The Fisher king

 I met some fishermen in the showers

Of April on the pier

They said March or die

I said how can I

When you've covered my DNA queer?

You've queered the pitch

You've tarred and bitch

You men of roads and gears

You've rolled my soul

In stones and potholes

And I've come up covered in

leers, jeers, 

I've risen up like a mountain

But my head has been eroded down

And now all that's left is a reptilian husk

Of the royal stem which once wore a crown

I met the fishermen

They said do you like fishing?

Are you going fishing

Well are you?

In Weymouth, I said,

some do, he said

He had this sweaty loss on him

This punter's cruelty

Of the King Arthur in Glastonbury

It's like a sickbed

They use a Noble name

And the customer's think 

Somehow through Osmosis

Or through drinking the beer

That they've absorbed some of his might

And right and Majesty

But it's built on a poisonous well

And they are drinking from a poisoned chalice

And if they're looking for the Holy Grail

Well they've found a town called Malice

I don't think Glastonbury is well

Down there it's a fishing port

It's a hard place, it's a cruel sport

Fishing

They would be better off calling it

The Bait and Tackle

As that's all they end up doing

Trying to catch each other out

Laying traps for unsuspecting fish to bite

I met some fishermen 

and asked them how they bait their fish

They said we can use maggots, worms, flies

Mosquitoes

Depends on what size Fish

The prize determines the size

Of insect

I said how did you learn to bait like that?

They told me years of practice

And night school

We had to join a guild

The FOMB

The FOMB I said pray what does that stand for?

Fear of mis-baiting? I suggested

No they said it stands for

The Federation of Master Baiters

Oh I said you must feel great pride

They nodded and carried on

Of ladders and dreams

 You reach the top

But you can't break through

So you get a job 

On the wrecking crew

Glass ceilings 

And waterfalls

All breaking up

When you swing your ball

You're climbing up

The ladder with the angels

Some are climbing down

With broken wings

We'll meet them on the ground

When the choir sings

Of heady stuff

Of being enough

Of what fire brings

Courage and love

Of human things

Of beggars and fools

And Heroes and kings

Morris-men

 Who are you to say what's right?

Morris man with your bells so bright

Jingle, jangle, tingle tangle

Me up in your music tonight

He was the son of a Morrisman

He danced all night to the band

And kissed the girls in the caravan

He was the son of a Morrisman

Don't sweet talk me pretty

Or sit on my kitty

I've been hitting the sticks

Since the age of Six

And I'll dance you to heaven

If you given me seven

Or give me five in a pat-a-cake jive

I'm the sweet talking son of a Morrisman

It's the bells and whistles

It's the great charade

Of the chardonnay 

And the grape parade

We're dancing today

Like it's the first of May

I'm 19th son of a Morrisman

My father's name was Morris

He drove a Morris minor

His father's name was Boris

He was Major then a miner

In the Russian steppes then the gulag

Then he did the goose step

In the jet lag rag

My great grandfather Morris

was a florist in the Dutch colonies

Not far from the forests of the Aborigines 

Where he danced with the originals

And learnt all the Abba signals

Beat his sticks upon the glass

windows of widows

A cruel magic

 He is gone, 

the magician Jonny Miller

It was his final trick

A disappearing act

Like he pulled a rabbit out a hat

But it's second hand news

It comes to me like a rumour does

Whispered

Gossip,

Shock

Most things appear and vanish

Like that

But she is the magician I know

On a sunny day she can make it snow

She is a keeper of secrets

In the sacred circle

It comes to her, easily

Like a hotline to God

To the Gods

I'm always praying

It's like a condition

Or my conditioning

She never does,

as I'm aware

And yet she is closer to

The holy crew

She just lays it bare 

on the table

Her cards

and wins the lot

Like a sweepstake

I have to take

 a back seat

 in the auditorium

Of her dreams

And mine

While she's on the stage 

she shines

But to me she shines more

when off it

She's got the magic

touch for sure

I'm off stage left

Looking to score

a draw

On her fiery breath

But the world is cruel

And fame is a test

And if you seek it

It may destroy

What soul you have

left

You saw yourself in half

And tie yourself in knots

All to feel the audience

Laugh

Or cry

Or cough

Or hold their breath

Or scream or shout 

Or cheer

And it will kill

You in the end

For there's magic

Over here

If you play with fire

You're bound to 

Get wounded

It's getting late

 It's getting late

Too late to care

It's getting late

And I want you there

But I can't hold a gun

and watch you stare

Me in the face

While I leave you bare

It's getting late

Too late to care

All the people in their houses

With a little hope

Watch as the wind blows in their blouses

Like a sail snapping rope

It's getting late and 

I don't know

How to change the cards

I show

I'm losing ground

It's stalemate

It's getting late

Too late to go

Can't keep up

 Walking with my bitches

bitches, bitches

Keeps giving me stitches

stitches, stitches

Cos they walk so fast

fast, fast

I can't hold up my britches

Britches, britches

My pants fall down

down, down

All over town

town, town

So I try and them pull up

up, up

But my bum it itches

itches, itches

I trip over my hoes

hoes, hoes

And over we goes

goes, goes

And we land in dem ditches

ditches, ditches

So now I don't walk with them bitches

bitches, bitches

But I work at the old people's home

home, home

Where they walk more slowly

slowly, slowly

Come and visit me homey,

homey, homey

5 in a row

 Bombs in west Bradley 

5 bombs

In a row

Molotov bread basket

Undertaker 

I was an undertaker 

He was an over taker

Who reached heaven first?

There was a speed limit on the stairway to heaven 

But an escalator down to hell

Treason , the reason of a tree. When arguing with a tree it's always a good idea to suggest it be treasonable and to stop barking orders at you. Do trees actually like to be weed on by dogs? They may just see as a bit of watering and quite like it, instead of getting mad. You can't assume all trees are untreasonable. 

A canny mason

 He was a canny mason

Very good with stone

He even carved a basin

For my very home

 I knew him as a greyson

But he soon showed other tones

He wasn't just in shades of grey

But black and white and brown

Oh he was a canny mason

And built all the buildings in town

Carved and hewn the face on

Every facade of regal crown

Mermaids on the balustrades

Lions on the coronet

Ask him not of gunpowder plots

He'll likely hew you from the neck down

But buy him a sack of wine

Let him weigh the stone in his palm

He'll tell where and how to place it in

The wall 

Then they'll all fall down

Inspiring work

 The steeple jack came

What work are you in?

I'm in spires, 

oh how inspiring, I'm an aspiring steeplejack you know

Oh really? What line of work are you in?

I'm a roofer, I only do flat roofs,, but I need to branch out

Extend my self

It's about the elevation, 

well only do it if you're inclined

Oh I am inclined, very much inclined

I look up at the church roof and think

That tower needs something

Oh and I don't mean cornices or more gargoyles, no sir

It needs a little je ne sai qua

A spire?

Exactly

A spire to reach to the stars

To touch God's hand

Well let's not get carried away

Say are you busy these days?

Well, I'm running from one spire to another near enough

Oh a steeplechase?

You could say

Well I know of a church, the damn spire just fell off

Crack and came spiralling down

Caught a parishioner totally unawares

Mrs Beeching , terrible thing

She never did have a head for heights

always afraid to climb the tower's spiral staircase

and Now she has spire for a head

Not very inspiring, 

She has a steeple through her temples

She finally got the point

Unfortunately it struck her too late

Well the thing is the cockerel hit her first

She heard this whirring

And the weather vein span down like a helicopter

It had fallen off

North, South, East or West, it kept spinning

She was dizzy with which way the wind was blowing

Then?

A golden hen, finally came home to roost

Well you should be careful not to keep all your eggs in one basket

My dear man it was a cockerel, not a chicken, a golden cockerel

My wife is into cocks too,

I beg your pardon? Cock-a-toos?

No cockerels, the weather veins

She paints them, gold leaf you see, we do a double act

I take em off their high perch, and she gives

Them a new lease of life

That's rather gilding the lily isn't it?

Well, it's rather gilding the cock

Ah the man with the golden gun

Oh your veins are so glorious I see

weather they are or Whether they are not

Is not for me to say

She's the weather-woman 

and I'm the steeple jack

Actually Perry the stone mason is my name

Though I'm also into flying buttresses

And my wife is Jemima the gold leaf artist

She's up at the crack of dawn, painting cockerels like the sun

So you are into butts and your wife is into cocks

Well good day to you sir!

Australian Film

 a Possum's creed

a cross between Muriel's Wedding

and Assassin's Creed,

a very popular Australian dram/action film

Flounders in Flanders

 I saw her there in a chestnut chair

She looked like a widow with willow stair

She stared out the window, she was hidden windrow

That billowed and bellowed her pain pellets spare

I saw her there like a crooked chameleon

All bent like a stick insect changing her feeling

Coloured hair like a maniac, bold and brash as an anorak

Crazy psychology of the sociopath's lair

I saw her there she stopped me in the doorway

All guardian of the universe her sphere of blue shit

Like a globe of becoming a purple mist succumbing

Combing the beach for wasted lives they have quit

I saw her there, but she is a little hitler

In charge of nothing but a dream that is wished

Who knows what to believe in, I don't think odd or even

Are numbers she's gambled on just bad waters fished

Her name it is Mandy, her banks they are sandy

Shores where her ship is scuppered and wrecked

So she started a bar for Amazonian pirates

And she banishes all those not on her wish list

Just ask for your hard hats, there nothing is stolen

Just ask for your dry tongues, just ask don't speak

Unless you've been spoken to by the Queen of the showroom

Just a Caribbean dive full of drunk fools and old fish

Iranium Uranium

 Iranian uranium

Oh it hurts our craniums

What the fucking hell is going on?

We've been living under an illusion

That our human rights are God given

Or at least preserved by a universally acknowledged law

But none of that is real, we're just lucky to be

On a small island that helped give birth to a Titan:

America

What saves us from obliteration is just the King's coronation

That had a lot of pomp and circumstance to it

That appeals to a dictator like Trump

If we weren't historical winners, white, westerners

Then certainly our lives would matter less

We can be living in this peaceful bubble

Until the war outside knocks on our door

Ultimately it's about survival,

Who will get the good stuff

The reality is America are not afraid

To go after what they need and want

Trump will be considered a prophet

A martyr

A winner who won a war and took oil off a regime of low to middling power

Before they became too powerful to resist

What makes me sick is saying he is a religious figure

That God is on his side

Well strength and power is

Perhaps a belief in God and the Christian way

Helped

However, framing this as a crusade

To Christianize Iran seems wrong

Really because of live and let live

However their regime abuses it citizens

Iranian uranium hurts my cranium

Machete

(Heard accompanied to the sounds of a machine clanking

and chomping, cutting and pressing, slashing

pressure release in steam and rising and falling, crashing 

metal kettles and plates, like a steam train that can't be late

a machete machine)

 I only want to tide things over

Oh I only want a bride to be a wife

It's not just a four leafed clover

I only want a knife to cut through life

Oh so won't you be my machete

Match eatty like a parrot or a kite

always flying over my shoulder

Always on the lookout for some strife

Oh Machete, match eatty, cut

and slash through the undergrowth

You can cut a path through the trees

You can cut, cut unto ourselves

Get us free from our ties which bind

Oh Match eatty Machete

Cut my hands off and use them as ashtrays

I'll be your gorilla in the mist babe

if you'll only give me your kiss

I'll even waive my rights to habeas corpus

Corpus christi stigmata of the wrist

Run a nail through my feet babe

And hang me up on my own crucifix

Oh match eatty machete

Cutting through the hearts on the list

What am I to do?

 What am I gonna do

Now you say

"I don't love you"

When my whole world feels

As if it's over

Oh yes it may be true

That I can live without you

In that case my lonely days are over

Still what am I meant to do

Now you say

I don't love you

Must I wander forever

The whole world over?

I'm shooting arrows into rainbows

I'm blowing bubbles at volcanoes

I'm throwing boulders over waterfalls

Just to see if I can shatter their illusions

Oh what am I to do

Now that you say

I don't love you

Am I really a hopeless bum 

On the sidewalk?

Well that's how you make me feel hun

So you better run, if you see me coming

I'm a son of a gun out for some hunting

And I'll shoot you too, if I see you running

Just tell me where to aim my gun

I'll be coming for you

Oh What am I to do?

April fool

In jest - many a true word is said ingest:

You banter, I canter

You chaff, I chafe

You fool, I muel, and mew

Said in fun, I reach for my gun

You tell a gag, I reach for the rag

Disgrace, lose face, egg on my face

Just jape, I try to escape

You jive, and I barely stay alive

You make a joke, and I am like a whiff of smoke

You jolly broom man, drunk on life

I pull out my brolly, wait for rains' strife

You josh, I am flotsam and jetsam awash

You kid, I bring the sacrificial lamb of I am

And it's just a quip, but I equip myself with weapons and armour

I'm readying for war games

You wisecrack, and I break, I snap

I'm on the edge, like Iran

My finger hovers over the button

Just then a leaf falls from a tree

And upsets the balance between you and me

yuck you say, get a sense of humour

I was only pulling your leg

In jest you say that I shouldn't care

this jibe, or that haze,

When you jeer, a tear falls from my eye

When you mock, the grace of God in shock

I shake at your rag, tag rally, 

Laughing down the alley

Always on the razz, 

But which is the better way?

My quiet, way, of restraint

Or to let loose every day

In bitterness or not to rib, 

To ridicule, tease, it's mean

But what if you don't fit in

To society's mould

Then how the world unfolds

In caricature, of prophets

lampoon the man in the moon

parody, and get carted away

For being a bit mad,  a little loon

satirize as a Satyr , never satisfied as a martyr

Has to always go that one step farther

To prove your point

And have the last laugh

Story

 There should be some kind of story

There's history

There should be herstory

and then mystory

And yourstory

And we combine them all to tell a story

And remember that it's only a story

That it's all just a story

And that it doesn't matter ultimately

Or that it matters deeply

But we can let it go

Because it's all going

and it's all coming round again

Where does the story end?

It never ends

Because it never started

Or it always ends

Because it's always starting

Again and again

To be retold

Detective Tight Ladder

 I was getting my tools together to go

Window cleaning 

When I noticed a pair of tights in my ladder

How did they get there I thought 

I have no explanation

Had I lent my ladders to John, the cross-dressing, transvestite window cleaner?

No, that was last week, he had given them back, ladderless

Tight-ass the builder also borrowed them

He could have got his tight ass stuck in them

But did he wear tights?

The plot thickened, and so did my porridge as I stirred it and pondered

Pondered and stirred it

Then it hit me, there was that lad the other week, he had borrow it for his

Amatuer dramatic show, they had been building the scenery and erecting 

and painting the backdrop

Aladdin tights, that was it, a cross between the Arabian nights and Billie Eliot

So in the end he had a ladder in his tights, 

And I had his tights in my ladder,

The mystery was solved

Orc world

 Fin estre - end of the world

Fenetre  - Window

Orc estra = world of orcs

An Orchestra of Orcs

A Romance for Orcs in three movements

High and dry

 I really feel like I'm in a living tomb

Encased

Self-sealed, hermetically

Like a hermit

Waiting for what?

High tide?

For the river to rise and bring me new life

Just on the shore line

Lapping at life

Dipping my toes in

Wading in the shallows

Afraid to venture into the deep

To swim, push out and explore

Up here I'm high and dry 

Strung out on a washing line

Caught in a fishing net

In my own tackle

My own hooks and bait

I've caught myself

And got tangled up

I need to cut loose

Break free and just swim

Escape

There is nothing for me in these waters

No life or hope of interesting work

Maybe Bristol, if it's doesn't drive me berserk