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

Danube Girl

 Danube girl, on the banks of a brand new world

Making waves with your hand shoe twirl

In the sand by the river

Danube girl, I want to swim with you in the curls

Of the water as you dive for pearls, on the bed of the river

Can you hear me, singing through the sea

Did you hear the voices of a Europe that was free

Danube girl, some where upstream, 

Where they make your dreams

Come true like in magazines

Trying find a new world

Training day

Train rumbles on
With the inevitable song
Of the bumble bee hum
On the iron drums
That roll like bread pins
Upon the flat iron railings
They flatten as they go on
Their iron rumblings

And I see without despair
The green river running there
Like a serpent as a spare
Jade sea snake dragon
Like an ornament upon somebody's shelf
Where dynasties once dwelt
But now they are remembered
In old people's retirement homes

Identity

 It is a bit of a come down

But I'd come to expect this of life

In its lifeless distress,

The clock ticks on but I'm not bored

I've just become like the stone on the sword

Waiting like a weight

Heavy as a date gone wrong

But this is meant to be my song

I was a someone, once

But that was all pretence

And I should not be afraid

To throw off my disguise

My make up had started to flake

And there was a small dark look in my eyes

And a sense of the fake

The imposter crept into my skin

I had to drop all the lies

So that was when then

I lost everything like Trump

I must admit defeat

Perhaps it does take more courage say

I didn't win

And return tail between my legs back home

To England

Because I never wanted this ego

This ID that was created by circumstance

Inflated opinion of one

Who is a native English man in a foreign clime

But really I'm

nothing special, just one who had a chance

And took it.

But back in England I am nothing

To speak about

I will need about a year of hard graft

To turn things around

And get back on my feet financially

And now there is a slim window of opportunity

I may be able to grasp

If only I can let go of Hungary and my ID

Maglodi ut

 I'm in the land where they walk down straight

The dogs are the gods behind the garden gate

And I'm in a condo with a bottle full of hate

The dogs in the farm yard

They double up late

Calling us angels, calling

Pigeons on the lamposts

Carex in the garden

Tumble down Hungarian

buildings that stand on

Their last legs

Well I went to walk where

the dead don't talk

And the living all are sighing

And the breeze like chalk

Cut in circles and forks

Around the ones who were crying

They said you're a marked man

We have you in our sights

I said "I am what I am, now don't

forget the plan-

I won't go down without a fight"

But then the tombstones baulked

Under their ivy leaf storks

At all their words that were dying

It's a living language, a honey tongue

And the bears are off fighting with the dragons

In the grit on the dirt road lying

with butterfly wings and dead acacia blossoms

 

I see the Roma women calling to their husbands

Convicts inside the prison

And they call back darling what I lack

Is the eyes for you to be seeing

"Your children are here, come on shout to your daddy

Don't you know that he is your Father

And you are his sons

Though many horizons

Have set while he's been in prison

The children are well, another says with a yell

We love you the mother prompts the little boy 

To holla'

He he cries back, I love ya, though the lack

Of seeing is like I'm dying

In this living hell, where everyday gels into

The next and the next one

And it's all just a rap

I've been caught in the trap

Of being a young gypsy man caught in the system

It's the same as well for those who ring the bell

The prison yard bell it is chiming

And their crawling along the floors

Their rapping at the doors

And those prison walls they are climbing

But the bell still tolls for one and all

The bells of freedom are a ringing

One day the siren calls, will not herald what befalls

Every young gypsy man in the system 

They come out again, the family, this time

Another young boy is with them, he is getting

bored and restless sitting on the grass

Scuffing his feet in the gravel

Sending up a shower of angry stones

To heaven

On my way back after they are gone

I see they have scrawled with pink and blue chalk

We love you Apa (father) on the side walk

While I hardly dare look or listen, but I must

To the sounds the men make in the prison

As the daylight dims on a hot Sunday evening

And they face another night in the cell

Without his family, whose graffiti on the pavement

Is the inverse of his own howling sentiments

To the government

This is justice, this is the consequence

For the criminal all life is denied

Outside visiting times, if there are any,

And the high prison wall that keeps him

Carparks in Angel land

They're putting up carparks in Angel Land
Where angels once walked
Now men are greasing their hands
With the dirty money
And the golden bands
That they pass around now in Angel Land

They are rolling their dozers down the main roads
They are swinging their cranes and carrying their loads
Where angels once walked softly, they now look on in dread
For Angel Land is a place they now fear to tread

They're raising their structures, erecting their towers
Blocks of offices for foreign powers
They are building and bumping and turning their heads
In Angel Land where angels now fear to tread

Gone is the gentleness of thought or action
They are using their heads in cold calculation
Compacting the soil, with blood, sweat and tears
Ignoring their consciences or the angels' fears

They're putting up carparks in Angel land
And paving the paradise God's made with his hands
They're doing it today, it'll be gone by tomorrow
When the only angels in the land will be walking in sorrow

Letter in a bottle

By the time you get this

The hills will have boiled

The shrugging chimneys

Will have spouted forth smokes

The dignity of trees will have reminded you of forbearance

And given shape to your patience

In the fulfilment of time

As you wait out the winter

In the quarries of sadness

The sad stones are crushed

Into mountains of lime

As the rubble lakes lie

In the seas of your eyes

Where blood tears have fallen

From the railway line

These tracks are so forlorn

As iron whiskers worn

By cats

And children who play in the ruins

On the brown broken down platforms

Of the railway line

The picture of sadness of Hungary are not the trees

Or the dereliction of the buildings

These are just superficial responses

To an underlying cause,

What future hopes are there

for any of them?

What future for any of us?

Spring time in the smoke

All the sexless numbskulls are trying to trip me up
In the forests of the evening and at the hour of the dusk
The candles they are leaning through the shadows of the tusk
And swallows tell their meaning in the narrows of the musk
Between the roof tops and the ceiling
Where they are all layed up
I think therefore I migrate,
I'm an immigrant of the brain
There are only seasons in the neural networks of the south
And the river flows with the blood of change
From its source right to its mouth
So silent, cold and unchanged
beneath the Danube rolls untouched

Can you clear a heart hole
Let the gold flow in its space
But no its full of pennies
And your heart strings are tied in knots
Nothing plays on the harp, the lute
The dulcet tones are strangely strained
And its all on waiting for the winter throes
Out in the fields of rain

The river with its tongue

The river with its tongue so cold

Speaks in slow vowels rolled

The bridge with its mouth bowed

Swallows all that it is told

And the bank side buildings' walls

Listen with ears numbed to stone

Strange gases emit and drift

Along the surface water sunlit

And race at faster speeds yet

Than the river boat captains can bet

Like a substance unknown to man

This life force moves with a mysterious plan

When asked who will understand

It answers only that women can

Yet lions guard the gates of freedom

For some things of stone may still have reason

And ideals of ancestors long dead bones

Resonate with the striding feet of tourist season

roots

Roots of this city

This is the tree

The plants are the people

They settle they join 

Spread their fingers to the water

Feel the river

Some are born here by

Rights to die

Some have lived

Such separate lives

But their roots are set down

Like stones writ in blood

Deep in the heart of the ground

Where they tread

While acacia trees tower

Like the panel buildings above

And bees beside garden fences

Drone and buzz

My heart is in the river

The peace keeper of love

It sings all the sweeter 

For chestnut leaves above

That drop brown to the nutty ground

And crinkle when crushed

Like foot on a crown

Mars Day

Out  here on Mars
It's hard to make a living
All the culture Vultures
Are busy with their killing

Out here on Mars
They talk backwards too
In fact I told them I liked animals
And they locked my soul in a zoo

Its hot though and I like it
Strange it is to say
Like autumn hasn't touched us
We're sliding down the Milkyway

And I work with a lot of Martians
They are always building bricks and bombs
They say they're building an army
To take over Earth
Well its seems barmy
Hardly worth it
To me

You know the parade is on
The Carnival is tuning up
We have to March this way til Christmas
In case the Russians turn up
And if they do
We'll take their flag
And burn it up

It's hard you know, the burning
The atmosphere's so thin
They really don't get the joke at all
Its lucky they're all thick skinned

I keep my bell jar helmet on
All the Martian day long
I can't understand
What they say to me
The wires got crossed
Its all wrong

Trolley Number 70

Made to measure slick boys
Ready for the construction yard
Cigarette candle ladies
Sitting on their waxwork chairs

Young bucks and old fucks
Riding on the same bus
Waiting in white
Bearded head blue suit
Taxis drive in yellow pursuit

Dread locked lover
Leather jacketed girl from
A magazine cover

Spear-headed pinstriped business men
Children, mothers wailing with green prams
Faces of beauty, blonde haired cuties
Glasses they wear, sit like birds in their hair
On the red trolley
Number 70

Cutting Glass

All along the paths of stone
That bruise and hurt our feet
There are none who would throw us a bone
Among those we meet

So many so the wild dog howls
Up from the depths of hell's bowels
Its been rejects of them that prowls
All along the jetty

Sometimes out on the lake at night
The wild wolves roam,
Their homes out of sight
All alone their eyes are bright
Out on the lake tonight

Sometimes out in the deepest forest
Tigers roar, warthogs forage
But it is all in jest
Of every last homage
To Budapest
Or the road once promised

Sometimes in the dreaming spires
I catch a glimpse of burning fires
Spiraling up into the sky
Like tears streaming down from the Sun's eye

Sometimes I feel the hilt dig in my side
Sometimes it is a thorn
Sometimes a spike, mostly
It is the sword thrust from love
That makes me cry

Why do you always move the stairs
From the steeple?
Why always move the chairs
For all the musical people?
Why when nobody cares
Do the wolves show their wares
And sell their teeth?

Why in the crooked house
Where snow white sleeps
Does the wicked witch creep
and always preach?
About how trolls should not be trusted
And how Goldilocks is crossing
Over another bridge
Then she tires of her stroll
And reaches for the porridge in the fridge

And why is puss in boots stuck in
The smartest suits when you
Feel he is a Spanish kitty
Meant for ally-cat pursuits

There can be no let up for
The open can of worms
That Cinderella is left to hold
After the cigarette factory burns

She should have worked in a glass works
And held onto a zoo of animals
Instead she lent towards the prince
Who was consumed with financial windfalls
And sucked into Pumpkin growing
On the slopes of Kilimanjaro

Knock on

So things went from bad to worse
You might say they snow balled
I was rushing for a train
It was a quarter to six on a Tuesday
After a little rain
The steps down to the underpass
Were damp in that new feeling way
And busy commuters were emerging
and swarming up the stairs the other way

As I approached the entrance
A woman stepped in my way
She was old and frail, so I left her
On her way, thinking I may
Side step her, I maneouvered in that direction
My momentum carrying me like a truck
Just out beyond the filling station
I was fast but not fast enough
For a not so young buck
Had stood in my way
And began his encumbered traverse
Down that royal highway of stairs
One might say, he considered himself king
Of it for that day, a king stuck not in forward, but reverse

Now I must say
Before I go any further
That I consider myself fair
In most circumstances demanding faith
And patience in another's ability
To climb or descend, I take a deep breath
And breathe deep, an internal sigh
Feeling in the next life I maybe rewarded
For such virtuous self-sacrifice
However I had already been this paragon
Of uncommon common sense
Probably at least twice before that day
One on my way up from Lehel (or the Hell)
To translate
Another I can't remember now
And this third on the way down at Corvin Negyed (the Crow)
And each time, I stepped in tow behind
I trudged like one of the lost souls
In the inferno
But in this instance- seeing as I was in a rush for paradise -the pub
(Which I actually call an English lesson)
I thought I might skip the purgatory
Of existence
That is the downward resistance to flow
That equals following a very slow fellow

So ladies and gentlemen of the jury
I ask you this
Is it right that I should be condemned
When feeling the need not to extend
My sorrows, I borrowed a leaf from the rabbit
and hopped the queue?
I leap-frogged -metaphorically speaking
Went around my obstacle to freedom
Like any sensible person would
My only mistake was this
I brushed him as I passed
I cannot believe it even constituted a nudge
Did he budge - no way
But he reacted like he was hurt by my affray
Like some wounded animal he began to howl
Like some howling banshee down to hell's bowel

I like the good Christian, I did not wish to engage
You might say I fled, but I did not fight that day
One has a sense sometimes of the murderous intention of folk
I have no doubt that he was capable of all kinds
Of horrible things if he had me in his yoke
But witnessing before in the eighth district a fight
Of a maddened man getting out of his car to yell
In the face of a passer by
I had sensed this feeling of his injustice, his injured sense of pride
That is really his general nervousness encumbered
By an instinctual feeling to fight
Unfortunately my own instinct did not show up in a similar light
And I chose the way of survival - I chose the path of flight

However when two opposing instincts do not agree on their way
What follows is a pursuit down through a subway
And if you can imagine I am not that young myself
Though not that old either nor lacking in legs
To put some distance between me and this red faced elf
I could tell he was behind me, because of all the yelling
and I surely received some quizzical looks
From astonished commuters passing
But that is the trouble with rush hour
As I immediately found
That I came up to a long queue of people waiting to enter the underground

By the time I had entered the escalator
I could still hear my foe
Shouting Blue murder - hey you, hey you
Though in Hungarian I suppose
What did he expect that I would turn and apologize?
By the time I did that he would have hit me
Or spat more insults into my eyes

There are times when I would have stood and fought
Or at least calmly tried to put my position and what I thought
But let's face it I do not speak Hungarian
And I was not about to repeat an encounter
With an enraged and nervous barbarian

Now I reached the platform
And panicked I had no where to go
The train had left in the direction I needed
And kept coming did my foe
My only chance therefore lay in boarding another train
One in the opposite direction
And my thoughts were not in vain

So in the calmest manner possible
So as not to stick out in the crowd
I briskly walked through onlookers
Hoping my pursuer too slow
And that I would lose him somehow
It even entered my brain
To embark a few carriages down
For the last thing I wanted
Was to be trapped in a car with a mad cow

The upshot was I got off at Kliniak
Shaken and somewhat stirred
But unlike James Bond I had no Martini
And the comparison is quite absurd
Next I re-boarded a different train
Travelling in the right direction
So as to make sure I was not followed
By a mad Turk intent on his own correction

Later in the lesson I did have a drink
And it was not that it tasted bitter
But that it gave me time to think
Should I have had more courage and at least socked my foe?
He was an older man and I do not think that was the way to go
Was it my fault? I confess yes
I should have behaved with more decorum
And less rashness
But alas I was rushing
And that is the scourge of the modern age
And it shows how even an English man
can in a foreign country, behave as a knave

Night Bus

Night bus, night bus coming down the road

Coming like a troubled truss, for our woes to unload

Night bus in the water, in the river with the toad

Night bus its double trust, all your thoughts its knowed

Night bus on the Danube, down Bartók Béla, crossing near to Blaha Lujza utca

Crossing over the border, crossing lines and crossing hairs

To get her in your sight

Yet you know she!s not the target

Target of the night

Night bus rolling strongly like an unstoppable force

Filling with the people of the party

Flowing out like a river’s course

Filling up like sardines

Filling up like kippers,

Making me sleep your night bus dreams

While I put on my slippers

Getting out in the rain, in the heart filled night

In the mountains of my youth

The moon burns big and bright

In the architecture of desire, the buildings are taking shape

They fall and quake into one another

A new home to make

Night bus brewing merrily,

Like a kettle a boil

Steaming down the wet rainy streets

With the night busman’s toil