Sing oh Lord

 

Sing oh Lord to the moon and the sky

To the land of the Blind

Where the pity birds fly

And bees buzz merry like the fruits and the flies

In the land where the pity birds fly

Sing oh Lord to the ones who have many

And the ones who are lost

But have not crossed on the ferry

Sing oh Lord to the Queen of the sky

To the Land where the pity birds fly

Hear their song, like a balm on the cherry

Like a sweet salve to the unchained mind

Hear oh lord how they sing you a tune

In the land where the pity birds festoon

Hear oh lord how their hearts are not heavy

With the price of their lives or the hanging moon

Hear oh Lord just what they may stir

In the land where the pity birds flew

Dirty Street

 Take me to the mountain

Take me apart

Like the rock may I never break

My heart

Take me to the mountain

Sweeping

Up on dirty street can be a 

Hard place to beat

Meeting crowds and passing feet

All walking down Dirty Street

I wish that I 

Didn't live here

Wish I didn't have this job

This town is getting me down

To the point where I nearly sob

On Dirty Street

In rainy town

Where the pigeons keep

Flyin around

And the seagulls beak speaks

A harsh sound

On Dirty Street in Shepton Town

I don't know if I'll ever get clear

It's gonna take a lot of running

To get out of here

Because the cops pull you over and 

Look at you queer

On Dirty Street

You've got something to fear

On Dirty Street

I'm cleaning up my act

I'm gonna get myself together

And file all my facts

And put all my ducks

Out in a nice neat row

On Dirty Street

With the bright rainbow

Paul St Community Hall

 The Paul Street community hall

There he goes riding 

Down from Bristol town

Across the Mendip hills

John Wesley

Riding like a fire fly

Alive with zeal and skill

Burning, burning passion

Driven convicted will

Build up all my churches

Bring the men to church

Lead the congregation

Through the slump and lurch

Out of heavy industry

Out with coal and oil

Give them some salvation

Which is worthy of their toil

Lift their spirits in the hall

Of the Methodist

Reciting in the circle

Hear the cheers go round

Shepton Mallet Prison

 Prison is a prisoner now of the town

It has been snared caught out by time

Kept preserved like a jar for its spirit

Of suffering, for tourists macabre sense

Of right and wrong, mistrusting themselves

Tempting themselves

To touch a darkness, they are afraid, yet thrilled by

Psychodramas played out

Within four walls

But what happened to them?

The ghosts, sure some died there

Were executed

For others it was their home

They did their time moved on

They are outside now

Trusting in the saving power of justice

And the reforming power of incarceration

The negation, the absence of life

Where liberty is a privilege not a right

Where is the prison? The town, the society

In which they do not fit

Are they locked up to keep them away,

Or to keep us away from them?

What is a wall, but an osmotic barrier

Through which they can still see

yet keep the time more preciously

Every hour can seem like a day

To try to make it work, make time pay

Learn a skill, learn to read or write

Learn the value of life

It is a school, in some way the hardest lesson

Was it a blessing?

Was it a fate worse than death?

A social death surely

Village fete

 You see them at the village fete

So long so long

and old gestate

The blooming maggots of the apple

The grooming faggots in the chapel

The dial up a cele-braty singer

The bells of the church tower ringers

Tiling the bats and cats from hell

Upon the cob webbed windows

Of lives Turned pell-mell

And yellow roll the olives

In the lady's cocktail

As she shakes her maracas

at the sailors who set sail

And cast away the wigs

of the bald and riddled with disease

And try to pull out their thumb

From the plumb of youth with ease

But the dam is always bursting

And the priest is on his knees

And the canal dogs are thirsting

For another lonely tramp to seize

I came and saw the village that seemed

To me such rot

Of all we had before

Of all that once was hot

But now

Cold meat and mutton

Are served upon the plate

And only rabbits made of cotton

Can lift a smile of late

I seem to see the sky fall down

I seem to see the sunset frown

But whether blue or whether brown

I cannot tell, or it is all too late

Anglo traders

 Anglo traders, were they Saxons

Or Viking invaders

Crusaders, or raiders of the loot

This block is sailing out the boot

Car lot, parking lot

Lancelot

Sling shot

David and Goliath dream

Fire starters in the stream

Anglo traders

Whaling cream

Brill it over the oily sheen

Ready with deals

Of the Windows clean,

Smart panel nailers

Hobs and washing machines

Stoves, loaves and everything between

This Harrods of Shepton

Suffers no gleam

It is not lacking in lustre

Nor lusting for a duster

Hustling for a hustler

Busy hustle bustle muscling in

It is a statement surely

Industrial pride

Giant survivor

Of a world left behind

No these Anglo traders will not abide

They may vote for trump

But not for cyanide 

Windows beautiful

Light fantastic

Lager lager

Morris cocks and Clark

Haskins

Giant halls and mirrors

Status of the winners

I wish for a dream

Of Anglo, angles

And English Angels

And heroes of the barrel heart

They had a lot of bottle 

To start

And I have lost more

Than I have gained

As have these angel traders

In their  parade where they reigned

Concrete dreams

Come on raise this building

Like a Moses foundation

Pillars of Salt

And pillars of rock

The three little pigs in a housing shock

Negative equity of Goldilocks

Rising inflation forced onto bears

Some of them built Shepton Mallet

The town

Sheep rustlers, shearers, 

Property of the crown

Strode was there with flowing hair

Looking down

Upon the poor who flocked to her door

Including the Ugly duckling

Black swan, white swan not seen anymore

Only on the pub signs swinging above the door

Periwinkle, weasel, wren and Robin

In the twisting clematis hob-gobble

Hoblin, goblin, shaven head

What dreams we have, when we are dead

Dying, trying to be new

Shepton Mallet, pallet crew

Shifting cider

Shifting saw

Bed pan, dustpan, bread pan more

Whistle down the truckers road

Hard granite town

Prince from a toad

Someone dreamt of a cinema

Another of a theatre

Built an enormous house

That turned into a monster

Some say its hideous, oh what an eye-sore

What do we need a fairy tale

We have Ugly post modernism to abhor

I'm not sure

It is a ball and chain

Tying the town down

It is almost a shame, almost a game

A mirror of the Church somehow

Except a warped being bent and contorted

Not given full form

Like a nineteen eighties computer game

Grasping at perfection

In replication, Ironic in it's supplication to

perfection, acknowledging limitation

Yet that was cool back then

Now it is a record of a time before

It is like a tetras castle fallen out of the sky

Landed like a giant parcel, some knowledge of 

an American Apple pie

But incoherent and intransigent,

And in, in , in itself  out of place

In congruent

But let's not worry ourselves

It was somebody else's concrete dream

And we no longer see the seams

It has been sewn into the fabric of life

Now it is a gym, it has turned into

It's own image of itself at last

A modern church - a temple to the body

The material wealth

Of protein and carbohydrate

Packed inside, prayed to 

Heated up baked in the crucible

Of exercise and self-belief

The Great I, the great I am

As we climb mount Ego

On the steps

As we let off steam

As we lose sweat by the buckets

On the exercise bike

Perhaps we lose our selves

We forget the boredom of days

That put on the fat

We negate with positive prayer, the mantra, I will get there

One step at a time

Like a stair way to heaven

Built of tetras bricks

That have fallen down for our sake

To climb, to work out

Rearrange angles, remake

So perhaps this ex theatre really is our modern church

as close as we can make it

Though I am yet to see John the Baptist

Lift a Bar bell in there

Although you never can tell of course

Once upon a time in Shepton Mallet

 Swooning in the afternoon

Following flies with my eyes

Hearing, clearing

The Foreign words

Hollow

She is standing there 

Someone fragile

Yet strong

Every woman

Everywhere a vase

And I am the eye of Babylon

Piercing in the quickness of a care

Piercing in the shallows of the stream

Woken broken with a care, from a shallow dream

Lapping in the inch high water of life

It flows just about, just married wife

Just divorced, just about on speaking terms

Just

And cutting the kite string it floats up

Into the stratosphere and I no longer

Think I know my own face

I have forgotten it

And so will you one day

Cinderella works in the barbers

Sweeping up the hair

The Verger mutters to himself

As he spreads the butter knife

The collared dove is cooing

The Polish sit on gravestones

Their Labradors open doors

To the afterlife

The Queen of Sheba is up there

She used to be a harlot you know

The night comes in

Her clothes come off

And the world moves on with its show

Cleopatra works in Ladbrokes the gamblers

She's taking bets on the horses

Raising the stakes on a possible invasion

While Rapunzel is in the hairdressers

She's arguing with Cinderella

Buggs Bunny walks in looking for something funny

But they use the stick and not the carrot on him

The Dardanelles are the good fellas

Every town needs its gangsters

Here they are supplying drugs to minors

Here's Peter Pan stoned out of his mind

On the park bench, With Tinkerbelle

Sprawled in a Corner

Wendy saw them, then ran to the barbers

To tell them the Church was on fire

They rang hell's bells, the fire brigade

And came hurtling down the street on their engines

Their ladders were reaching up to the tower

Where Rapunzel was waiting

Prince Charming he came shouting

Ranting while running down stairs

What's all this I hear about farmers

And what's that I heard about bears?

Well the three bears have moved 

Into the neighbourhood

And now Goldilocks goes to school in the wood

She tried to stay white, for they said they don't bite

But she ended up bitten quite good

Now Red Riding Hood is a mummy

And she works in the seven eleven

She's got to make sales targets this month

Or her little dwarves will have empty tummies

Oh yes she's relying on benefits

I mean her husband is an ex miner,

He mined all the coal, now it's snow white as his soul

And Snow White's has turned rather black

You see the wolf with baleful eyes

Something's eating him up deep inside

As he marauds down the street

Looking for meat, or just looking

For the life he was owed

Don't worry young man,

Oh young rabbit

For you're living in Shepton Mallet

It was tinsel town once

But now the time is upon us

And the clocks face has turned away from the sun

Even the sun dials are broken

And astronomy is all out of whack

I'd like a time machine, visit a time so green

When fairy tales didn't end up so black

Lost for words, they're burning the books

Salisbury plain in the rain

And the foreign hoards

The hair dresser in a Salon

One of Seventeen

They were different there

They told her she talked too fast

She needed to slow down

I asked her if she knew any blacksmiths

No

There weren't so many horses in Salisbury I concluded

The conversation 

Began to feel awkward

Though perhaps that was started when I tried to pay

With a fire damaged book

I mean barren down

That's where I found it

And I didn't want to go

in there empty handed

She was sweeping up human hair

and I was dropping charred words

And paper on her floor

From Collins 500 word search puzzles

I like the idea that the word search survived the fire

So that when we are lost for words

At all the devastation in life

We can keep searching for them

And eventually we might solve the puzzle

I hobbled back into the rain on my crutches

and got the twelve pounds out the bank

To pay the nice hair dresser lady

She told me the bull dog statue was for the Bath and West

The fire, I didn't see it

Only the black singed earth

The smouldering and then the smell of sulphur

Addictive somehow

Barren Down

A Barrow

The dead may now be cremated as well as buried

And you can see the Glastonbury Tor

It is torn from Autumn brown

They're burning books in Shepton Mallet

The fosse way

They are turning the pages

of history black

They're making a stink

Painting it pink

And the Goblins are wanting it back

The green fingers 

Of book worms

The witches are running in turns

Hailing the flax

Railing the haystacks

Smoking like chimneys in packs

They are burning the books

In Shepton Mallet

But don't tell them

They can't read them

Their libraries closed

And the Filo fax

Is out of order in poets corner

And I'm having one of my attacks

Roman Roads 

All along the spine of hills

Open and close like chapters

Read in geological time

Strata of line and verse of rock

The meter and rhyme

of ticking geo clocks

But the stage coaches rolled on it

Reading between the lines

The wrong side of the tracks

Came from the Frome side

All roads lead there perhaps

And maybe they paid in kind

In book bind, double blind

On the summit of knowledge

When you know it all

You find out you know nothing

So Burn your books by the pallet

Burn them in Shepton Mallet

Burn them tooth and nail

I'll go over with a fine tooth comb

To find these lost words

In the ashes of Canard's Grave

Voices

 Thanks 

give me True, true and the honey badgers

of destiny and the child of the sun

And the Empire of choices

Give me silence

Without voices,

But I did not ask for that

It just came

I am the town crier, big of heart

And girth hear me tell

My well trod tale

Down to the pitiless earth

I'll leave a few hair pins

Bends and turns

And twist like myrtle bushes

The thorn in the briar couldn't

Climb much higher

Than my story of which I birth

In corridors of power

Nameless towers

Where Hebrew nuns did shine

The walls they cower 

In shadows shower their lines

I wrote down on their spindly veins

Which mortal mortar could complain

And read the runes and bled the lanes

That brought me there to you

They follow fleeting folly

Like fellows bellows and swallows

Breathing pigeons

In harmonica halls

And crumbling churches and catapulting rules

Like books from school by be-brollied kids

As the rain fell down

It fell in spatters that greyed the town

Left black the tarmac pavements

And shined the dustbin lids

But the Crayfish gang came round

On their motorbike steer pikes

whaling it up and down

The Saint Peter and Paul street

Fly away said I, fly, away

Peter and Paul,

Where have they gone my patron saints

Come back Peter,

Come back Paul

Give us some guidance,

Paint thinner Saint sinner

They stole it

They stealed it, and pocketed it

And pilloried and picked it

Out my throat

Oh we're all in the same boat you say

This is democracy we all have a voice

Not me, taken, not my choice

But surely shocking though it is

To fight with kids over a crisp packet floating in the

Air, 

Who has it now? Crumbling tin

Sheep, and shops.

That's rat-ta tat-tat Mallet,

Chase that rat out-ta town

With a hammer swinging like

John the Baptist

At all the holy unholy ones

Who never live up

To what I have my mind

It takes ten years to learn to sing

To play anything creative

For the neurons to realign magnetically

I suppose

Like pigeon pose, like lay lines, 

We follow

Down a rabbit hole or wishing well

Playing get well, with speed well

And Cabbage whites in circles

Always the dance of Madam Butterfly

The dance of white butterflies

Except they took it to Mells

The Krayfish gang

On the night of the New Moon

And I was wearing

The Pajamas of peace

And wonders will never cease

When you wear the pajamas of peace

And even the police, will stop and decease

and mop up their mullets in Shepton Mallet

And serve their skullet hair cuts

And their cutlets in skillets, and perfect palettes of cheese

And please what's the matter officer?

What's the platter, pita patta of tiny breaded knees

And pudding, and price cut butter

And cease Electricity and gas

Wonders will never cease

When I wear my pajamas of peace

But they still took it,

My voice, It was locked away by the bad boys in chains

In voiceless town of Mells

They had no voice, I had no choice

Now they have mine

The Krayfish boys

You better watch out the Krayfish brothers

Out to revenge their Cuttle-fish mother

Who was picked and pecked by chickens and parrots

Who left her marooned in the Town of carrots

And mocked her voice

And repeated it still like a gravelly husk

That bent at her will

Parrot fashion, pigeon livin'

Slim pickin's in the forest of wills

So she lost it, they kept her in a cage

The family and every day they pecked her bones

And sharpened their own bills on her

So they could speak

But all they did was mimic what they heard

Parrot, fashion, parrot fashion, what a bird

But what a fish they say, could give up her day

And life at sea to be kept like a voiceless canary

In a cage and never to sing

So they stole mine and gave it to her

Now she's singing in Mells

Where the witches will stir the cauldron of Kells

And books of demure

And the looks and the smells of opening doors

To foreign lands where they don't hurt anymore

And are happy

Oh happiness now there is the cure

Or is it yet another illusion

Brought on by the Parrot delusion of copying

All what others would have you be

Find your voice sir

Find it buried under the sea

The river runs from here

Under the road and across the Frithfield

And down beneath  the prison walls

Just where the Krayfish gang used to be

Held tight like posterity Their 

posteriors pushed up against walls,

Somewhere beneath the river runs deep

And their voices call

All the imprisoned voices carried away

Down the wells

back to the heart of the Mendips

Back down

The slippery rocks of Croscombe

Joining the Sheppey at Bowie

Down the Cathedral at Wells

And it joins the Bishops Palace moat

And these sinners voices

Find absolution in their daily ablutions

In the rivers and Wells

And then they spring up again

Free you see to be drunk deep

By a citizen and spoken

For the river will carry all our voices away one day

From the children playing in the park

To the dogs' bark

From the ducks' quacks

To the squawk of the lesser black-backed gulls

And the shop assistant girls in Martin McColls

And the tills which ring out in shrill thrill

Of all the useless money they eat

And all the football louts in pubs

And rubber dub dub three men in a tub at Mells

All their voices are going down the plug hole

Even the witch of Wookey hole

But hey will be held lock and key, no not stole

Kept safe in the memory of water, whole

As one

On their way out to the sea, the Bristol Channel

Where they will be churned and turned

And broiled and mixed with the Welsh voices 

Of the Valleys and hills

The Brummie accents and yam yams of the black country

The dark Satanic Mills

And all the Irish voices floating in on the Irish sea

Swept around from Anglesey

And even the Scots

Who sail down the coast

And greedily spy the mainland

No voice is ever truly lost

It is drunk down again as rain

After the sea has sung it out in loss and pain

And in happiness has breathed it up to heaven

Where clouds are voice spirits come again

To reform and coalesce in a conference of words

And meanings and things spoken, or remembered

Of jokes told or cut short

Or lovers' whisperings

And they fall as rain in droplets on the land to be soaked up

To be felt on felt topped or broad brimmed hats

To be licked off the cheeks by thirsty tongues

To be drunk down deep, when the new day comes

And the mother turns on the taps

boils the kettle makes a cup of tea

And says to her child, how did you sleep?

Scottish memories

 You left me just where I picked you up

A little tired

After the music had  stopped

And the merry-go-round took us

back to the start

Oh we had mountains to climb 

in the hills of our hearts

There were valleys of consequence

And hidden snow drifts of guilt

Holes to fall through

The frozen surface

On lakes of indifference

But ferries of respect

And reunification bridges

Where we dropped sticks in for a bet

And love lockets

And hearts on chains

And notes in pockets

Written on wild west steam trains

And seas so cold they froze our brains

Oh tell me what love is and is

This the same

I remember seaweed on shores

And little animals that slither

And crawling on all fours

And winds that made me shiver

And camping in the pinewood

Next to the Inn

And you being so afraid

Of the Wild winds din

And how we hunkered down in silence

And protected we slept

In each others arms

Like violence

In the arms and the neck

That hold tight yet don't let go the bow

Don't let the arrows fly yet

I have more to give

My heart wants to live

Before the final vet

I need you

But I don't need it

I want us

Without the fuss

I miss your tender kiss

And the way we fell in bliss

But the silence between us spoke volumes of trust

And the sea shore swelled and hushed

And I breathed

And knew you were there

Once upon in Scotland 2015

 

The land of the rising sun

 Her eyes are closing

As mine are just opening

And in hers all the rivers have shone

In mine they are bleeding into the ocean

Out to the land of the rising sun

Will we ever be together

Forever chasing that horizon down

Here it is ever a setting sun

There they are always getting things done

Well we're chasing forever like a ship

That's untethered and sails

To the land of the rising sun

I hope I'll meet her maybe tomorrow

Maybe when Gods will is done

Then our roads will ever, be together

In the land of the rising sun

A Father's Day walk

Flocking crows down near Northload farm
Look and see a house on a hump
Tractors unload in yard or road
Like a yarn on a story spool
Hammers thump, thump
Starlings stall in midair
And fall, turn and bump
As flies buzz, buzz
Earwigs lug their prey
back to the rotten stump

Otter's little travel bristles
Through divided clump
The grass festooned
In the month of June
With seeds ready to jump

The old bridge tumbles into ruins
As days now pass us by
But the rhyne is green
With days unseen
No this is no day to die

Little green finch play on
limbs of skeletal Elm
And songs are sung by
Birds so long as sailors
Hang on to the helm

Clover fields are purple meals
For bees that suck at their flowers
And tea leaf docks
That spoil in cream shocks
Of clover patch powers

And the house rises up
On the high ground
The Doomsday Book once wrote
As safe on the island from
Avaricious eyes and only
Reached by boat

Now the house in ruins
Where periwinkles blossom
Brambles curl the Elder's bosom
Kingfishers cast their regal eyes
Down the stream
Of the sleeper bridge's dream
And the voices gurgle and gargle
Beneath, while
Above the butterflies float

The wool of sheep is cast about
Is strewn about the pen
Rusted troughs lie
Like a milk maids cry
Of the lambs many
begotten
Begotten, begotten
But not forgotten
This ruin on sacred Doomsday land
Saved by King William's hand
This ancient house still stands
Like a relic of old England

Elders have reclaimed most of it
Its roof collapsed long ago
The limestone bricks and mortar
Make up its end walls
Just a shell on this sea wrecked land
Just a cockle on the shore
Whispering to the wind
A home for nettles and starfish
And a collection of tumbleweed wool

Some how it is fitting
Somehow the fish just bite,
The green grass grows
Where cuckoos call, and the crows
black as night stare
As the clouds roll in so tight

Now the sea gulls cut fast
Like a scythe, the wind around
This summer island
And we say goodbye
To the feather and the sky
That rolls like a blue robin egg
Around them

Australian Reflections

Notes from a train

In the Out,

The river bed stout

Dry and dry again

Never fall the rains

On the potbellied plain

Of the crumbling green of tufted grasses

The crinkling leaves of trees in copses

The sapphire blue of the infinite sky

Against the dark green of the mountains

The peppered fields peopled by sheep

That peep from a green sea like fish out the deep

And forests, oh forests of spectacular stun

That reach to keep the splendid sun

And jack in the Marsh, rabbit on the hop

The kangaroo is filibustered in the election of the sun

Wallabies hid in the wheat

Spray of yellow rape at his feet

In the afternoon light

That is a delight

Upon the mottled plain

The mountainous lumps

Are stony stumps

Which lie in timeless stages for ages not in vain

The stirring rills which catch and spill

In pearly, swirly swills

Where swallows swoon

And boys fish with a loom

From their mother’s knitting room