Dead Angel’s Of the Railway

Clipped winged angels bow their heads in the garden

Sitting there decaying waiting for death

As railway drinkers sip at the tables

They sleep in communion like the argent and sable

With the railway sleepers and the drunk’s breath

Romano nosed bartenders serve out the beers

As from the same cup drink the true ones and pretenders

And radio silence cuts the rabbit’s ears

Across the noiseless countryside time is called

At closing time songs are sung through

And fly past towers of tenderness rhyme

That long ago a railway ran through here

When peat workers trudged their black shoes through snow

But all that’s left now for to show

Is the footprints of birds that dance on their toes

Yet when I have slept, like the railway sleepers

I am the rhine, the south drain, the rain

It is buried deep in a nerve bundle of the solar plexus consciousness

Calling me back there to live

At closing time

When the glasses clink

And the voices fall silent

Who will remember the dead angels in violet?

With their wings cut off as if from shame

Holding eternity in their palms

Old as the peat beneath them

Decaying so quietly without violence

Sometime close to dawn

When the midnight choir grows silent

And the rains pita- patter on the window

Then the shadow of a rush of thought

Has cascaded through consciousness

Like a waterfall of memory

So precious and startling as ice flow

So transmutable as vapours

Which flow around us

That the single state of being

Is as three, a trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit

Or ice, water and steam vapour

That before the dawn we are in phase all three

The Fisher king

 I met some fishermen in the showers

Of April on the pier

They said March or die

I said how can I

When you've covered my DNA queer?

You've queered the pitch

You've tarred and bitch

You men of roads and gears

You've rolled my soul

In stones and potholes

And I've come up covered in

leers, jeers, 

I've risen up like a mountain

But my head has been eroded down

And now all that's left is a reptilian husk

Of the royal stem which once wore a crown

I met the fishermen

They said do you like fishing?

Are you going fishing

Well are you?

In Weymouth, I said,

some do, he said

He had this sweaty loss on him

This punter's cruelty

Of the King Arthur in Glastonbury

It's like a sickbed

They use a Noble name

And the customer's think 

Somehow through Osmosis

Or through drinking the beer

That they've absorbed some of his might

And right and Majesty

But it's built on a poisonous well

And they are drinking from a poisoned chalice

And if they're looking for the Holy Grail

Well they've found a town called Malice

I don't think Glastonbury is well

Down there it's a fishing port

It's a hard place, it's a cruel sport

Fishing

They would be better off calling it

The Bait and Tackle

As that's all they end up doing

Trying to catch each other out

Laying traps for unsuspecting fish to bite

I met some fishermen 

and asked them how they bait their fish

They said we can use maggots, worms, flies

Mosquitoes

Depends on what size Fish

The prize determines the size

Of insect

I said how did you learn to bait like that?

They told me years of practice

And night school

We had to join a guild

The FOMB

The FOMB I said pray what does that stand for?

Fear of mis-baiting? I suggested

No they said it stands for

The Federation of Master Baiters

Oh I said you must feel great pride

They nodded and carried on

The Horse's shoe

 Oh Jamie

The polish on your glasses

Is not same

I feel I forget my own

Name

Ee

There's a hill named frog

It's drunk up all the grog

And

I think that it's such a 

Shame

ee

Well you run a bar like a Queen

We are so far

But ever green

we think We're middle aged

But actually it saged

The wisest amongst us

Is never seen

I had 2 pints of Blindman's bluff

The blond beer

Was the golden stuff

You served it like a queen

It was all so Steve McQueen

But you know I'm really no

Film buff

If there was some place to

Leave my package

Like DPD or Amazon

Raffle

Perhaps the post office

Had returned

Would you like to show Saint George

Just how we remember his name?

We shine the flagpole

We raise

The flag of blame

I prefer blame to shame

But both have skin in the game

Both can make the conscience flinch

Both can make the face pained pink

It is an honest account

At least that's what alcohol amounts

To

And no, no, no doubt

His wife would have something to shout

About

Oh Jamie

You drive men mad

With your body shaped like a jar

So curvy, it's like you're a star

Of the overwrought at the bar

I have to say I noticed

But do I think you'd be 

The one 

Making friends with an alcoholic

Is not the way to beat

The cholic

He already has your number

Written on

His shirt sleeves' umbra

Shadow of the fallen race

Yet he is the one

Of poor taste

No religious nut is he

Only One flew over the cuckoo's tree

And state and all is free

When we let all things just be