Rich man

 30 years

Of trying to go my own way

30 years, 30 years

 And you put a big fence in my way

And it is thirty years away

But it still could have been yesterday

Railroad man Jonny

Steamroller away

Steam roller , heavy roller

The Ash trees sway

The wind blows through the tunnel

And the hours fall away

30 years tomorrow could've been yesterday

Who is the rich man

Falling on the pile

Another Mink lined coat

Another mill-a-mile

Burning up the cotton

treading down the yarn

Only railroad Jonny could do him any harm

Rich man, rich man

Won't you give away some wealth

You know I am a poor man

And it's not good for my health

I'd like to be a rich man

With my hands on the controls

But on the path to the top you must

climb many a greasy pole

Can you blame a rich man

For all the money he stole

If he stands upon the poor man

To see his dollars roll

And will this railroad reach him

Or will his pit black soul

Be as dark as a railway tunnel

Where the trains no longer roll

Building bridges or barriers

 30 years across a divide

Territorial suicide

If you see us let us go

How sweetly grow the snow drops

In the New Year's snow

30 years of treading walkers

Dogs on leashes and deer stalkers

Treading softly never stops

Over the hills of the Snow drops

Where you put your barriers down

Where you lay your claim to this town's

Hopes and dreams, her fields and streams

You cut in belts of Green and Brown

But you who judge and deem, and measure

Across our land it seems at your leisure

Saying this is ours and that is yours

Is one good way to start some wars

And if you should let greed rule your heart

Then throw away your beauty and art

For nothing sacred can be understood

Unless to live in peace in your own neighbourhood

And nothing built shall be bound

Unless by the folly of those around

Weathering the storm

 Can you hear the gushing sound 

Coming down the roads

The water babies on their bellies

With the frogs and toads

Flowing over grey stone walls

Filling up the gardens

We've thrown down all our cement bags

Now the bloody things won't harden

Out we dash with broom and bucket

sweeping back the waters

Then we lose the broom and think

This preparation doesn't cut it

what was it they taught us?

But who knew it would be this bad?

Who knew really what would happen

If the farmers take down trees and plough

Then surely water will start lappin

At your door and at mine although

You may live at the bottom of the valley

Of course we all know where the river will flow

It's just whether the river will sally

But one thing's for sure, we sure lend a hand

To help out others in need

Give them your arms and legs, hold a wheelie bin

Before it floats off down the street

But there's no need to play the blame game is there?

These things are just acts of God

Except surely we can mitigate against them

By not replacing forests with fields of sod?

Perhaps why not create some catchment ponds

That way it can slow down the water's flow

Some flooded fields further up would help bond

And allay the more tragic affects down below

Some kind of agricultural plan must be thought up

To prevent this ever happening again

It was like this ten years ago when the levels were caught up

Because the rhynes wouldn't properly drain

Why hasn't the environmental agency had 

a more stringent program of maintenance

Then we might have a case of Neptune's Staircase

Rather than a torrent, a deluge of complainants 

Let's try and deepen the River Sheppey

Make it deeper and broader

I'm sure the army of James Heappey

Would be more than happy

To carry out the order

Choir of Quiet

Shush, shush go the mothers to the babies

Shush, shush they say and hush them to sleep

Shush, shush go the train wheels on the railways

Shush, shush rumble the sleepers in the deep

Shush, shush go the pistons in the factories

Shush, shush go the Baby sham works

Shush, shush sing the cider in batteries

Shush, shush go the office clerks

Shush, shush goes the town's silence

Gone is the sound of the town's violence

Shush, shush go the copper cables and fibres

Shush, shush goes the telephone exchange

Shush, shush go the flies trapped by spiders

Shush, shush go the tongues sounding strange

Shush, shush go the nuns to their priory

Shush, shush go the shops of the high street

shush, shush go their shuffling feet

Shush, shush go the birds in the briar or tree

Shush, shush go the tides of the shy shifting sea

Shush, shush goes the traffic beneath

Shush, shush say the rocks of the cave

Shush, shush goes the gushing stream

Shush, shush underneath the limestone

Shush, shush where the stalactites dream

"Wake up!" say the road sweepers

"Wake up from your long summer sleep!"

"Wake up!" say the railway workers

Dig on, though the tunnels run deep

Shush, shush go the church towers

Shush, shush go the stained glass windows in pane

Shush, shush go the vases of flowers

Shush, shush goes the church warden in vain

Shush, shush go the leaves in the graveyard

Hush, hush go the mothers to their babes

Shush, shush go the yew trees that stand guard

Over the cradles, sundials and graves 

"Come home!" say the wives to the sailors

"I must go!" cry the sea gulls to the planes

"Come back!" cry the lovers to their loved ones

"I am here!" cry the others back again

 

Art for art's sake?

 When does Art become

art

Is it the intention

When does gentrification become

Standard living

Does an artist move in because of an opening

Or because of an opportunity

To create

When it all is just gaps on a slate

Wipe the slate clean

Erase a high street scene

Fill it in with colours

But the buggers will keep

Burning and vandalizing

So what is going on

Who is expressing a need

Where are the youth

How Are they involved

And who sees a future for themselves

Here?

Shepton Silence

 The drains glimmer like celebrities

In the sodium light

And families watch them on TVs

On some slow Thursday nights

The tree leaves are turning yellow too

And a sickness hit me this week

I stayed in bed

As the world it sped

Past equinox and winter seas

Come along to Shepton

You're sure to suffer some shocks

Come along to Shepton

Where we've all been put in the stocks

They take vegetables

From recycling bins

And hurl them at you in the docks

And they judge you if you're an artist

And they judge you if you are not

Come to Shepton in the summer or 

While the Church bells toll

While the men drink cans on the gravestones

While the youths are playing vandals

And Van Gogh cut his ear off

I told you once why couldn't you tell

That these kind of landscapes may clear off

All other escapes from hell

I lay my cards on the table

Yet The dog ran off with my shelves

I built up reputation yet

I couldn't control all my selves

Don't personify all the animals

The Llamas on the hill are not Gods

Though they look like enlightened beings

Still you must look at the path they have trod

No I come back now to St Paul's Street

He of faith and of fire

Branding the love of a creator

Into the dogs collars of a choir

If I shove the book off the table

If I even try to call up a friend

The telephone exchange holds the cable

And we meet in the middle and end

If I yank a wire

will it hurt

All those vandals with candles

Down wells

If you live in the valley

Do you wish for

A higher home near the elms?

 Do your wings beat like headless geese

Following yet going in circles

The arctic is one I can think of, I guess

But not one I mean ever to go to

Underneath us are copper and fibres

Underneath us, are caves and dells

Beneath us the water is eating

Like worms in rotten apples

The rock is like their candy

In geological time it dissolves

Yet we like miners from the North

Blast holes along the stream bed

Waking from the long sleep

the dragon trapped there by the elves

And we burrow like scientologists

Into the heart of ourselves

But like dwarves our hearts are greedy

For the gold beneath the mountains

Like kings we can't rest in our sleep

Until our coffers overflow like fountains

Intransigence

 The yellow brick road

Yellow in the sodium of street lamps

Yellow orange in the saffron

Of Indian Restaurants

Where the beige curtain twitches with 

The interested interior

Friend or foe

Interloper or explorer

Back from the pub

On a night time's throw

Shepton in the red lights of traffic lights

Glows

Stop it says admire 'no-goes'

And standing still

And stationary waves

Like the stations of the railways

That say

Just stop

Do not pass GO

Unless Go straight to prison

For that is remembrance's rainbow

It's a kind of trump card, wild card

In the deck

When you get caught out for doing

What the heck

And your life just stops

In mid flow

On the railway tracks

Where nobody goes

Except your wife and children

Who follow you there

Then wave up at the prison bars

Or drink down in the square

Where else

What else to escape from this logic

Of intransigent history

That keeps you in its pocket?

But you must reach escape velocity

Eventually

No, anti-matter doesn't fall up

So neither can you despite how black

You may feel you must

reach for the stars

And generate momentum

It is who you are

In this space time continuum

Viaduct

 To the viaduct

Go walking

On the long wet rainy days

With your dog in the forking

Of the long hot summer hays

And Dripping with rememberance

Of a past now left behind

When railways and Steam engines

Crossed the valleys of our minds

And all the strawberries travelled and all the red currants

Too

Like blood and diamonds in parcels

From the mines of South African fruit

And the empty arches standing

As a door stop in our minds

Leaving open the door to the past

And passage way to a time 

before

Though we know it does not last

Ryme and Reason

 Oh the church bells chime

As the tap dancers clap

Foot against pine

In the old methodist hall

And the old piano drops

Pounding notes that fall

Like hammers down a well

Oh the Rhyme and reason of it all

What, where how and why

Of Christian beliefs or

Children who try

To dance in time to the teacher's call

Oh how we try, we do not sigh

The rhyme and reason of it all

Shepton Show

 A is for apple

Just a pure comedy song

Just the way we can grapple for where we go wrong

Live and be merry

Die and get long

Like the shadows in the orchards

When I was young

Cow play of the herd

Instinct, moo movement

Turd ringlet, who ever heard

Of a bull

With a ring in the end of his nose?

Shire horses suffolks

Built like tree trunks and their buttocks

Not even the endless toning in a gym

Could come up to the mark on him

His great grand daddy was an American Stallion

Brought over by the owners

Mustang, no mustang Sally

Drive your rodeo out of town

Clip, clop, tightly prigged

Pony tails of the braids

Like their riders so tight lipped with bit in mouth

And dressage horses,

slim of ankle

Not these tanks,

They have no fur for the clay earth

To clog in

Shoed

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

Buzzed out

I'm in the Buzzard BnB in Bedfordshire

I'm sleeping on the wing

In a feather down mattress

My pillow is of duck down

And my bed fellow a funny fucker

She's a buzzard the same as me

Oh a real Buzzcock cocker

I'm in the Buzzard B 'n' B, 

Come pack up your sheet

I'll go down to breakfast in the morning

Claw my way down the stairs

I pass a Golden Eagle in his Eyrie Attic

And Sparrow in his window box

A lot of us Buzzards here we lost our nest

We flew it long ago

In the long flight West

Looking for a new home

In a countryside so green

Yet we ended up in Shepton Mallet

If you know what I mean

The streets are pretty busy,

well the streets are pretty clean

The houses are full and empty

Helps with the homeless scene

Some have too much

And many don't have any

And they think they'll take a shot

At the national lottery penny

But no they never win

Only scrape by a livin'

Yet the pallets keep on turning

The lorry wheels keep on spinning

I'm not saying it matters

I'm just a buzzard on the brink

I speak my beak

And think my think

If they start policing that

Then the whole pontoon might sink

We'd be back in 1984

And pigeon holing people

Based on their way of thinking

Let me see if you will commit a crime

My monitoring machine is blinking

well in a sense we already have it

With a google can of beans

GDPR and algorithms who know where you've been

Think they will predict where you are going

If in your thoughts they've seen

Some evidence of intention to a crime scene

It's a fair cop governor, I've been circling around

this field of dreams

Longer than my tail feathers

Shorter than a stream

I'm trying to catch a little mouse

But all I can find is carrion

If you call me a predator on the prowl

I'll scream and shout and swing my towel

In such a carry on

This town is a birds nest baby

It's full of stick houses yeah

And all the match stick people

Go about combing flames out of their hair

And each fiery tongue licks the next

As every wing is clipped

By a cuckoo government 

who've taken over the nest

So show me back to Bedfordshire

Where I may rest my head

In the Buzzard B'n'B 

back in my home

Bed stead

Concrete notions

 City whores, in the dirt

In the deep

Of concrete

And bungling jungles

Where fungal spores are rife

and reach rifles

And breach bedposts 

And linen trousers of

Generals

Whose black hearts are scorched by war

And peace is just a begging post 

On the road to War

The city of blood

They are dead flowers

Rotten lilies

And flag Irises

Drooping 

Pungent smelling

Of decaying pig

And human hearts blackened

By smoke, and smog

And money

That breeds the flies of greed

From the maggots of envy, and pride

And the worms of lust are twisting

Through

The rotten flesh

Of the over sweetly smelling roses

The bawdy bright colours

The bold washed fast, bleached hues

The bumble bee dyed

Boxers and blonde wigs

Of stags and figs

And pigs

Who dance in the moonlight

But never smell

a field

Shepton on Show

 Behind the scrape the hotel slates

Fall from the roof that stand up late

Into the scoffs of hate and rebuke

The pavements soft from puddles of puke

And Shepton stands above it all

The show of hands is ready to fall

But play your cards right late at night 

See the lands of firelight

Where burning men and women fight

Like flames of candles flicker in plight

Shepton, Shepton on show

Shepton, Shepton on show

The windows full of birds and bees

And Coloured snow and worms that seize

The books they throw at the libraries

And the jokes they tell in the reggae-ease

Of Shepton, Shepton on Show

Behind the handpicked frieze

The bright rainbow is covered in sleaze

And thoughts which show the summer's ease

No greased elbow or lock-jawed keys

So cling to the clinker of unspoken word

Fly away like a jailbird

And say what you say without being heard

It's a world away from castle and sword 

Shepton, Shepton on show