's not wilderness exactly just away.

Perhaps true wilderness is being separated from civilization

And having only nature

I've felt very free walking in the Blue mountains on my own with just a bottle of water in my rucksack

I met another hiker some hours later with his backpack full of water and he thought I was mad to be walking with so little water.

I suppose if I had a good knee I would be doing that again,

But I've broken it and now the idea of being away and relying on

my body to run or walk enough without extreme arthritic pain

means I don't want to consider it

garden of Eden

 Wilderness in the garden

Taming the garden of Eden

The garden is really the closest thing most of us get to the wilderness

The fact is if left unattended the weeds grow over us and we have to fight to survive

So even outside our front door we have wilderness

We really, when we are older or frail, rely on others to fight off the wilderness.

There is an interesting paradox here, in that peace of mind can come from order

And yet to throw yourself into the wilderness of forest or jungle with near abandon is also

freedom and freeing.

Though of course you need to learn or know how to survive. And it is only human to try to bring order out of chaos. Even these tribes in the Amazon are sweeping up and keeping their homesteads clean and tidy and there is order in the community. To think otherwise is delusional and I'd say too much the basis of green or hippy thought. You cannot function as a society on such an individualistic basis in my opinion. 

You go into the wilderness to escape people and find people living there. They live in more harmony with nature though. I only want to live and be around real nature not just agricultural lands but Scotland and mountains. And forests.