Brick by brick

 What does my building say about me?

A Church, an apartment

Or you might live in a tree

An Italianate, baroque palatial frieze

A facade on the cards or

a post office parquet

You might live in a bank

And call it Art

You might be a river rat

And think that you're smart

Does living in a vault mean you are at fault?

Or down by the green meadows

Not mean you're ever in shadows

For do we choose our homes

Or do they choose us

Each is a road to Rome

It is do it or go bust

But is it all as capricious as the wind

Torn by time and trust

Dumped down by the tempest

Having circumstances thrust upon us

Well wild is the wind

In the corner of the park

Wild winds blow chill in

The foreign country's dark

But run from your home

Or stay still and rust

It's all just a rolling stone

That gathers no moss

And happiness is a home

A home is where the heart is

Comfort and some bliss

On the road to Rome

Look out for your pension

Don't worry about inflation

Negative equity and property booms

On the Road to Rome

House price increase

Mortgage decrease

Only in a blue moon

How about not thinking

doom and gloom?

In the parking lot of common sense

Where the council takes its recompense

And even woodland elves help themselves

To the goodies on the shelves

Greed and self-reliance

Blowing hot air over vipers

Of envy and jealousy

And competing neighbours

And every day seems like a fight

But though I know that don't seem right

It's what makes the winning and the losing

An end in themselves

And so petty rivalries from conclusions

Drawn from some imagined illusions

Of another's backstabbing collusion

Should be vanquished like the night

Yet when truth shines on a light

As I know in my heart it might

Despite all dark forces of might

That bear the shadows of night

I cross my finger and the road

I just keeping carrying this load

Just wish to let go but don't

Because I believe in the light

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

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

Roses are Red

Roses are Red
So is your hair
When we walked up the hill
In the fresh morning air
to Gul Baba, looking like a saint
The walls in the background could
Do with a lick of paint
Yet that is Budapest - tired and torn
Living like fish in a bowl, new born
Swimming around staring goggle-eyed at things
The sweetness in a crisp packet blown up in the wind
The temperance of shadows that lends buildings their mood
The light plays and puppet hands of a life when its good

Your hands also played in the snow
Shifting it back and forth ceaseless cold show

Roses are red, they lay dormant and freeze
On the balconies of the mausoleum
Around the holy knees

They climb their way up hill
She rambles like a rose
They climb their way up the trellis of time
She flies straight as the crows
They all have their heads cut off by a prudent gardener
Prudence, leaves her shears at home
She watches as her red hair grows

The sky line skates beneath the cloud,
Out lines of the Parliament cry aloud
And roof tops, taking weight lifter bets
To prove how much white stuff they can hold
And the rose grows its thorns of the past
Prick us and we bleed our red onto the snow
That somehow we know will soon melt
And yet we can never forget