Pocahontas

 Well, the sweetness

In the water

When I taste your lips

And fleetness of the daughter 

Of the time we kissed

Who is the king who shall fall

And fold his arms

Like Napoleon down waterfalls

Losing all his charms

Biting at the bit

I hold her away from harms

But Geronimo keeps

falling in the forests

And breaking all the farms

Oh Pocahontas come and marry

me

Come with your pan pipes

And sing around my tree

Oh Pocahontas

Won't you come and marry me

And we'll be gone by the morning

Before the doves are set free

Back on the farm

 Oh yes, I'm back on the farm                                      

Oh yes, I'm, back on the farm

It can't do me any harm

the animals are a balm

The river's quite calm

And I'm back on the farm

 

Well, they sold the world

And they sold the soil

But for all I heard

It never got spoiled

Oh yes, I'm back on the farm

 

Bring me a shot gun

I'm gonna shoot some rats

They better get running

Before they goes splat

Oh yes, I'm back on the farm

 

The dogs are howling 

It's a silver moon

And the fox is prowling

He'll be round here soon

Oh yes, I'm back on the farm

 

Well with every songbird

There comes the spring

And in the morning

 I hear the nightingales sing

Oh yes, I'm back on the farm

Knock me down with a zoo loo telegraph

 Well it's been a night and a day

of delight

It's been a grey sky rising

But the sway and the way of

The newly threshed hay,

I feel my spirit's horizon

I suckered the punch

I learned to eat lunch

Without much food nor much money

But no lunch is free

And a supper's not a tea

Not unless 

Your thieves are inviting 

COME TAKE ME TO DINNER

i am a winner

I beg and I steal and hob nob

And the cheek of the butter

Is in the pudding you nutter

Don't go off before you finish the job

Of salient cheese

All down on my knees

Begging for a piece of mind

Well you can give me a jerk

Or a forty dollar shirt

But it won't ease the trouble I find

I'm back on the farm

But they sold the estate

No you can make hay or you can placate

The love of a hansom mare or jump gate

 Just let her run wild

Until it's too late

THEn CLOSE THE STABLE DOOR

And watch her escape 

for time is a post-modern construct of late

And women need boundaries

just as men do

You would hear me say such diplomatic make-do

Such poppy-cock of reason

OR WHAT A TREASON

 But brother no woman is blameless

And I am capricious

When they are delicious

But it's just a season of mind

I only knew one saint in my life

And I tried to marry her

But she wouldn't be my wife

She would never stab me in the back it was

true

So I had to do it

And passover to you

We all survived the ghettoization

Of souls

But glass houses couldn't stem

Our migration

And now it is gone there is more to go wrong

Than a bottle of bud and a barrel of rum

Deer Jon

 It's been five hours since I was at the factory 6 am, my wife is going to work as a secretary in the local primary school. I feel sick, a kind of cold sweat. Maybe I'm ill. You'll be fine she tells me as she goes out the door - remember to put the chicken on for when I come home. I get up pull on some slacks and go downstairs to make a cup of tea. The mail has arrived. A letter from the gas company saying they need to inspect our boiler. It packed up last week and I had to call a repairman. 

As he was fixing it, I felt sure I saw something in his eye, some redness there. It's this look some people around town have been getting. The librarian had it. A little distant far away somehow. Like they are talking to you but somehow not you or not quite there.

The toast pops up and the kettle is steaming and it brings me to my senses. I can't get over that feeling that something has changed. I remember the cadavers being rolled off the back of the truck into the factory doors.

In town I go in to the supermarket to buy a chicken for tonight, but the venison is on special offer. I don't know why but I pick it up and proceed to find some other ingredients for a nice venison dish. Potatoes, some red wine, herbs.

I throw myself into cooking it and look up all the ways to make a delicious dish. There is the carving and dicing, and after a couple of hours I've finished. My wife comes home, and somehow I've made it magical, there are candles and wine and we get on. I can talk to her like I haven't been able to in months, and suddenly the tension is gone, we fall into each other and make love. I don't think she knows what has happened to me. I don't think I know, but I sleep for the first time in weeks, the sleep of the innocent. 

The next day I feel like a new man. I'm going to find a job today honey, no more moping around the house. There is a mushroom picking farming up on the Mendip hills and I drive out that way. I heard they were hiring  and you just need to turn up. It seemed like a good opportunity. After eight hours my fingers were stained dark brown with soil and my clothes were dirty. One of the workers Alf talks to me about truffle hunting, and wild pigs in the woodlands. I can feel the cool soil, the wet leaves and smell of the rain on the ground around silver birches.

At the end of the shift I get  in my car and drive home. It has got dark by then, and there is a little rain. All of sudden a stag leaps out of the undergrowth and collides with the front of my Toyota. It careers across my bonnet and its antlers jam into my windscreen. I come to a screeching holt and its thrashing legs are beating the panel of the bonnet. As I climb out it has slid down to the front of the car. I crouch down because its crumpled mass of wet fur and legs is still breathing. It is panting hard, its mouth is open and its tongue lolling. As I reach out a hand to stroke its fur it makes eye contact with me. It fixes me in its gaze and I am transfixed. All of a sudden it rights itself, shakes its pelt and staggers off like a drunk at first and then leaps more confidently. 

I am taken a back and lean on my bonnet and then I look around into the surrounding woodland. The eyes of what look like ten deer are staring back at me. From both sides of the road. Ignoring the damaged windscreen and bonnet, I climb back into the car as quickly as I can and pull away. I race back down the hill to Shepton Mallet. 

Cow turns, don't Kow Tow

 Cows in the field

Just as I was praying

Saying me Psalm,

The cows came from behind

Meaning to do me harm

But I kept reading

I kept putting my hands together

Each time I turned they had advanced at a toppling speed

And the trampling sound as of thunder came up

I turned again and they were struck dumb

By my lightning speed

It is easy to surprise a cow herd, indeed

Make eye contact is the first rule

Let them see you are not afraid

For they equate fear with walking away 

Therefore do not give them any excuses

For their abuses of animal power

And sheer brawn over brains

Just like the Hawk

You've got to keep looking over your shoulder

Look them in the eye,

If you feel you're going to die

Stand your ground

Don't run

The cows are going home

Under the sun

And lay me down in pastures green

And the beasts of the field

Shall be your friend

Oh don't be a coward,

But be a cow herd

Stand up straight like a cowboy

Why do we never learn those skills in England?

Where arguably we have the greater chance of being

Attacked by livestock

Being a rambling nation

And having the majority of foot paths crossing 

Through farming land?

Teach a British school boy how to lasso

Or how to holla at a cow

How to barter at a cattle auction

How to herd and how to gather

Oh give us a bovine education

Let us know our roots as a farming nation

Make us heed how to stop a stampede

Give us proof to contend with hoof

And know just how long to pale out the tether

make us cherish our boot leather