elephant hearts

 Funny how it starts

And funny how it ends

In the chambers of the heart

Where we might find a friend

Elephants fart

And little mice mend

The holes in dresses and truse

Of the confessions of shrews

Who also need a friend

Elephant ears

 Where are the monsters

Of common sense?

They are living with the elephant

In the room under the stairs

Oh nobody knew

If he was really theirs

Where are the dragons bent on destruction

Fire, fire flames, grow higher

And what of the fairies, elves and dwarves

Where are they now?

Have they gone indoors

Oh show me the way back to that world

Where courage still lives

And all 

Any old Adam

 Well paradise was full of birds and bees

And elephants with long trunks

Tucked up their sleeves

And God said, look who's that man Eve

And she said - I don't know him from Adam

Now Eve, I thought I told you not to mess around with boys

You know you will break my equipment

These men are not toys

I have already given you several models named Steve

So who's this one Eve?

And Eve said I don't know him from Adam

But Eve said, this one's different, I can feel it in my bones

For now I've set the ball rolling, it's like a rolling stone

And please stop this cajolling, insistent tone

God said do you still believe in me Eve?

Eve said, well I don't know you from Adam

Just then a snake slithered down from up in the leaves

Eve thought he was a rope so gave him a heave

Hey kid quit pulling me down,  what are ya tryin to achieve?

Eve said oh you must be new in town, because I don't know you from Adam

Well if that's how you treat a stranger, I think I'll get myself lost

I can see a three leafed clover, there's a manger and a holy ghost

Perhaps if I went in, they might give me a warmer toast

Eve said I doubt it unless you can shed your skin,

They don't know you from Adam

And Adam said to God, I don't know if I  really know myself

God said here's a mirror, look within you'll find I am your twin

And so they embraced, like long lost cousins, and Adam got a lump in his throat

And God got a pain in his neck, and before you could say paradise

Eve appeared with an apple

Now I'm willin' to marry a twin, you don't have to ask me twice

But before we tie the ribbon, I think it would be nice

If you can introduce him, the one with the snake eyes

And God said I would but I don't know him from Adam

Thank you

Thank you for the flower from India
I received her pressed in a cardboard shoe box
She had a Saffron head
Smelt of Juniper
Reminded me of the subcontinent
A pity she was dead
Thank you for the thought
From India sent
Mumbai street scenes
Elephant grass, high humidity
Of boggy marshes
The tiger's trail ahead
Thank you for these false dreams
The cut out conveniences
Of mind, snipped, cellotaped at the seams
To run the reel of old India
In my post-colonial, mobile-phone-rung mind

A to O of jobs

 Ant eater

Accountant

Actuary

B - Baker, Butcher, bailer, bailif, banoffe pie maker

C-conartist, caption writer

Cockatoo tail feather puta in a

Cockatoo tail feather pulla outta

D-delecroy

Delivery driver

Diamond miner

Deatha nd taxes person

Ditch water inspector

E-ear wig owner

Egg white beater

Elephant trainer

Elegy writer

Electrician

F -foreign affairs correspondent

fisherman

Flaming heart flagellist

Fake hairdo maker

G-God look-alike competition inspector

Goal keeper

Giraffe adoptionist

H- happy go lucky hippie

Hair dresser

Hope creator, hope maker

Handle turner

Huddle Goth

I-indicator maker

Index finger - giant index finger

Individual inspector

J-jokey

Jill- as in Jack dressing up as Jill

Jimcarna organizer

Jolly sing-a-long

Jeopardy host

K -Kung-Fu expert

Kapitan

Kapital hill creator

Constructive cages

King maker

Killer

Kiss-me-quick

Kiss.me-not

Kiss.me on the spot

L- loverman

Low brow

lowdown taker

Lintel inspector

Label maker

Literature thief

Lobbyist

Leg measurer

Lentil maker

Logo elaborator

M- Mechanic

Motorist

Mender of watches

N-no one

Nobody

Notch maker

(K)Napsack carrier

Nuptual inviter

O- octopus trainer

Onthologist, Opthalmologist

Open university lecturer

Opportunity knocker

Like elephants on ice

 The sun goes down over the street

The crepuscular creepers walking

the beat

Light head lice

The head lights are yet to turn on

In the Somerset Town

They call Babylon

The colours so chrome

Oh I wish they were yellow

Magnesium white lights

The glare of the mellow

And stroking the firelight

The RAC fellow

Goes hammer and tongs

and bellows

The sodium sipped at the supper of kings

Of the control of the periodic table of things

And song of the elements

And elephant wings

But who ever saw an elephant

Fly?

 inside she sings

And who knew the tide lines

And the marks that love brings

On Muriel Sparks

Or Ann summer's stings

And filing for divorce at the court of Great Kings

The Queen has been fought

But she has lost what he brings

Oh take me, elephant, thick of skin

To be your lawfully anointed wife

Oh Mouse husband I do, I do, I do

Now where shall we live?

This house is not big enough for two

I being an elephant I could fill a room

And you being a mouse could barely squeeze in

We must invest in a super saver sofa

And super soaker cheeses

And supper saving goffers

And Puppet waving breezes

And suffer saviours and their sabres

Suffer saboteurs and wheezes

Who would hold their noses

At supermarket freezes

But Jesus, please us and means us, beans us

And holy communion crumbs of busted breeze-block kinesis

Come on commoners come on please

Shake a leg at the foreigners who go between the fleas

And suck up your carpet hairs of all your finger nails

And sneezing snares at the market wares

Coralled, cajolled over controlled by forces

Of Minsk, and rinks of ice, and risks that slip on rice

And dice are rolled down to the bone of hip, skip and suffice

Weeping beech

 lolloping giant

Sheep dog shaggy

Elephant trunk and arches

benches bunk branches skunk

tail waving laughing, laughing

Trumping and dancing a shaggy hippy stomp

Shaking the shady chandeliers

Swaying all baying in 70s flares

To the age of Aquarius praying

Leaves like feathers ruffled chicken fella

Born out of shape and time

A little too heavy in the arms

Dragging knuckles on the ground

Chimp-charrooing like a monkey aping an ape

Gorilla tree, Green man

Jolly green giant

Animal farm

 What if the Russians controlled Divina McColl?

I don't give a monkeys

I've got a ladder in my giraffe

There's a snake down my trousers

And ants in my pants

I'm an eager beaver

I've got a dolphin's glance

I'm missing my penguin

I need an eagle's eye

There are eleven elephants who've forgotten how to die

And a parrot named dignity

Who can't stop talking lies

Circus shorts

 The circus came to town

The ringmaster and clown

Not pulling any punches

Pulling lots of hair

Pulling over drivers

Screw drivers and survivors

And Pirates are walking around

With performing bears

She held a tiger in her hands

And camera in her pocket

Little miss Lucky locket

Forming figures

From the statues of dancers

Standing like a straight up and down

Bottle of Champagne

Bursting in bubbles

Walking in vain along the tight rope of years

Like hamsters in cages they rolled

Turning mechanical crane

Running round in circles

In the circus of the years

She is tied up and let down

Always the pull if you're a twin

Of the invisible string

The almost shared placenta

The picture of the womb

The acrobat and the firm believer

In the miracle room

Painting pictures on the ceiling

Of Adam touching God

And the trapeze artist

and aerialist are reaching

Ever reaching to hold the horse shoe

Shod

And in between the tug of war

Over the fair share of good luck

She picked up the horse shoe

And the elephant trod

And up and down and all over the town

In the arms of the clown

And the Ringmaster pursued them

With his crown of thorns

And bleeding stigmata palms

All the way through the lavender farms

And shook them down

And the bees shot out

The bees buzzed out

Animus

 We live in the age of the dog

We own them, Not to talk

To each other but to say

Keep your distance

they bark for us, they are our voices

That we cannot express ourselves

God soon it will be the age of the wolf

Howling at the moon light

Of unrequited love and dreams

In the past it was the age of the Mammoth

We would walk them, Walk with them side by side

They were silent

But knee and kept our secrets

We were the howling men and women

They the serene beings

The elephants of our collective memories

We killed

They had no voice, and no choice

But when we killed all the silent singing beings

We too lost our voices

We lost our ability to communicate through

The silent thread of mutual understanding

Like the whales in song

We bred dogs,

Tamed wolves to be dogs,

Tamed dogs to be humans

And in doing so forgot our animal selves

But also gave our souls to the dogs

Becoming dogmatic

And no longer Mammotic

This summer sun

 I recall the sun before it went down

Burning brightest

Like a jewel in the crown

I recall the orchard, and the Bristol Down

Oh the Summer sun, just before it goes down

And all the memories of forgotten elephants

Who sit in rooms

Trying to remember

And yet they have nothing to regret

No there's nothing to regret

When you can forget

I remember dances

And halls

By the sea

And taking chances

Like glances of infinity

And in those eyes that seem to stretch

On to forever

I got lost in eternity

Oh now I can remember

And certain sun's faces

And glances in halves

The King or the aces

Turn up like the cards

And I can remember

I took a gamble on you

Your eyes were the dice

And you rolled them true

Double sixes a pair

Of diamonds shone true

Oh I can remember

The chance taken on you

Yes I'll never play that hand again

Not the same anyway

The tables have turned

The players gone away

And I have learned

To remember it's true

That the sun will burn brighter

When the days nearly through

For there's nothing but living

And loving to do

So come hug me tighter

For I'm swimming to you

Do the skeleton walk

 I do the skeleton walk

All bones and elbows

Like Jesus on my cross of crutches

All trussed up, a walking puppet

Stilts of Dali's elephants in deserts

Top heavy

But now loose hung together by sinews

just what is needed for my frame

"Hang loose"

The Romans said to Jesus

When they saw him pinned up there

We make a crucifix of suffixes and prefixes

We make a bonfire of our vanities

And shatter the mirrors of man in God's images

Ever receding an infinity of apes

Ever diminishing the square root of our madness

Human ideas are bound by shapes

None can get beyond their own boundaries

All must, like Lucrece, give way to our rape

and hold in the eyes the pennies of badness

And let fly the scarves that would hang our own nape

Elephant time/ elephantine

 

Doing my best in a shortfall, to be gone in a can of

Cortisol and hair spray

In tooth decay in nominal equities

And innumerable beauties

And telegraphic controversies of hook liners

That shape the turtle dove into some angelic being

And give her a golden egg imbibed with meaning

And when in actualness the forecast looked grim

Because high above antennae rooftops swam the peregrine

 

And even if these wolves are called the sea, and gems are not cut by diamond dromedary

Then the lump she was concealing in her peacock pouch

Was gemlike glistening

Heraldic and fizzling to be close to social exclusion 

And far from some happy place

To see in isolation solace

And yet to laugh in loneliness’s face

If that were the attainable state

I shouldn't care where the pendulum swings

And if I am a free bear

Then this forest of time

Should not be thickets of problems,

I should see the wood for the trees,

But slowly I see the hunter stalking me

Through the long grass

With his elephant in his spy glass

The elephant in the room

No one is talking about him

Just the way he likes it

He likes to be left alone

An elephant is always solitary when he's far from home

Though this doesn't mean he's made of stone

It just means he's packed his trunk is on his way

To where I could not say,

To what time or place

can you find him pining for the forest again

For the memory of ivory is like the scent of burning wood

And bonfires of his vanities,

And tusks of really doing good

And ears of imperfection for to listen

To malapropisms and feet like starved mosquitoes

Spread-eagled and flattened without blood

Pachyderm

The thermal tongue that licks the peanuts

And the snake bark skin

Like a tree trunk, gnarled and thick, as the crusts of earth

On which his feet are treading.

Humanimal

It's a bad habit
So don't do it
You're not a rabbit
Get through it!
Yeah you're not an animal
So don't do it
It's a bad habit

You could be a Panda
Eating shoots and leaves
Then you see a tasty animal
Makes you give up what you believe
He's a vegetarian not a carnivore
And you're a human not an animal
So don't do it
It's a bad habit

You could be a Giraffe
On the prairie
Head in the clouds
Like a fairy
Well come back down to earth
See your human worth
You're not an animal
It's a bad habit

You could be a monkey
Throwing banana skins
Trying to trip up others
In their times of sin
Well you're not an animal
Since Adam and the fall
He bit the apple
It's a bad habit

You could be an elephant
With his long trunk
Happy when he's relevant
But not when he's a drunk
You see he forgot
To remember he's an animal
But you are not
Don't do it,
It's a bad habit

You could be a flammingo
Standing in the pink
He can stand on one leg
After he's had a drink
But he's an animal
Don't be a fool
Don't do it
It's a bad habit

So lock up the zoo
The human's out his cage
There'll be hell to pay
And put heaven in a rage
You're not an animal
So don't do it at all
It's a bad habit
For all creatures great and small

A cheesy line

A pleasant scene

So nice and green - a riparian garden

Through the hills

The winding rills

Twist gentle then they harden

The Summer spring in elysian fountain

Coy carp rest easily in reflected black

The lilies float

In moon mountain craters

Elephant footprints smack

A trinket for a cat

A piece of reed

She swallows flat

The tiger and the mouse

Both escape near Martin’s House

For the followed, swallowed fog

Has escaped the abandoned dog

And the buzzing dragon fly

Beneath the cat’s claw does lie

Out upon the frosted moor

Where grass snakes knock on the door

To the anima enlightened

Just the wolf don’t be frightened

Petitudes

The Darling Pets of May

May:

The legs of the Elephant

Not scare at a mouse

The eyes of a cat

Not burgle a house

The ears of a rat

Not abode any louse

Nor the fever of a dog

Run hot as a spouse

May:

The nose of a rabbit

Be tickled by a trout

The kindness of a kitten

Be smitten by a stout

The radar of a Russian

Be rattled by a lout

Or the uncle of a Kingdom

Be carbuncled by a bout

May:

The hubris of a herbivore

Be preyed on by a quail

Or the vertigo of an eagle

Be debedded by a snail

The notion of a cuckoo

Be knocked by a tail

Or the hailing of a whale

Be disgruntled with a nail

May:

All these and likewise

Never come into fruition

Or else the trees upon which they grow

Be banished from Eden’s Kingdom

May never a more saintly brow

Be mopped up by a vet

And therefore good kind Gents and Ladies

Do look after your goodly pets