Badger sett free

 I'm so black and white

Black and white that's me

I only see right and wrong

The grey shades don't occur for long

I wanna live like a colour TV

I wanna trade in my coat

I've been picking up my giro

On the unemployment lines

Benefits to badger

Wildlife welfare cheques

They treat me like a charity case

On the breadline, I wanna break their necks

All the money goes on car parks anyway

These well wishers, it's true

But why don't they just try living for a day like we do

On the Badger Breadline

Hard lined, and hard nosed sniffing out grubs

From under a rose

What I like I'm stubborn until I get it

I'm unimpressed by their cameras

watching where my Sett is

How would they like it if I set up shop outside their home and started filming

everytime they come and go?

Noting what they eat and when and even every time they take a shit

There's no dignity in it

Anyway I'm changing, the emperor's changing clothes

I'm going to paint myself a rainbow badger

See what Chris Packham and his wildlife crew

Will do

They'll probably pull their hair probably re-write natural history

They'll put it down to badger stress from living on the breadline

He didn't turn grey, just for badgers, he turned multicoloured

Like a TV with its wires crossed like a satellite on the blink

Like the moon shone a disco ball of sparkling strobe lighting

And I just let myself go and danced like Grease Lightning

I just slicked back my rainbow locks and rocked around the BBC garden

I just let rip my rainbow ship and it sailed off into the horizon to harden

I've had enough of living like a pauper

I'm gonna live like Cindy Lauper

Because Badgers just want to have fun

Badger breadline

This one's going out to all my 

mustelids out there

All my polecats, weasels, stoats,

All my skunks from other mothers

My pine martens and otters

Keep it real brothers

Sacred is the Murray mint and humbug 

I'm just another badger on the breadline

I'm just another badger on the breadline

I'm just another badger riding the badgerline

It's from Frome to Rome and it is on time

I've got to get myself together in time

I'm just another young badger living on the breadline

You wanna roll with me, you've gotta take the punches

You wanna eat squirrel well we'll have worms for lunches

We ain't buying our meals from Greggs or subway

We're lookin in fields, digging up dead stumps anyway

We can

Just another young badger on the Breadline

I'm talking about breadline, dread-line, that homeless feeling deadline 

Always on the run, ready, get Sett, go!

Watch the farmer's gun

Always lookin for our badger cave

Better make sure we don't dig our own grave

Living underground, away from busy traffic sound

Below and beyond the blue yonder

When we come out its starlit wonder

Black and blue the heavens chew

Over our immortal questions we ponder

Who was the Holy Badger Father

Head of our Order

The brotherhood of the Badger

Jean Paul Sartre 

Came from Secret World 

Rescued By the Abbot

Came to live in the habit

With Run away rabbits

But he brings them all in

When he gives his sermon

All the animals sing

Hail to the king

Hail to the brotherhood

Order of the skunk

Hail to the Holy Badger

High up Holy Monk

Storm at sea

 Oh your teeth are chattering and your cage is rattling

And I can hear your glass ceiling shattering

Well outside is the rain

And inside is the pain

Of my heart crashing against yours

Like some Viking longboats

Clashing oars

Pandamonium all aboard

This ship of success

Break through the storm

Until you see the sky

Wild wiley loon

Flowing along the cutting edge

Of the blade of your love

That falls like a lightning strike from above

Right into the heart of me

Through the storm's eye

Joke 678

 I went to a peanut farm and asked them to tell me how they grew them, in a nutshell.

Bowsprit

 I wake to the sound of traffic

Buzzing in my ears

Busy bees so hard at work

Goes on and on for years

Where do they get to while I rest?

A few more miles up the mountain

Pushing the boulder as Sisyphus

To reach the eternal fountain

Well I'm down here in my hovel

But I don't bow and I won't grovel

It seems like spit is rain off my shovel

I'm staying home today

I only like librarians

I want a woman who will tell me my book is overdue

And the loan I took out needs returning

I need a woman is it you?

But so long as I'm learning, she'll keep my pages turning

She can't be book burning it's true 

You can beat me with your shoes

You can beat me black and blue

But I only like Librarians

Oh there are all kinds of women in the world

There are secretaries, C-sections, and sectarians

But there is only one who'll do

Yes, I'm talking about you

Oh I only like librarians

It must be the way they files their books

Oh in alphabetical persuasions

Colour coded or by title it gives me titillations

Yes I only like librarians

Oh there are women builders, gardeners and enterprising

dancers, 

Engineers, teachers and farmers too

But beat me black and blue

Cos none of them will do

Oh I only like librarians

Oh there are many kinds of races in the world

There hispanic, European, Black or Asian

But I don't mind the skin tone or colour

It's the way order books shelves that matters

Oh I only like librarians

Throw away love

 I threw away 

Yes I threw it all away

I threw away the love I had

Why I should've taken the good with the bad

But I squandered my chances

On fleeting romances

And I threw away the love had

So don't follow in my footsteps my lad

For you may never love another, it is sad

To say that you have life only when you have a wife

That's the truth, It's no colouring of the truth

I have lived the life and am the proof

I threw away, yes I threw it all away

I threw away the love I had

There aren't any more fish in the sea

 There are no more fish in the sea

Whoopey

Yes they've completely run out

And who do we have to thank?

Oh overfishing the doggerel Art bank

Yes there's no fish in Auchan

Aucan, not any at all

They've all swum up the rivers and stayed

There beyond the waterfall

When they say you can find a fish easy these days

What the hell do they know?

They are basing it on movie reel parades

From when they were in Fish Schools

Back in the 1960s

It's all good

 It's all good

You've got wood in the hood

Wood in the hood, wood in the hood

It's all good in the neighbourhood

It's bad, you got twigs in the bag

Twigs in the bag, twigs in the bag

Well it's all bad, you got twigs in the bag

Twigs in the bag is all bad

Don't fret, you;ve got strings in your net

Strings in your net,

Still a chance you can catch a fish yet

Catch a fish, yet, Don't Fret

Come back home, I'm waiting for Rome

Waiting for Rome, Waiting for Rome

Shepton Shearers

 The sheep shearing season is short in Shepton

So short in Shepton it's stepping on septums

And September is too late for conception

In Shepton the sheep saw a ram

A ramming went Rambo through Rotterdam and

Ramsbottom, a Rutting a tutting a Solitary Sam

Who settled in setts where badgers made bets

On mother hubbard's long laboured lamb

Oh but not to be ham, the pigs they globe trotted

And Forgotten the begotten Ramsbottom Ram

They cried out oh Dad, Delivers us Do

From Do da days dallying daily with dew

Wren story

 Straight as lace she walks

As an arrow down the catwalk

Tartan tinged with mace

The pace of hell and scarper

Escape the rate race

Come out West

Where the air is clear

And all that forgotten grace

Will return to ring in your ear

Sing little wren of the hedgerows

Sing and show that you matter

Sing because the cruel wind blows

And will tear your nest to tatters

Hold on little wren, your home

Is a growing thing

The buds will blossom

The wood will lengthen

And protection come in Spring

Hold true to the hedgerows

And eek out existence here

Raise some young

Or hold the one

That you feel most dear

Tragedy is a circling crow

Hungry for its meal

So fly, fly to the deep hedgerow

Or hide down low in the field

Fakery

 I've always wanted to work as a faker

And I finally got the job at the local fakery

I have to get up at 3 am to start faking.

Friend zone

 I tried to be your friend

But it just seems like in the end

I'm extra cargo, out in Key Largo

Jettisoned from the jetty

No more need of confetti

It was a dream on my head not a crown

But a cloud,

Just vapours of my stale air

Like inside a bell jar

All I saw was you

It's like you obscured my view

And I saw through your hue

Oh January

You're always looking forward to April

That foolish month

That opening of the year

Let's look forward to it together (They said)

We're going to plan to get clear

Together

Each year

(They said)

I'm born looking into the abyss

The darkness

Of a holiness

No idea how to conquer fear

So confused by the dichotomies

Wish my birthday meant a good thing

But it means a twisting changing

Like a rope twined until it's tight

And strong enough

Then doubles up and coils

Almost in a knot

It unravels

But needs the space to do that

That's me

Like cargo in Key Largo

Jettisoned out to sea

Mr Stephen Jarvis

 Mr Stephen Jarvis

Stepped into a Tardis

And went back fifty million years

To a land of dinosaurs

And minotaurs

And a place without no tears

It's a steaming jungle out there

It's a kettle full of fish

It's a piece of urban furniture

That is an artwork he can't miss

And flying through directories

The birds have found their perch

In alcoves and near rectories

Where alcoholics go to church

He's bound by books and fakeries

To drown his human woes

But finds in sound bread bakeries

His soul food fills his holes

I should have been his friend

I should have held the knife

I should have shattered the mirror

That would end his strife

But I made a mistake

I've dulled the edge of life

With broken hearted bottle's

Recycled absent wife

I've lived with joy and sorrow

I've come out feeling blue

There'll likely be rain tomorrow

And I've got a hole in my shoe

So if you have a love 

Don't trade it to the winds

For fat or thin, the dove

Will fly and never come again 

Miss Jennifer Parker

 Miss Jennifer Parker

Is a most elegant dresser

She's even a Fashion Professor

Dressed to kill in traitor's style

She'll catch you with her wiles

Walks as fast as a steam train or a car

There she goes, Miss Jennifer Parker

So trim the hem, and cut the shawl

And fill your glass with wine

So sew the sleeve, patch the heart

And follow the line til we shall part

There goes Miss Jennifer Parker

She's on her hands and knees

All day long

Pinning up a hem, trimming a sarong

She's in the store room mapping out history

With her pins and pleats

Kith and kin complete

With well written blurb

Never a wrong or missing verb

Then in the Front room she's window dressing

The models all stand there awaiting her blessing

They're ready for her and to be honest

She never puts bees in their bonnets

She'll stick it and pin it

She stays through thick it and thin it

There she goes Miss Jennifer Parker

So trim the hem, and cut the shawl

And fill your glass with wine

So sew the sleeve, patch the heart

And follow the line til we shall part

Miss Jennifer Parker

You go up and ask her

What's brighter or darker

She always knows what goes

What colours flow

What lines meet or cross like streams

Into the river of her fashion dreams

On point, like a dancer, a pinhole camera

That lets in just enough light to show

In polaroid, the cones and rods of colour and shade

Whether natural or man-made

Going back through the kings and queens of history

Going back through their stately home parades

Of the upper classes, mind not pint glasses

But the grape pitchers, she's in the sorority

A sister of mercy and the wine bar

It won't sound terse if I say she will go far

There she goes, Miss Jennifer Parker 

Love labours day and night

 Trying to find the words

To say I love you

But nothing seems to come to mind

It's like it was just on the tip of my tongue

But now however much I look I can't find

Searching for it in books I've read

Looking for it in signs on the street

Seeking it in the faces of people I meet

And in the pavements I tread

Nothing seems to work, no

nothing seems to work

The more I seek, the less I find

i'm wearing the same shirt then rolling in the dirt

And I wash away the stains from my mind

Yet nothing seems to work, no nothing seems to work

Even if I say it, you cannot hear

It's like at the pitch of a bat

Oh the dogs all have my back

But it never rings a bell in your ear

Yes my love it labours day and night

At the coal face of your heart

But I can't seem to break the ice

No matter how hard I fight

The hammer blows, they echo below

And up the valley resound

But no matter how I work at it

The right words I have not found

So I'm going on strike

I won't work for dirt

The love I have is in my shirt

It's on my sleeve, I still believe

But this just can't be right

For my love it labours day and night

A lack of diplomacy

 He was a diplomatic diplodocus

Long necked hocus pocus

Ranging around like an evil wizard

On his high horse like a terrible lizard

Willing to wager the country's treasure

All for some new shoes made of Spanish leather

Left the foreign office in a state

Ordered his love like a takeaway plate

Shining his star, but shone it too late

Oh that worrisome bore

Of diplomacy's fate

Beef

 He said I've got a beef with you

I don't wanna beefburger,

Don't wanna commit murder

It's just this thing that you do

You've been out on the tiles

For miles and miles

And now you're drunk as a screw

I have a beef with you

You come here in your state

And throw up on your plate

You shake and shiver and vomit

Can't you try a washer or gromit

Put a cork in it won't you

Yes I have a beef with you

Temp

 Temporary

You're one in a million

Hard to catch

Just like a cloud

You evaporate

Like a ghost

I could walk along your coast

All day

But you're so temporary

Temporary

We all have to grow

Change from the first things we were

I can't tell

If this is heaven or hell

Or if I'm in purgatory

As you're so temporary

Indigo bay

 The river floods with our blood

Like wine

All indigo in hue

And you, I miss you

In the river of indigo

The swollen towers of pride

Have fallen down beside

Its banks

And all the children have cried

All the mothers given thanks

I have no other lover

I want to make you mine

But I don't want to steal you from another

I have only our precious time

There is nothing left beside to say

Except the river between us flows on

into the Indigo bay

Early morning serenade

 It's 3 o'clock in the morning

And I'm making my way to you

Walking along the pavement

Like the bones in a skeleton crew

Fighting to stand alone

Stand on one leg or maybe two

But the grave is calling me home

And I don't want to go without you

Looking forward to the sunrise

Holding my heart in my hands, it is true

Guessing that you'd see in my eyes

That I truly love you

Hoping to God I can see you again

Maybe just as a friend, who knew

The depths of longing and pain

I've gone to over my love of you

Jokes upside down

 I worked at an undertakers once

It was a nice little Urn-er

A tree surgeon - a Tree who like to cut

off people's limbs

 I put the vet in the car, he was getting old

And I brought to the Cat's

The cat was very nice about it as I sat the vet

on the table and the cat patted his head

And stroking his ears

The vet seemed to like it and calmed down

And then the Cat administered the deadly serum

My island in the sea

 There's a land I want to visit

And it's sinking very fast

It's an island way out to sea

There's a place I'd like to be in

And it's a blinking on a mast

And it's a rocking on the rolling sea

So come and see me on my island in the ocean

Come and visit or forever set me free

For I have no more use of the mainland

Oh that pained land where love just conquers me

I am leaving, I am leaving

On the next ship from the harbour

I have nothing left to tie me here

There's a place where I'll be safe from

All that love's lost and laboured

And I'll not return til I have forgotten her

So come and see me on my island in the ocean

Come and visit or forever set me free

For I have no more use of the mainland

Oh that pained land where love just conquers me

Treasure

 Upon your cliffs I have kissed

Your thrift

Your spare ribs of a ship wrecked hull

I've hugged your skeleton crew

And thought I knew you

Bones and all

But what did I know of

That rattling chest 

Where you keep your heart?

Treasure

Your speedwell fell

fast as a peregrine

Your glass back

Was a waterfall

Broken trembling

Your arms

Were a figurine resembling

And I have fallen

In the spray of your sea cave

And drowned beneath your teeth

Which you keep

Behind the shark's jaw

But I don't think of you

So much anymore