To have and to hold

 I wish I had her to hold again

All through the night's bitter cold again

This can't be how our story ends

I wish I had her to hold

I wish I had her to hold

More of this and it'll make me so old

I wish I had her to hold

And let our story unfold

There are many ways I've been told

But there's only one way I want to hold

My darling in my arms

Keeping her far from harm

I wish I had her to hold

It's a wrap

 The thing about presents is

The only worthwhile thing in them

Is their wrapping, because that's

The only part the giver has actually taken the trouble 

to do themselves

That's why dogs, cats and toddlers play mainly with

The wrapping, it is the best bit

A book, someone else wrote it,

a toy, somebody else thinks that's fun

paper though, wrapping paper

That was touched by the hands of someone who cares

Or feels obliged to give you something

Even if they don't really care and are giving you

The present out of duty, then they at least

wrapped it, put it in a box, maybe wrote a card

That's why it's fun to tear those things up

Because it just shows what a fun waste of time it all is

giving or receiving is really bollocks, but we do it

because it's something to do

And if we didn't it would be boring, and it would probably just be raining

and grey

But you see building things up and destroying them

Is really all life is about

And it is most fun to destroy things someone else has made

or valued

And it is even fun to see them being destroyed 

To an extent

Of course it's easier to understand when it's a cat, a dog or a toddler doing it

But deep down, that's all we really want to do anyway

They just have an excuse, infancy or they're animals

So it's pretty much the same.

Second chances

 Immigration, immigration

Getting like it's hard to mention

You ask somebody where they're from

It's like they've been hit with stun gun

I'm not trying to exclude you from my world view

I'm not trying to categorize you

But I like to know just who I'm speaking to

So don't get offended if I ask you to answer true

What's the problem? What are you hiding from?

Is it the dreaded word immigration?

I can say where I was born, that means I know where

I'm from

Though it sounds absurd

It matters if you're an Afghan, Somalian or Kurd

Sunni, Czech, Lithuanian, Polish or Bulgarian 

But only because it's culture is different

Isn't it worse to pretend we're all the same

And lie about where we're born

So we can get given the password

To enter a city, a country of gold,

But you know it's only this way

Because we haven't entirely sold

Our souls

Of course the massive corporations have though

They've been buying up

Our rights to life

They control our old age accommodation

Market forces

Forced Grandma into a home

Capitalism made your parents divorce

Getting rich, and being well

Became the only Christmas to sell

And such things as faith and honesty

Got thrown out with the dishwater

Into the frozen sea of commerciality

Some place, perhaps there's a place

Where being a family means

Being loved, its rules

Are above the government's laws

Regardless of citizenship

Which is just a passport key

It's just a way of saving a life

From poverty into prosperity

Prosperity, but no family

Just a waltz with the dollar

Just a Sterling march

A glide around the ballroom

of Second chances

Taking a spin

On the wheel of life and love

But you must forget

First what you used to have

Get into Christmas

 Get off my lanterns

And start running the show

Christmas is coming

So don't be slow

Get off my lanterns and get into

winter glow

My head was doing a performance on the chopping block

I walked around the corner and found quite a shock

That the French revolution was an exhibition on shutterstock

And the photographers were the only ones keeping their heads

The rest of them were hopeless lifers and may as well been dead

but no don't talk like that

Get off my lantern

the bare trees are blowing in the wind

Falling

 My eyes fell, fell a sleep

My eyes are falling, falling into the deep

I fell out of bed

I fell down the stairs

I fell off the log pile of all my burning cares

I fell, I fell for you

Falling, falling waterfall dew

My eyes are falling

Falling water too

My eyes aren't falling

It's just the morning dew

When I rise the sun in my eyes does too

But now I must be falling

Falling in love with you

Island sliding

 D7The problem is C you're attached to someone G else

D7 If we lived on an island C nothing would matter

To G ourselves

D7           Am          Em

Ebdim      

D7 But we live in a world G where we see other people D everyday

D7 And you know what they say about C other people?

G What do they say?

D7 Well they will C say whatever they G say

D7 Let's live in a world C by ourselves, G Just for today

D7 I think we can do it, C Now what do you G say?

D7 If I knew you and C you, you knew G me

D7 Well I know you, and C you, you know G me

Am Em

D7We can do this thing and C make it work out G today

So come with me now, now what do you say?

Brexmas

 I saw Jesus coming on a donkey

I saw a little boy and a monkey

I saw a felicitous cat

But I'm keeping that under my hat

I saw a fat man wearing red

He had a big hat on his head

And it was just like the Sermon said

But I'm keeping it under wraps

Don't leave it out in plain view

For you know they're dwindling few

To hold the Christmas vigil

For Santa and his jezebel

Have clubbed the real message to death

Still we're all about restraint

And don't do that it's not safe

That's the British society we breed

And why we're losing our creed

But also we've made laws to stifle

Our own cultural traditions are trifles

And tea with the Vicar, 

hardly happens or it's quicker

Than it ever used to be

Not that I'm C of E

I was brought up a Catholic, that's me

But put me in a box

Or tell me to stop

Well then this isn't the country for me 

The longest day

 Why does the shortest day seem like the longest day?

It just seems so long to me

I don't mean the sunlight

That doesn't matter

I'm talking psychologically

Why when it feels so hard to be

Without light

But we put on light displays

Candles and plays

And laugh and talk with our friends

There's a feeling I don't 

Want it to end

Maybe it's the start of something

so new

Maybe it's the end of the year

Maybe it's the Christmas period becoming

A place of bickering or cheer

Maybe it's an idea

That these false circles

And machinery

Of community

engagements

And structures of

Certainty

Of people you who hate you

In their eyes

Of clique connections

Which are founded on

self lies

And lonely women

Who bully and cajole

Simply because

They lack any control

Over their own lives

So they stare like cats with knives

Over and beyond you

Because they don't respond to you

Because really they are jealous

And your single fate offends them

Or reminds them

Of their own emptiness and hate

But love is the only answer

To their sparse disaster

of a life

Rainbow song

 You can't have the rainbow without the rain

You can't have love without some kind of pain

No, you can't have the rainbow without the rain

It's got to be a sunny day for you and me

Just waiting for it to break through the old bare tree

Oh winter is a gloomy, gloomy time of year

But you can't have the sadness without some kind of cheer

You can't have the rainbow without some kind of  rain

You can't have tomorrow without memory lane

You need some sorrow before you get pleasure again

You can't have the rainbow without some kind of  rain

The spring time is coming round, yes soon it'll be it's turn

And we'll be dancing merrily as we watch the greens just burn

And all the fish of the see who don't know what's going on

Above the land is changing mysteriously and they swim on and on

You can't have the rainbow without some kind of  rain

You can't have love, my dear, without some kind of pain

You've got to accept it in good cheer and love the sweet times again

You can't have the rainbow without some kind of  rain

Yes, I saw you only yesterday, but I think of you today

Why can't it be the same as it was when our lives were lived at play?

We had so many tomorrows waiting in our way

You can't have the rainbow, you can't have tomorrow

Without a hard time today

So I hope for all our sakes that you'll come back and stay

It will all be to borrow, for tomorrow from today

Cos sometimes you owe a debt and other times you get paid

You can't have the rainbow without some kind of  rain

You can't have the rainbow without some kind of rain

The mistletoe on the vine

 Oh the stars are cracking in the sky

And the starlings are on the line

The apple trees give up their leaves

For their mistletoe on the vine

I say hello to the crow

I say hi to the pigeon

And the fellow in rags

With the homeless mags

Still the mistletoe grows on the vine

I see the snow

And the winter throws

The warmth and mold wine

But I've nowhere to go

And the starlings stow

Near the mistletoe on the vine

Keep me warm oh Jesus do

The sorrow of the hedgerow is mine

But it's all a glow, the holly tree grows

Like the mistletoe on the vine

Just in time deliveries, Uber politics app

 tintinnabulations

 and contraindications

of Asbestos poisonings

from the ivy on the wall

Thunder on April Fools

Current runners running Affairs

Who's the fairest of them all?

Look in the mirror of Spice girl hall

You can't catch me I'm the gingerbread man

Pan headed Pan of chocolate mousse Dan

Roll up your sleeves give it some elbow grease

More thrifty Forbes and Fergie, the dead beat lay loose

Blasted by royal trumpets

Tearing out strawberries from last year's crop

fissiparity irregularity

And uncertain congeniality

Especially Asparagus conspiratorial 

Of the Auspicious moon

And she's a Sarah Palin of the moment

Can tell you all about the politics 

Of the liberal agenda and its moves

Against the Maga movement

But for all her talk she's never done a blind thing

About it, so is really just as culpable 

As the rest of us for our doom

Yet if you see the starfish she will lose an arm or two

But continue to grow

In ever spreading fingers through the rock pool

And other's just eat their mothers and brothers

But we've moved on from that all

Haven't we?

Or are we still struggling out of the sea?

Christmas in a nutshell

 Well I tried to crack my walnuts

I tried to eat my cashews

But the fact of the matter man

Is while I try to eschew

My worldly responsibilities

Of academia mediocrities

My macadamia Aristoteles

Was shooing away a squirrel

Keep your Christmas platitudes

I've got my attitudes

You could give me some latitude

But of course you already do

Perhaps it's unresolved trauma

Of some bedroom Nessun dorma

But swap my Nissan for a Korma

And my Kingdom for a horse or two

I've definitely suffered slings and arrows

But unlike Hamlet, I took to wheelbarrows

Less dramatic one could say than murder

Probably more phlegmatic

Easily a more cowardly act it

is it to be a herder than a murderer

Yet we can't all be Shakespeare's Hamlet

 We can't all die on our swords

As Yul Brynner says in the Magnificent Seven

A coward dies a thousand times

A hero only once

Perhaps that's a choice I make

Perhaps I need some more Christmas nuts

  

Get off my lanterns

 Well the lanterns they are hanging

And blowing in the breeze

And I am out there thanking

Jesus saying Jeez

I wish that I could meet ya

I'm alone

But love is sweet

For the friends

The mistletoe came alive

In my car

What no one realized

Was that is was an alien

From outer space

Get off my lanterns I said to it

But it just kept on spreading

Where it did sit

Get off my lanterns

And onto my tree

Show me a land 

Where we all are free

It don't seem like God's here

No more, we've all forgotten 

How to pray

So let's open the barn door

And make what we can of the hay

Get off my lanterns

She said to me

Who me?!, I said with an innocent guile

But in my heart I knew

I was a crocodile

Yes, you, with the head and the eyes

And the hands

Jack of the field

Leave alone my lanterns

But they're shining so brightly

In the dim winter haze

I just want to lie beneath them and laze

A Christmas Carol

 Looking for a christmas carol

Looking for to make ends meet

Looking for a Christmas carol

On this dead end Christmas Street

The road is hard, the road is narrow

What is good and what is meet

I'm looking for a Christmas carol 

on this dead end Christmas street

Jesus came to me like a sparrow

Singing strong and oh so sweet

With a voice so deep but shallow

A little Carol on Christmas Street

It was dark and in the shadow

And down the road no one to meet

But his heart was like a rainbow

Lighting up the Christmas street

And I know this Christmas Carol

Is the best one I can't beat

For I hear it when I'm walking

Down the road to Christmas Street 

The Birmingham canals

 I was on a submarine (sunburnt marine)

Somewhere over near Birmingham

We'd come the wrong way up the canals

Whoo ee, whoo ey

What a bow wave

All up the Birmingham canal

I saw New Street from the crow's nest

And the Bull Ring

We torpedoed in a haze

But the silversmiths built us a new ship's hull

And a shining, spangling we heave-hoed

All the way to the Brummie navy

Come on chums and climb aboard

I'm just ready for the black country

Where I can lay my soul down in the coals

See what tomorrow brings

 For we don't know what tomorrow will bring

The sea is a changing thing

For the clouds roll on

The sky's ever changing

We cannot hold onto a transient thing

All the small things matter

Don't be so cruel my love

Our life can be in peril

A fountain that's trembling

All the falling snow

All the light things

Only kindness bears the weight of tragedy

Only heat can melt the icy spring

Let the waters flow

See what tomorrow brings

See what tomorrow brings

Life

 How can they tell,

And where is the switch

Who told the driver to drive into the ditch

All that I know is that life is an itch

And you must scratch it unless

It gonna have you in fits

How could he go

Where will they hitch

How will I know now

Life can be a ...