Poor Rosemary!

 Rosemary it's so plain to see

That I don't need you as you don't need me

Your heart is weak, you're jowl by cheek

I feel the sleek brush with death

Somehow

Your breath

You cow

Leaves much to bow wow

You dog, you growl

I hold my nose when I see you scowl

You are so foul

The lowest bowel

Could not speak better

Than when you sign your letter

Rosemary, I made my vow

Never to see your ugly maw

Chomp and talk

Like a pale wan stork

Who needed a chalk

Outlining or two

It's murder she wrote

When the dog's at your throat

Has the cat got your goat

Has the frog rocked your boat?

Your ugly rapacious mug  

Really reminds me

Of a giant sea slug

So I'll let you bottom feeders

Hoover the rug

Of the ocean floor

And won't see you no more

Poor Rosemary

Rosemary, you're so poor

Poor Rosemary!

Troy town

 I used to be a policeman

but then didn't like it, didn't it

didn't didn't it

If were a policeman I would bang you

to rights

You have got so many vices

And it isn't nice

Come you must rearrange how you treat

The strangers

In your town

You bring me down

I didn't like, didn't like

Didn't like it

Don't you know that we're all the same

You call us by a different name

So treat us like the other

We could be your long lost brother

I don't think you have read that much

Never heard of Ulysses and such

Well there was once a place named Troy

And they spoiled the life of a little boy

He was just an innocent shepherd

Until he thought he'd be something better

The bright city lights

Changed his mind over night

And I didn't like it, didn't like it,

didn't like it

He fell in love with girl named Helen

He thought he could take her

And they'd be in heaven

So he tricked the palace by being their friends

But they never knew he wouldn't make amends

Helen was the girl next door

But he was rich and she wasn't poor

He stole her from Menelaus

Who got angry said Paris would pay us

Then he got Agamemnon involved

And it all went to hell in a hand cart I'm told

And they didn't like it, didn't like it, didn't like it

So next time you refuse a stranger a hand

Just remember what happened in that ancient land

The Greeks got pissed and they destroyed Troy

Well with a little help from Odysseus' toy

A little gift horse they looked in the mouth

Turned out to be the whole world went south

And they didn't like it, didn't like it, didn't like it

So you want to accuse and to blame

a perfect stranger of what's never named

So you want to mock and defame

A guest who's come to your house, for shame

They didn't like it, didn't like it, and I feel the same

I didn't like it, didn't like it, didn't like it

And every time you try to slander my name

And put out a rumour that tries to declaim

I did something that I've never done

Well I don't like that and your time will come

Yes your time will come, your time will come

Frog chorus of the river bank

 Coming out of the blue

I saw you in red

Coming out of the fog

I raised my head

And leaping onto logs

I said

I'm out I'm alive

Don't make me go 

Back down that pithole

I don't want to work underground

It'll destroy my soul

But likewise

I don't have the energy

To rise above this dull chorus of frogs

Who ribbet and bekekex bekekex

koax koax

croak their throats

At river boats

passing over

Arise, arise subsistence farmer

 They've taken away our way of life

Oh I'm now a subsistence farmer

I'm working for the man and woman in strife

Drawn along the strawberry line

And the fosseway is the battle ground

Against the beast from the east

It's the Brighton crowd on their fairground

Spreading their money and culture of grease

It's a thinning line, it's the battle front line

Is Shepton Mallet

It's the invading Romans versus the working celts

We're being pushed out and robbed of our wealth

They're trying to get their hands on life itself

Don't let them, don't let them

There's no point in being up in these hills

There's no land here that pigs haven't killed

That strange robberies and withheld wills

haven't rooted out corollaries and instant thrills

I'm being blown back down to the land of sweet rills,

Where I taken my nourishment from rhein ditch bills

What's on the menu is swan's neck soup

I'll wearing a garland of rose worm silk

And swimming in mud of the peat bogs rich

And eating bog butter from the rill ranch ditch

But it's alright, it's alright, I was born that way

I'm a subsistence farmer, it's in my dna

They want to give me pharmacology

Because my family sold my farm

I've no inheritance to speak of

Because the cuckoos came and no one raised the alarm

And the early warning system didn't suspect the strange egg

That burst out and pushed the others out of the nest

It's like that all over Somerset

The poor get eaten by the rich

What they want is our culture

But what they take is our grit

They make a joke of farmers

Like it is somebody's latent word

But we're all just ghostly echoes of the age of the sword

And King Alfred he retreated back inside the marsh

In order to fight the North men

From a stronger footings' start

So rise up, rise up my reformers

My peasants shall revolt

And rebel against these disasters that befall us

But none it has been our own fault

Let us raise an army of some tough handed farmers

Let's take our pitchforks and sickles

And scythe down the witch-hearted fickles

Let's defend our common lot

And protect our livelihoods

Because they'll spread their cultural rot

and they're not for the common good 

Shepherd's pie

 When it's nine o'clock in the evening in Shepton Mallet

And none obeys the speed limit

Or when you're driving on the road from Glastonbury

to West Pennard

They just use it like a speedway

When it's seven o'clock in the morning in Shepton Mallet

Oh nobody gives any quarter to anyone on the roads

All they do is act impatient to get to the work they don't 

want to do anyway

When it's four o'clock in the afternoon in Shepton Mallet

And they're all racing home

Yes nobody pays any attention to the speed limit

All they care about is getting home

All they care about is their little conservations

Leaving town

 you know you're meant to hold down a job

To put the jump leads to the dead dog

To afternoon an evening in a mount pleasant

vein

I can't keep saying what I was going to say

She already killed me with her eyes so vain

Hers were the windows of a house of pain

Don't be so dramatic, oh let me explain

It's all so plastic just a weather vane

The leaves of grass have grown again

Did I lose my job in the harvest grain

Did I eat my job or bury my pain

I've eaten my loss, like a moss of stain

It's human to cross the river again

Because the circus is over they've packed up and left town

And I can't shoulder the burden of feeling so down

It's all a charade of the last act of the crown

Leaving this place is tearing me a frown

Across a night of lights falling to ground

And smiles on faces for miles around

 

Open mic nights

 He's your friend

He's my friend

Is he anyone's?

Where does it all end

Don't ask me

I'm only the MC

I'm just behind the scenes

I'm on the beams

I'm the DJ

I don't exist when the music stops

Well none of us do

It's a hard world gone soft

It's the bright lights with the colours toned down

It's I would rather be born

To someone wearing brown

Because the colour of life is in the human interaction

Whether that's a voice singing

Or a glance, an eyebrow raised,

 a leg shifted

The turn of phrase 

It's not in the music

But that is the sauce

Because we all just taste life better

When were in the main course

I don't mean don't pay the piper

I don't mean abandon the band

But the point of going to a music night

Is the whole darn caravan

So don't drown out the conversation

 with too much loud noise

I mean let us enjoy our own company

Not only the sound waves, boys

Art wank

 I went to the louvre

And I wanked over the Mona Lisa

I saw Van Gogh's Sunflowers

And whacked off all over them

I Jacked off over a Jackson Pollock

And it made no difference I could see

I masturbated over Matisse's blue nude

And even Monet's water lilies

And then they banned me

What reason did they have?

I was only showing my love for the Arts

Self-expression, that's art, that's all I was doing

You can't ever please some people

A Liverpool Lass

 She's was a Liverpool lass

She turned off the gas

Got out of the house

And came down south

To getaway from it all

Getaway from the Mouth of the Mersey

On the ship of education she sailed

And the black sailor paled

She was one of these chips

On the shoulder

That floated

And failed and floated back up again

Into a better life where the little city droids

Buzzed around the town

Her boys were there living better than her fare

She was ambitious

From the lanes of poverty

To her rich uncle Tom Cobely and all

Inherited some money

Tasted the honey

And controlled her aches and pains

With the common strain of marijuana

Forgetting all the human stains

That wash away from her brain

When it rains

Manna from Heaven

Marijuana from Devon

To live amongst 

the unleavened lawns of Shepton

Recycling Eve

After the book club

I went to the pub

But alone there's the rub

Compared to the bookish affair

It was like a lonely men appreciation society

There were men whose wives were on holiday

Men who'd been single most of their lives

Men with families who go there to mingle

Men who go there just to feel alive

And me why did I go to the open mic night?

Just to listen to the music and enjoy a pint

I had a pizza as well and it was a good evening

Not every night can be the night of your life

And I sort of went because I was talking to you

And you left to go home and I took my cue

Maybe a woman needs a home and a family

maybe a man does too, there's the tragedy

because they've got to be in love or have respect

for each other, I don't have anything else to report

the pub is place to share a table with a friend

When you find men and women cannot truly do that

That they really see each other as sport

Then I'd rather get lost in the music of men

Who are missing their loved ones

Than have be with the one who has torn my world apart

After I offered her sympathy and an already damaged heart

To have it thrown out like the garbage into the dustcart

I remember it's recycling day today

And I haven't put mine out yet 

Path through the glades

 So the shadows have been shifting and there's

A way through the wood

And what I understand

Is the path must be good

Not Hailing away to each song that's sung

From the tree tops

The killed birds

By the woodsman are hung

And fallow deer rest 

In the hollows and glades

And I will visit there best

On some holiday

It feels a vest of armour I wear

When the screaming crows hollar

From their self built blockade

I'm used to the figure

Or the grand larceny ball

Of colourful folk

In their shades at the hall

In their tokens of blessed

Sovereignty calls

I awoke to the woke

I lay down with the laith

That turned me a yoke

That I shall carry as I path

A new path through the forest

Where once I knew graves

New shafts of daylight

Have broken the shade

Miami Mallet

 Miami Mallet

It's no Ballot

They've taken the tickets for the free Chalet

The heat hits you like an iron hammer

The street greets you, you start to stammer

Miami Mallet, Miami Mallet

I can't hardly stand it

Gotta get me out of this inferno

It's like a towering tornado

Of heavy heat flow

Overpowering pallette

Of scorching reds 

Miami Mallet

Beats on all our heads

Mandy

 Oh Mandy, you came and you gave me a warning

And then you did it again

Oh Mandy then you banned me

From the academy of all your lack lustre friends

Oh Mandy pour me a shandy

I'm through with whisky and rye

Oh Mandy your artless bank needs a banksy

But he's already run dry

Oh Mandy, I'm thirsty, for the first tea

of the day in a dog worn afternoon

Oh Mandy it's like stealing candy

From a baby for you

Oh Mandy you make it look so easy

Can you teach me how you do?

Oh Mandy

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

The Emporium of Past lives

 Pandering to Mandy

Why do we pander to Mandy

Why do I meander and pander

Like a river of pandemonium

Into the mandated Mandy kingdom

Of utter strangle hold dominion

She has on social currency and fuel

Like in the strait of Hormuz

She's got her claws around it

Choking, she's about as crazy as Trump

In her utter blindness of vision

No multi-channel options like Netflix television

Just a Mandy towers, mini Mandy apprentices

To carry out her bidding

A pit of vipers, a stinking compost of rot

And corruption

A seething bed of vice disguised 

as community relations

A necromancy of diplomacy

Casting evil spells from a witches coven

Getting her evil elves and fairies

To dance around her sacrificial table

Oh Heathen whores who unholy dance

Burn, burn in the fires of chance

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

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

After the glitter had fallen

 After the glitter had fallen

The ball had stopped spinning

The music turned off

The costumes were hanging on their hangers

The models had danced their socks off

After the manikins of bodkins

Had scaled the omphalos of night

After the slim ones, the trim ones

Had returned their souls to the light

After their bodies and shoddies 

Had shouldered their blames and their shames

After the love of their eyes had smouldered

In their ear's last refrain

After their mouths had powdered and chowdered 

and lisped their clasps undone

Then I knew that I was older, but not

colder for the sun had still shone

As the hall let down its decorations

Like a dog shaking off

As a christmas tree moults its needles

So spring crept into our midst

And winter was a burnt out candle

That really no one could handle or miss

Still I knew I was a vandal for the words

I'd used when instead I should've kissed

Yet Jesus still lay on the cross

And Mary Magdalene cried at his feet

And all the holy wine had cost

The word forgiveness spread on the street

Right in the heart

 There was a time when waters flowed

When feet tapped to the drummer's art

When people danced and bands played

When rivers ran right in the heart

When church bells tolled

When markets stalled

When children schooled

Right in the heart

There was a time when snow drops sprang

When church bells rang

When prison's cart

And so when men believed

In nation's pride right in the heart

Right in the heart the spirit sprang

The choirs sang

The sun rays dart

When skies brighten as dark clouds depart

And future's form in solid gold

Moulded in, right in the heart

And on palisades, or in rocky glades

where cider's made, a cunning craft

Where times have changed

But some things remained

Because they stayed right in the heart

The Amulet, and church a couplet

A twin, like chalk and cheese

So far from each other's trouble

But in a bubble of cider's seas

And the bubble burst

All the thirst was scattered seeds

So gather up and sow again

In fertile earth

The rain will fall, new life it calls

will spring forth out of the dark

As things must turn right before the dawn

And kindle fire right in the heart

The drovers

 End of the drove

Where do they go?

All those people

When the bar closes?

All those lost people

All those lonely souls

Bitter as litter

That blows

When the field knows

The cattle in rows

Filled, eating the bar

Chewing the cud

Drifting back home

In their droves

But where do they go?

Another bar opens

And they hang there

Like pegs

On a line with no

Clothes