Seagull versus Egret

Egret: 

I have no regrets

Be like me I'm free and light

Like a feather from the flight

I have no regrets, Je n'Egret rien

For I'm the Egret, the Egret I am

Light of foot

High stepping wader

Small compact, a pint-sized invader,

Stout as Guinness, white as lightning

Drink me down river fish frightening

But don't you cuckoo spit me out

Or curdle me like cheese about

For now I'm in cider

Once I was an outsider

But now here's me level's home

I have nothing more to say Seagull crone

But if you don't like me leave me alone

Seagull:

Here I am the old salty dog

Hopscotching across a grassy bog

Just a field, where the cows graze

I'm on a rubbish tip holiday, hoorah

Now you might not think I belong in your field

But a bird like me has got make a meal

Take your worms or fish where you can get 'em I say

Never mind your fancy prancing pins

I'm down here in my flappers looking for fins

And if you don't like how I've waded in

Well just you keep your beak shut Egret thin

Egret:

Go push your boat out to sea

Why come inland and bother me?

Have you lost your sea legs?

Or are you a landlubber now?

I'll give you a hand you fat blubber cow

If you get any bigger seagull I'd stand on your rump

And peck your hide pa rum pa pump pump!

Seagull:

Now who are you calling fat?

Ok I've put on a few stone, but my stomach's flat

So what if I like Kentucky fried chicken

 in the seaside town it's slim pickins

And inland there's more tasty things than fish

To wrap my lips around out of bins of rubbish

Oh I do love fast food, cos' I ain't slow like you

You just stand there for hours waiting for a minnow

I'd get bored of being like a statue I prefer to hustle

Push your way in if you want to get ahead use your muscle

You're always gently treading avoiding causing offense

Why don't you get off your high horse pick a side of the fence

Egret:

I'm the greatest fisherman that's ever been around

If you wanna know who's the King fisher, I wear the crown

I'm lighter than a Heron, he's like an accordion that flies

My beak's long and sleek, like lightning from the skies

I'm the featherweight boxer, dancing like Cassius Clay

You wanna see me shadow box then get in the ring, let's play

Seagull

Oh well you don't think a Seagull packs a punch?

Well, I'm gonna chop and dice you, eat you for my lunch

I like a nice bit of sushi, and your Egret feng shui 

Don't impress me much, you can just dance, well phooi

It ain't no song and dance, I can do the seagull sailor's jig

I'll dance all up the town, along the roofs and over oil rig

So while you tip toe, I'll be on show for all the world to see

I'm the main man, the Seagull heavyweight boxing free

You stick to your river banks, and sedate country streams

I'm more used to fighting crows, rough seas are my dreams

Robin versus Blue Tit Rap battle

 Robin:

Hey what you think about me

Think I must be just a loser

Hanging round in a tree

Well, I'm the boss in the moss

I'm the stig on the twig

You see a red bolt

You better run, see

I'll be Robbin', I'll be bobbin'

I'll be mother freakin' hobbin'

In the cobbin, I'll be knobbin'

Knocking on your door like a dobbin

Blue Tit:

Yeah, yeah Robin you be fly

You be cruisin in my big blue sky

But watch out

You don't get a stick in your eye

Cos I'm pullin out out my bazooka

Gonna shoot ya in the pig sty

Gonna cream ya, double dream ya

Gonna make me some red robin pie

You ain't getting out of the net I set

I'm gonna trap ya in the lap of the God's Say Ey!

Robin:

Yeah Blue Tit tittin' you be spittin'

Some dope rhymes, I see you try

But don't be pittin' yourself against the best

You know I'm blest, I'm the freakin' one and only

Robin red breast

Now what you wanna talk shit for

Acting like you're True Grit your

Out on a limb Blue Tit, 

Just a Nip on a rose hip

You're a cold lip, But I'm some red hot shit

I'm gonna bee bop, beat drop

and sink you and your Blue Peter ship

Sure You think you're all that

Parading with your buddies

Round the one mile flat

But you be Mulberry bushing

You best be shushing in the hat

Drop your keys on the mat

You be leaving my territory

Like a little pussy cat

Blue Tit:

Now Robin you be Robbin

You be stealin' those things that don't belong

To ya bro,

You think you're my friend no!

Or that you can overthrow my reign

No, now go, 

I'm the only king of the tree

It's my Blue zone territory

I wear the blue crown, 

cos I'm real regal see

You're the false one

Like false teeth

You be chatting and prattling

Yap, yap yapping

Well little doggy

go bark up somebody else's tree

I'm the sayer, I'm the player

I play tic tac toe

On your little Robin show

I'm the slayer, mine's the wolf's lair

if it's tit for tat, then take that Red Crow

Hey yeah

Robin:

Yo, yo, now you're in my way it ain't good

And only I do the Robbin in my neighbourhood

I'm the thief, I'm gonna rob, gonna lob and corn cob ya

Stick you on a spike, gonna kibbab you on the MIC

You be fryin' ,

you be cryin' in the fire of my rage

You talk like Blue thunder, 

but I think you're a canary in a cage, 

you be so yellow, 

I could drop you on the brick road 

when you say hello

I'm gonna sellotape your beak shut, 

You dumb beech nut see?! 

speak when you're spoken to only

This my freakin tree 

Birding

 Can you catch an oyster with an oyster catcher?

Or shank a red, redshank

Can you shell the shell of a shell duck?

Or dun a Dunnock to his bank

And are you the one to witness the whim of a Whimbrel?

Or take cool turns with an Arctic Tern

Oh please tell me what Birding is in the end all about

Will you buzz a buzzard out on a panel show of ornithological knowledge?

To be cock of the walk, rank high in the pecking order of chickens in the run

While the sun is out

Will you gan at a Gannet, like you may gander a goose

Or might you take a puff at a puffin

Before with a sly smile turn him loose?

Might you throw a wad at a wader

Or take a snipe at a snipe

With your lens he is in the eye of the beholder

But do you see an eye for an eye

Or a tooth for a tooth

Can you turn over every stone in your search for a Turnstone?

Will you turn tail and run from a gull

Or gull at him back through the clear light of truth

May you lessen his black back?

Simply by painting him grey like the weather

Or fledge a fletch of his juvenile feathers

In the arrows of a Robin’s Hood

To hoodwink a Starling who sparred with a Sparrow

Tell me kindly if you’ve understood

Did you put the black bird down in your little black book?

Or put down the lark as a clown with a stern black look?

Did you flinch at a finch when he came around?

Was it you who took the voice from the mute swan?

Do any of you really have a choice in your wan?

Or like the grey goose do your clothes have some use?

You may hide in your hides, ride down your rides

Or follow the moth and the fly

For an insect is a gift to the very fast swift

As a wood pigeon is

To the peregrine or the Lord of the Sky

And not forgetting the crow

Who you too well may know

For his Corvidian cousin the Raven

Has driven you stark raving Mad

With his gang of dark vandals

Who are no strangers to scandals

In amongst the nests and eggs of the coot

And should you hold a full suit

Or a good gambit of feathery friends in your hand

Please keep them safe and

Sound advice is this :You may remember it is best

To believe you are blest

And unlike the cuckoo who intrudes on a nest

For the others' eggs out he will push

But know without doubt

Your life is not worth a short snout

For a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush

Buteo

Buteo, Buteo

Wherefore art thou Buteo?

On what holy wooded hedge

Where you make our hooded ledge

And wherefore do you fly?

Forever a convict of the sky

And conviction yes

More is the less

As with auspices make your pledge

Your blood bond to swear by

Vow your vows

Bow your heads

Here comes the vouchsafe

Of your lives

Give money, give roses, poses of heather

Black is the beak, brown is the feather

The air in some torpid atmosphere

Breaks like breakers of a wild sea

Snapping like a belt of leather

Sends up vapours

On whose thermals see thee

Oh how grubby are the praying hands

When they come together

Beneath wedding bands

And marriage yet between

Sky and land

Though thou art unknowable times of sand

For where do you come from?

Who is your mother?

Thy father is every falcon

Every hunter back to the age of man

But how many mothers can

Give birth to your skill

Your art is the destroyer

How learnt thou to kill?

Who taught you? Treacherous sky and wind

Tempest belly was thy womb

But land that keeps your harboured pledge

Vouchsafe in him

Your meat and bread

Father provider to a son born of the air

Always crossing the sun

But what cares the sun for poor Buteo Buteo?

He is forever a traveller

In search of his carrion loot

In search of dead gold

When the sun is treasure chest

Enough for this pirate

Who sails blue pastures

What more wealth can be searched for?

When wisdom is the treasure the sun has in store

And he but transmuted

The vessel of nature’s law

Sign giver and guide all those

Who worship him and him adore

Yet his auspice given, rewards

Neither love nor hate

But like the majesty of heaven

Reigns down equal upon those from His pearly gate

Questions Where AM I?

 On what enlightened bay

Do the tides of time descend?

On how sweet an afternoon

Of light astray

Can the scarlet pimpernel festoon?

Where do the oysters catch?

And where do the gulls loom?

In the fasted Lapis sky

Beneath the hay making sun

How does the bracken grow?

How weaves the stinging nettle?

Through what thistle do the finches whistle?

Or over what cliff is heard

The peregrines steaming, screaming kettle

How comes it that I am here?

For to tell what enters mine ear?

And why for do the black birds mew?

Or the crow caw, caw

Or why do the rabbits run, lapis lapidary

Lapin lapping the blue from the sky

The yellow from the chicken sun

The silver from the harvest moon

The white from the clouds undone

How comes it the temperate chain lies unbroken?

The wind to cool, the sun to heat

How is it that words left unspoken?

Best describe this nature’s beat

Ode to a Buzzard

Oh Buzzard

Harbinger of death

Augury man above

On your miracle, spiracle of breath

What did the Roman’s make of you?

You man of War, of ides

The soothsayers look up to see you crossing the sun

Of their dark days

Skull as a battle warriors helmet, visor down

Omen days

Buteo, buteo

Occipital holes, below heavy brows

Beyond is the world

Within the oracle of her mind

The subuteo men go walking beneath

And she is like a goddess

Who holds their belief

Come visit this isle of the dead

A suitable repose

To make your hunting ground

And roses’ bed

You are always above roses and poppies

Scavenger, scanner

Of starvation’s horizon

The hunger circumference of your vision

Which fades with the sunset

And its ring is set by the stone

Of the moon.

Ode to a Peregrine

 Forward, forward all ye sea cannons.

All ye barrages of the swell

Here I stand in my cliff cabin

Knowing ye intruders well

Forward, forward screech

Ye of impossible reach

The scream of alarm into your soul

So schooled in the art of the fooled,

I am a witch on a broom

A thoroughbred racing down a fell

I am an instant in your time

I wear the disguise of death,

My hues and clothes demark me well

I am your first and last breath

Peregrine am I,

The Lord of the sky

The high Sultan of the Salty Perch

In my crow’s nest

I am scarecrow, caw, caw

Black the congregation of my high church

Fall in ye gulls, ye gabbling ranks

Commoners take turns to fish the sea with thanks

I thank not the gel,

Nor its green brown pell-mell

I am as quick as honey, I smell with my flanks

These eves of rocks I chose for the view

Those shore leave in the docks show

Where my shadow sheaves

And time me on clocks

I make landfall before Eve

May pluck an apple for Adam

And let it fall from her sleeve

Hunting a pigeon on the wing

It is a smidgeon of a thing

For what I enjoy

Is to play with this toy

As a train racing track

When I attack

I smother and sting

With Talon and Beak

I rend skin from wing

Then back to the nest

I deliver the rest

I am the postman with the fastest letter

I am the messenger king

The carrier of carrion

The bringer of tides

Don’t shoot the messenger if you dislike what he brings

Whether evil tidings

Or indiscernible things

The message did not return one evening

The bird was not heard

The vital war time correspondence

Fell silent in my mouth

Yet its secret I kept safe

For I did not speak a word

The moorhen shuffle

 You kick your leg to the left

You kick your foot to the right

You get your feathers in a ruffle

You do the moorhen shuffle

Round and round and round the pond you go

Where you gonna stop nobody knows

If you meet a dog you do the quick step

If you meet a sea gull on the hop

You do a kick back

You kick back and forward

And forward and back

You wave your wings

Like you're in a flap

You kick your leg to the left

You kick your foot to the right

You get your feathers in a ruffle

You do the moorhen shuffle

Birds

 An ordinary blokes poem of the summer

All the birds have buggered off

Oh what am I to do?

I used to feed them from my window

But now I haven't got a clue

I think they've found another sil

Or else another Gladys or Bill

Charley, Benny, Nigel or Gill

Bloody nosey parker I'd like to kill

If only I were a bird flyin' high

Oh how happy I would be

But you weren't Burt says Mary

You were born an ordinary baby

And now you're an ordinary bloke

Who's just wishing to be free

Listen says Susan to Harold

You should've been born a bird 

If you wanted to fly

Stop chasing rainbows off in the sky

There's people down on earth you know

Who care

Yeah says Harold, which ones, where?

They aren't worth the dirt

Under my fingernails

As I claw my way out the grave to

fresh air

Birdie, birdie

 Waxwings in the supermarket car park

Directing the traffic

Seagull on the trolley

Pushing his family to go Christmas shopping

Buzzard at Mcdonald's picking up

his happy meal

Blackbird prittle-prattling in the planted pot

Crows flick-flacking on a lamppost

Below a pied wagtail strutting its stuff

Busy birds bush whacking the red berried trees

Off the M5 motorway service station pit stop

Spit

 Cuckoo, cuckoo

He says spring has sprung

Cuckoo, cook who?

Who has rung?

Cuckoo spit over

A pint over

A pint?

No bird could

What are you talking about?

Coal tits

 Under the arches the coal tits dart

Around the quarry they flurry

Down over that little bit of swamp

Where the railway men's waste was dumped

Over the piles of rubble, brick work and industrial trash

The leached-into, the sodden ground, near the river, brown bushes grow

That make homes for the Coal Tits, they flit and dart between them

And hang on to the brick work

With their little claws

In the embers of December, they are the spark

In the grey rainy Novembers, they come again like filaments

of colours in the filigrees of green and brown, agricultural hedgerows

In the borders of the town, where the dogs and dog walkers

go around

Not forgotten about

But just hanging around

Like a resident nobody knows

Except you'd miss their sound

Because they're like a loved one

In the fabric of the town

A backdrop scenic prop

Except they chose to stop

There who knows, what senses

Just an ideal bit of real estate

To live beneath the arches of the viaduct

Close to where the Sheppey flows

This is obviously Pigeon Street

 Coo, coo, Ha, Haa, Ho, ho, He, he,

The slap and tickle the cackle free

Of turned up turnips

Tourniquet, tie around

a dignified neck

Telescopic voice calls out

Not a laugh, but a shout

You've reached the corner

Now turn about

back onto Pigeon Street

Real lives turn fake

Taken pride, prison cake

Somewhere within you find

The key to 15 Pigeon Street

Now yours, now his,

This wide eyed blink

Can you believe no Kitchen sink?!

Can you cry out, what drought, what drought,

Its dry on Pigeon Street

Come pour with rain

Come fill your pain

With Tears so distant they

Fall in vain

When windows blow

The prison cell

You'll know too well

You're living on Pigeon Street

Two eyes collide

head on with stuff

Graveyards, bones

Now I scoff at

Flies inside the beggar's belly

Calling out for Pigeon Street

Reading lines from long lost poems

Who wrote the Mayans

When they last wrote Home

Because they died because they lived

In the house on Pigeon Street

Railings cold, and trailers scuffed

Tears dry on tombes

You learnt your books off

And libraries close

And Roman roads all lead

to Pigeon Street

Coo, coo, Ha, ha, hee, hee

Hoo, ho

You know you are a prisoner now

Your keys are gone

but thought lives on

Inside the cracks on Pigeon Street

Take heed my friend

It does not end

That road which leads from here

there wends

When the light is gone

And all is cold

You know you've reached the pigeon road

And there no friend

One may meet

Unless its to ask

Is this Pigeon Street

Gate Road

 Down to the gate road,

And beside the running brook

The gargling of sea gulls

As the starving starlings look

The road is cold

The frost takes hold

But robin cheerily sings

things unfold

He is bold to talk of happy things

And mist enfolds the hills

And clings to valley bottoms

It is sticky in the trees

Where the river sheppey rolls

But not forgotten

And we wander over storks of fields

We crunch in icy puddles

As spinneys of trees shine on hill tops

And the sun breaks through

As a yellow shield shining

Through bright dew drops

And snaking along the treeline

The sheppey does take shape

And lifts the pages of the mist

Like bed sheets from its face

The old oak with the spidery crown

Waits beside the gate

And we take turns to clamber down

Across a broken field stile plate

The post is rotten in the ground

It wobbles and it shakes

As we walk around the Lorax patch

Where the cocks crow as men of state

The hens are brooding in their hutch

Like glamorous fashion models

Kept there ready to lay such and such

A golden egg to bottle

As proudly strutting cockerels parade

Their fleeces, like dandified fops

Their ruffs like Elizabethan curls

The court of the Queen of chops

Off with their heads she cries

And headless chickens run a mock

And chicken feet run down the street

And upon the hills spill their blood

As the Cathedral peeps over the brows

Of hills which are vacant of cows

And streaming white whiffs of clouds

Float gently in the blue

I can see through these see through days

Can you see through me too

Invisible in the olden ways

Awaiting the tides of new

As I bend down to tie my shoe

A cockerel cries a murder blue

And digesting all that we've been through

I fill it up and bring it to you

You offer it back like your take affront

I take it back but not from want

I wish I could give, but what I have

Is taken up by the ditch grab

Blue bird

All of these things that you say to me
I think they're blue but you say they're free
I walk the forests and see the tree
I think they're blue but you say they're free

I walk out among the parks
where the dogs bark
When it gets dark
And fall to my knees when I see the spark
A forest ablaze
A freedom lark
I hear him sing,

he says to me

I think it's blue

But you say I'm free

Summer's bird

 I saw you lost your throne of stone

I saw your crown was broke

And in amongst the daisy chains

Was where the blackbird spoke

Saying I lost you in the morning

I lost you in the spring

And the fourth time I was calling

You came home to me again

For the cross was born in the winter

And the tides rose up in field

And we all feel so brave on the short summer waves

When the heat is our only meal

Lords of the land

The water of the moors

Is a dragon's land

It is meant for 

The grey cloaked wizard Heron

and the white cloaked wizard Egret

These are the druids who commune with

the Nature Gods

Stare into black pools

Read in the brown tea leaved peat water

The signs of things to come

They know when to fly

And when to stand still

To catch the darting fish

Duck Disco

 Duck butts in the air

Stick your duck butts in the air

Like you just don't care

while looking for your grub down there

Shake those tail feathers

Fellas, ladies

Mallards, Drakes

Come on and waggle it

Just a little bit

Make no mistakes

There's party going down on the lakes!

Come on and haggle it

Come on duck on the dance floor

Dance, dance duck on the ice some more

Slap and tickle those little duck flipper flappers

Slipping off a duck's back like Jack Daniels

Don't throw no stones at glass houses

Fly on home

In your thousands

Canada Geese just looking for release

Come abounding, resounding to the beat

Of a hundred duck feet,

 paddling

Treblecleft textures

 What do you say to the twigs that fall?

The whispering Starlings shush shushing

The air and all

Hushing the reeds like a lullaby

The level's baby to sleep

Moses drifts up in a basket

Somewhere down the Euphrates

And the crocodiles all drown

In their own tears

The borrowed frowns of bucaneers

Postpone the hate of conquering years

In which enemies fall at their gate

But No speck of blood falls

In their spotless cities

No nagging horse neighs

Without the controlled rumble

Of cannon fire

And I am the tear

That rolls down the knoll

The fear in the belfry

When I hear the bell toll

Another and another soul

Yet elsewhere the sky is yellow and bold

And the bright blue sea shines like gold

And a penny is tossed splashes and ripples

The cats and dogs dash, the priest has his tipple

The hum and roll, the ebb and flow

Of cavorting children

And parents extoll the virtues of being virtuous

And how sadness lies like misty veil

Over the memory of this town

But some professors write

That all things come around

Again, as they sweep through cloistered halls

In black and white gowns

Duck Pond

 

Deep in the duck pond

Where the green weed grows

And the straw is yellow

Next to the track,

Where the ivy creeps beneath the Alder and Willow

Which brush their stems and stem their flow back

Deep in the duck pond

Where the green weed grows

Ducks fight and splash about

It could be a war or a turn about

Or a pair of lovers in a spate

One who loves, the other who hates

But deep in the duck pond

They see to their deed

Where the willow weeps in the green duck weed

Down in the duck pond,

Where fellows blow their horn

And the little spirited sprout

Sings for the sweet summer corn

While the West wind blows

Then across it the Easterly is torn

All along the deep duck pond

Where all the birds were born

Severed heads on severed spikes

All seem dead but go ask the tyke

Shadows shake in the shallows like

The deep duck pond

Of the bad old Pike

He swims about, he asks not twice

He sees a snout, then snaps his vice

And there he has you, pulls you down

Into the depths of the duck pond to drown

Where hell is a spirit on the water

And the wind chills the slender necks of swans

And the rails with the moor hens daughter

Falls to the pails and the sweet shorn sun

Where the kale sways in the shallows

And the bulrushes blow their seed

Deep as heartache over the water

Of the deep duck pond with the green duck weed