Count to ten

 When you get back in

When you get home

Will you count to ten tonight

Leave the dog a bone,

Leave the ringer off the phone

Will you count to ten tonight

Oh those leaping sheep

As the blackness creeps

And you begin to lose control

Oh the man steps in

When the ghost flies out

Will you count to ten tonight

I had a million pins

A million stars

They were tired of staying so bright

I said now count to ten

And then blew them out

Will you count to ten tonight

Star man

 You have to see

That I said I loved you

With my eyes and not

My tongue

This means 

I wish you sweet lullabies

But not another rung

I climbed the ladder to you

Up in the stars which sung

Cold about stories from mars

And the man in the moon who hung

Bear and fish story

 Life etc a glossary of terms

Be for a bear who lives in the forest

And stealthily catches the salmon

F for the fish who swims upstream

And is caught in the sunlight's gleam

The bear caught the fish

But the fish said

Why'd you want to eat me

For my shining white body

For my gleaming scales

Or because I'm fast in the water

While you are slow and clumsy

I am not the bear protested as slow

As you claim

For I've caught you or is that not the same?

While you may have caught me

Many other faster fish have slipped through

So what was it you wanted me for?

Good point said the bear and threw

Her back in

Then he thought to himself

That fish tricked me

And made me think I could catch a better fish 

Than she

Oh I am a slow clumsy bear as she says

But despite this he kept on fishing

And caught other fish who did not complain

The next summer he was fishing again

And he caught the same talking fish

That's twice now, said the fish

Just as the bear was about to eat her

What is it you have against me? When there

Are plenty of other perfectly good fish in this stream?

Well I don't know what you mean

Said the Bear

I'll show you

And with that

The fish held the bear's head in her flippers

And kissed him a full lip-smacking kiss on the mouth!

What did you do that for, stammered the bear

As he staggered back in shock

Well I thought I'd teach you a lesson

You can do more than eat with your mouth

Or talk slow stupid words

You can love and be kind instead

I see said the bear, can we try that lesson again?

Yes why not, said the fish, as long as you promise

To put me back in the stream soon or I shall suffocate

The bear agreed, and they went on kissing until

The fish began to beat her tail

Which told the bear to drop her back into the water

To save her life

She swam on upstream and gave a glance and a wink

Back at him

And the bear who had never thought of fish like that

Went on with his daily life

But instead of eating fish he took to eating berries instead

Only by the next year he'd forgotten his lesson

And was again hunting the fish in the stream

That went through his territory

I'm from the forest he said

And they are from the stream

And we could never be together again

Only in a dream

Which the bear had actually

Nightly

That he and the fish would somehow be married

she came to him again then

Into his paws and she slipped up to his hairy bear mouth

Her silver fish lips

And her silver scale back seemed to feel like a bear

And her flippers became like claws that

Wouldn't let him go

Then he felt himself becoming more and more

Like a fish

He would swim up the river with the salmon

And jump up the falls

And they called him their bear brother

Fish bear, bear-fish

But he would get cold and tired of swimming

While the strong sleek salmon swam on

He had to rest on the river bank beside the stream

And so he always wandered back home in the end

Finally she came again and he caught her

And he would not let her go

He wanted to kiss her

But she said no

For you have tried to eat

My brothers and sisters again

But I tried to became a fish like you

And I couldn't change not fully

I still have to have my forest to live in

But why can't you live her with me

I can dig you a pool and you can stay?

But I need the running water

I need to move or I shall die

You can try, he said, you can try as did I!

So she agreed to try and he built her an outlet

A kind of watering pond with an offshoot

Of her stream where she could shelter in the

Shade of the trees

Where the water flowed not so strong

And he could sit upon a rock

And sing her a song

And she, being s fish with a good pair of lungs

or gills really joined in along

And their bear fish song could

Be heard throughout the ringing mountains

And onto the hills in the valleys 

And across the fields

He shrill harmony, like a wine glass rung

And his a deep vibrato alto bass, tenor sung

All the growling, and howling and all the

silver water quick mercury calling

As he fellow salmon went a leaping

Up the waters falling

They loved and they lived with each other

daily and nightly under the stars

They embraced and kissed the face

Of forever

But the time came when she had to leave him 

and return back to the sea

And he was as sad as a sad bear could be

But he knew she couldn't stay

He just thought that he 

Might try to became a river boat captain and sail

Out to sea

And follow her out into the wide ocean

Not a place for a bear from the mountain havens

But believe you me he loved her and would have

seas a seven if only he could be by her side. 

dreams

 Oh my heart's on the wet stone

And my sorrow's the leaves

And I'm feeling so all alone

And I yet I have to believe

We all were made of bone

To dust we must cleave

The love of another one

Is just only too brief

I've been searching in the gutters

and the streams

And I hear someone mutters

Their life dreams

Looking in the river of stars

That gleam

And in the windows of cars

That beam

Searching for some pity in this town

Searching up and searching down

Looking for some pity in this city

But what I find is mean, lacking dignity

What has happened to the dreams of the man

Who writhes around drinking from a cider can

What is there in life to which he clings

Life to him seems a wretched thing

Can you spare him a look

Can you give to her a book

Let him read of what it sings

That life indeed is a wonderful thing

Searching for some pity in this town

Searching up and searching down

What I find I cannot fully tell

For whom the bell tolls, it's for you as well

tAKE ME DOWN

 I should have held you by my light hands

And walked you soldierly over our dark lands

But you were motherly and smoldering and hot

And I crushed like in limekiln tongs some pot

But shining like the light of kings i thought not

Since you are made of stranger things than rot

And grottos or the pearls of Queens who trot

Around the the grounds of palatial scenes shot

Just take me down to bathe in your ice streams

Just lend me your ears and listen to my dreams

I have stars in my hair and a beard of dust

For we all are a mix of air and astronaut lust

Love upon Love/ upon all

 

I came upon loves fence

Out from a walk in wilderness

And sat there for a while

Many a thought did come to me 

As I rested upon loves stile

And many a feeling too

Though so fleeting were the clouds above

That soon I abandoned love

and walked on

In that time all was white and fine

For the briefest moment all was bright

I said good bye to blackest night

And in my hand

I felt her hand

In my heart I heard her voice

Each was nothing

but ever most

She was too real

Yet she seemed a ghost

Each was hard yet soft

In my dilemma I had no choice

I had to return to love

Either to win the moon and stars

or to lose all of creation

Either to be bold to match the feeling

Or as ash and star dust

be blown away

Nothing was near yet nothing far

As all in Love's landscape

had been changed by trust

And silence moved my very soul

Yet in my heart

I heard music of harps

And all this I found in loves place

This love I found in her sweet face

Stars and Bucks

 It takes a lot of bucks

To get to the stars

To the black espresso coffee

Of space

Where God is a barista

And stirs in the galaxies

And he sprinkles stars like sugar

All the way

Oh it takes a lot of stars to make a universe

It takes

A lot of Bucks they're far away

And if you could take a single shot of rocket fuel

Would you reach for the stars today?

Who thinks

Who thinks we can get there?

Who thinks we can get there today?

I'm just sitting down here on a bar stool

Drinking a coffee to the milky way

The star-bucked Martyr

 Oh how the stars bucked me

They threw me off indeed

I thought I was dying for a cause

Or a need

In fact I died for my own greed

Selfish as a human will

The stars they taught me a lesson still

Do not follow or ride our train

Around and round the earth again

You'll get dizzy

It's all in vain

The Star-bucked Martyr cried again

If I should go down in flames

Let the stars spell out my name

But they ignored her single claim

For stars are no man's fool

And no woman's gain

They follow their own rules

So don't get cross

If you find your stars are lost

The banner still shall be held high

On the spot you came to die

Dusty's New Year Adventure

 Well the champagne had flowed

And party poppers had popped

And Bernie and Shaun went for a midnight jaunt

Down the long icy road

With Dusty well stowed

Inside Shaun's green coat

They danced a merry tune under the stars

Dusty was not quite so sure himself

But then they arrived at the garden

of the Theale commune

And he took this as his cue to scram

The field was enormous to Dusty's little mind

For by this time he had not ventured much

or broadened his horizons

However at two o'clock in the morning

The frost was quite enticing

And he frolicked through the field of white

Soon though he thought this is getting cold and I must hide

In a bush or hedge

Wonderland

 Are you going to the Wonderland?

Are you going my way?

For I wish to be there

For as long as I can 

oh

Are you going to stay?

Can you take me in your hand

Can you show me the way

I want to visit the Wonderland

I want to go down that way

Life is dreary and I can't stand

The traffic of the highway

And the leaves are falling

and turning brown

I don't want to go down that way

So if you visit the Wonderland

Be sure to bring me along

For I have a wish on the stars and the sand

That in time I will be strong

Enough to stay in your Wonderland

The river green

 Down by the river

The rolling green river

Down by the river I've been

Down by the river

Where flag Irises quiver

I saw the river Queen

She walked like a sliver

Of moonlight, a shiver

Wishing upon stars in the scene

When I went down by the river

Down by the river,

Down by the river green

Down by the river

Where the wag tails bob

And the fish in the flanks

Who finish the bank job

Of eating the insects

That live only to rob

Down by the river green

Down by the river

The rolling green river

Down by the river I've been

Down by the river

When my heart and my liver

Turned a skip for what I had seen

All the bally insects

Flying round like little jets

All the colours of the scene

But one that will know you

Even everytime show you

That's why the river runs green

Intransigence

 The yellow brick road

Yellow in the sodium of street lamps

Yellow orange in the saffron

Of Indian Restaurants

Where the beige curtain twitches with 

The interested interior

Friend or foe

Interloper or explorer

Back from the pub

On a night time's throw

Shepton in the red lights of traffic lights

Glows

Stop it says admire 'no-goes'

And standing still

And stationary waves

Like the stations of the railways

That say

Just stop

Do not pass GO

Unless Go straight to prison

For that is remembrance's rainbow

It's a kind of trump card, wild card

In the deck

When you get caught out for doing

What the heck

And your life just stops

In mid flow

On the railway tracks

Where nobody goes

Except your wife and children

Who follow you there

Then wave up at the prison bars

Or drink down in the square

Where else

What else to escape from this logic

Of intransigent history

That keeps you in its pocket?

But you must reach escape velocity

Eventually

No, anti-matter doesn't fall up

So neither can you despite how black

You may feel you must

reach for the stars

And generate momentum

It is who you are

In this space time continuum

X-ray-ted

 The X-ray machine was broken

They scanned his body

But nobody had spoken 

And no one saw the flash

But they suspect the skeleton stole the negative

Someone saw a whitebone stuck out

Leaving the door

The heel bone

Somehow the machine jammed

And his bones got left on the photograph

The man stepped out - the flesh man part

And said - I feel weak at the knees

Then he collapsed into a heap of skin and muscle

That will take some explaining

Thought the radiographer

Call in the cleaner she will have to hustle

Then the matron who was keeping an eye on the place

Peered around the corner

And saw the skeleton

wandering down the corridor

Looking a bit sheepish

It's the first time they've let him out,

Observed one old patient from his bed

Looks a bit unsteady on his feet - said another woman

Sure they should have given him a frame at least

Come on on young fellow

And a buxom dinner lady guided the skeleton

Into the canteen, would you look at you

There's not an ounce of meat on you

Lets get you well fed

You look like you need a good dinner

Meanwhile back in the X-ray Department

The Radiographer said to the cleaner

"Put that man on ice!"

Right away Dr, which ice might that be?

Don't you dr me, I'm not your medicine woman

I'm a physicist I work with the real, the here and now

Time and matter, and right now Time matters!

Is it of an essence Doctor?

Yes shirely, it surely is, if we don't cryogenically freeze

This man's vital organs, muscle and skin tones

There will be nothing but mush left

To reattach to his bones

To the emergency heart transplant room now

And talk to the surgeon

They surely must have a theatrical solution

So they rushed the man's remains

In the cleaners mop bucket

All along the corridors of power

up until well they thought

Fuck it!

Let's go in here - the ice room

And this was the winter palace where

They hung up the skins of those patients

Unfortunate enough to have missed their insides

And also the insides which were missing their skins

Eyeball missing their lids

And even some frozen parents who were missing their kids

And were put on ice until their kidnapped children

Had again been tracked down

The British government believe it stopped them worrying so much

Which of course it did

And so they hung up this man in there to freeze dry

Right now that's done and dusted let's track down his old bones

They must be walking around somewhere!?

Another nurse comes out Doctor, doctor!

Don't call me that I'm a radiographer, call me Mrs X

Alright Mrs X, well Mr Ray has gone missing from your department

Oh no, not another one!

Who on earth turned that X-ray machine back on?

I told them it was faulty, I told them it was flawed

But would they fix it would they ever?

They told me I was bored

And had too much time doing nothing in the day

Just twiddling my poor thumbs

Waiting for an X-ray

Well it came

Like bolt from the blue end of the spectrum

Like lightening from the Gods, in Ultraviolet detection

It was Infra-dig and Infra-red and they might have called it a day

But instead they called me Doris X and my machine Mr Ray

It should have been Mr Ree you see they say, because noone 'ere knows how it works

But I do you see I got a degree

In Nuclear Magnetoscopy  - I can spin the particles

And weave them waves and caused a knitting thread

To ball up inside your head

I can Tell an MMR machine from a catscan

And I can PET a man and call him a dog

I can read your palms like I read your bones

You it's all written in the stars

and in the sticks and stones

So it doesn't matter what you call it

Just as long as you say

I am Mrs X and I'm married to Mr Ray

There can only be one explanation for why it did go wrong

And that must have been when that Mrs Jones brought in his little son

And he didn't want to have the X-ray unless he had his Ted

So he brought poor Ted in there with him

And poor Ted wasn't hidden behind any lead

So I think he got a blast full-force of a dose of ray

And now he is X-ray-ted and he has been on his way

I saw him fly down the corridor, 

Surely more super than any Teddy before

this Super ted 

Clapping hands and smiling to all the patients poor

Oh surely this must be the reason

Why Mr Ray has lost Mojo for sure

We must find and trap this Superteddy

Before he does unknown damage

Oh come my little pretty -

Do you mean me Dr?

Yes of course I mean you Shirely,

And don't call me Doctor!

I am Mrs X, with my mean and perhaps dualistic X-ray machine Mr Ray

I won't let them take you away from me my love

It is lucky you are mobile on four wheels

We can just disguise you as a trolley and wheel you out of here

Shirely you can be the dead body ok!

Anything you say Doctor, I can do a good impersonation of a corpse

Of course you can Shirely of course you can!

Right next stop the morgue and from there to the outside car park where we will load

Mr Ray into my van.

Super-ted you won't escape my clutches now ah haha ha ha ...ha!

The bite of remorse

 The con climbed over the wall

He scaled the razors and barbs

And miraculously those little sabours

Left his flesh unharmed

The he ran with the spirit of a rabbit

Darting the spot lighted eye

The search the perimeter horizon

He was determined that he would not die

Next after swimming the short moat 

He found himself in the cemetry

At least when they measured his pulse

They'd note no unusual telemetry

So not to be down beat, he let his heart and feet

Rest a while

And the hint of a smile

Began to creep across his face

This graveyard was a god send, the peace and quiet

Ensured he'd be undisturbed for at least another few hours

Except then he remember, tomorrow was the Day of the dead 

There would be women bearing flowers

And men bowing their heads

At least for now he could rest in peace

Or at least that's what the tombstones said

He was overcome by tiredness and drifted into sleep

The veil of the other world opened up

And in his dreams he could peep

He saw the ghosts of his loved ones

Uncles aunts and cousins

And then he noticed something stirring in the bushes

But he was paralysed by sleep's soft bosoms

Suddenly a twig snapped

And he was jolted awake

Wide-eyed and blinking

He surveyed his surroundings

and it was all he could do to stop thinking:

Someone is watching me!

..Or something...

Nothing moved, and the night was still

But then a scurry a movement quick as a flash behind a grave stone

And then again it popped out two furry ears

And his nerves were allayed

Just a rabbit he softly spoke

And all tension left him as he got the joke

The lucky rabbit's foot, he remembered in his pocket

And rubbed it for good luck

Somebody up there must still love me

But as he looked up searching the night sky

Through the branches of the lime tree

He seemed to see two green jewels starring back at him

Unlike any stars he'd witnessed before

Then the realization dawned

Oh God a figure in the branches above

But it was too late

It, whatever 'it' was

Had swooped down upon him

And its superhuman strength had wrestled Joseph to the ground

It seemed a swirl

It was over in a flash

The creature had sunk its long fangs

Into his neck and was drinking his blood

Joseph began to feel weak

As his strength was leaving him

But it was beyond him to speak

The falling stars

The stars are falling down
In the city, in the town
They're falling from the steeples
Like jewels from a crown
They're falling from the tower
From the lapels of those in power
The stars are falling down

They're falling from the Christmas trees
The stars are falling in the cities
They're falling off the flags
Like antlers off the stags
The stars of the city are falling down

You look up from the gutter
And see them glitter in the sky
You think of all the utter
Business of truth telling over lie
And try to reach beyond to pluck them
For your piece of pie
But they fall between your fingers
Like tears fall when you cry

The stars are falling down this Christmas time
They're falling like the fairy dust
On twinkle town
They're falling from the tree
The stars of the bold and free
Falling down on you and me
In our prime