Tick-Tock

 Time was so long

Time was so far

Time to die today

Or not in a car

Time on my mind and

Time on the shore

Time after time

And Time again even more

I've had the time of, my life with you

And I've had a life time too

Time is your life, life is your time

Be you modern man

Or neanderthal dude

I've cut the time in half,

It was a time saver,

Take time to laugh

Snapshot of time's photograph

Who is that model on Time's magazine?

Who is the face of time, or the face of time's dream

Take a time out

Time is looked for, but unseen

Time phrases

 All the mountains of the mind

Come a crumbling like the time

That grows upon the wrist of mine

Where turtles twist and dragonflies divine

The certain water courses prime

For we are like water through the lime

That quenches thirst but never mime

Those shadows on the wall recline

As the sun dials back the time

I wish for this, but wishing passes

Like the sand down hour glasses

Past and present travels fastest

When we wish for what never lasted

Water clock

 I wish I could act like it never happened

I wish I could forget but I can't

Like you do

The sun across the fields

I remember like a glance

A look in the face

From the eye in the sky

Shining down in radiance

But I don't wish to conflate or paint

A false image

The mascara foundation

That covers the nation

In false eyelashes and expectations

There is enough that's already made up

I just can't deny the break up

Didn't shake me to my foundations

Yet what I build my house upon

Are ideals and values that are shared

They mean I can bear the petty

Inconstancies of another's frail heart

Or capricious moods

Regular like the tides of the moon

And yet

Without such forces

Would life still run its courses?

It shan't

It is a water clock dripping

And a river rolling

And the time you dip in your toe

Is never the same part

time turkey

 I used to lie in the gravel of the sun

For hours and hours

Used lie above the woodshed

On the virginia creepers

And examine the soft jews ear

That grew on the elder

That stood by the slat wooden fence

That sometimes blew down in the wind

I used to watch the cat walking along the fence top

And then she would travel down

and up the side of the house plot

I had a heart to love

All the bees in the foxgloves

But I can't say that now

I used to feel care free chasing butterflies in fields

Or watching snails wandering underneath Rhubarb leaves

I used to have that desire to find out all about the world

But I don't have that now

In winter running

 In Winter running through the past

What lives are these, these lives that last?

And turn fresh leaves into the grass

What lives are these, these lives that last?

In summer, blossom crowns the crows

And all black death goes rolling home

When bones are dug and bonanzas known

What lives are these that rest in stone?

In winter running through the spring

Time's tap runs fast, what joy life brings

But in these days of autumn glass

I see darkly, dimly how all things pass

In winter running through the trees

Brave squirrels defending terroritries

And crouching ducks waddle down the lawn

As I walk out soon just past dawn

In winter running summer's sand glass

Hours, minutes, seconds pass

But I count no grains

For no grain lasts

Except the truth, yet no shadows it casts

a chance hand

 Bitter tears fall in a bitter lake

Full of all of my mistakes

Rain drops from a grey sky

Where rainbows snap

And birds don't fly

But I call to mind the dream

I once had of a forest stream

Where we walked you and me

Hand in hand for an eternity

Of time, of time

That precious thing

We sell by the pound, the ounce and bean

We sell each plot like we hadn't a lot

And use it up, all we've got

But if you can buy my time

Can I buy yours?

Or do your give it freely

Like the sea lapped shores

Where we skim pebbles

Over time's waves

The ripples echo out

The drowning man saves

himself

Or someone lends him a hand

It could be a second, a minute

Or in an hour, he understands

This may be the last chance

In a sea of blue

Where I skim pebbles

That skip so lightly to you

Time's wall

 Are you barely holding on?

Quiet desperation is the English style

In a struggle with the Gods

And yourself for a while

Until something splits 

The pea breaks

The willow cracks

And a viper spits

And Then you fall 

To endless

Time

Oh Time's wall

The wall of now

For ever we climb

Trying to reach it

The present moment

Like a summit

That we keep sliding

Off of

Like ice

You see you cannot ride 

Or overshoot the wave

That crests ever on

And never breaks

But is always breaking and being reclaimed

The endless cusp of tomorrow

Though you can look through if you are brave

And see tomorrow and tomorrow save

A moment from the future

A moment from the now

Like an eternal suture

heals over

A wounded brow

And the closer to the summit 

The more clearer your vision through

The medium of tomorrow

Time's eternal blue

Ocean of forever

Man your surly crew

All hands on deck

Else we break our necks

When we try to push on through

Keep reaching for tomorrow

Keep striving for today

Keep letting go of sorrow

Like a pearl lost to the clay

It will be found by someone else

Another day

And its wisdom impart

Like the shaking bough

Interprets the wind's thoughts in its way

Isn't it time?

 Well we never were built to last forever

And it's a shame but it isn't a crime

To know that life lives light as a feather

And its name is "isn't it time?"

Isn't it time you start living in the present?

Isn't it time today, for tomorrow's too late

Isn't it time how life can be oh so pleasant

When you let today be and close sorrow's gate

Oh the birds fly with the wisps in the willow

And the birds speak in whispers and rhyme

And I heard sweet love was left on your pillow

So now let's make ends meet it's around about time 

I walk down the same streets of a wintertime's grime

Eat the same meat, feel the crisp winds billow

through swaying leaves of Birch and Scot's pine

I shed the same tears that I shed last year dear

For the same love that I missed in my prime

Well isn't it time?

I asked isn't it time? That we just live in the present

And let tomorrow go up it's own mountain climb

Oh, well isn't it time?

Castle clock

 The castle walls of Bishop's rock

That tick away with tidal clock

And listen on a body engraved by time

Listen to the water clock,

Time it rolls on

Ever the peaks and troughs ensue

Lapping at the laces

sapping at the shoe

Clapping hands in races

Of the egg and spoon

Holding up your swimming aces

Letting flags of colour croon

Body mark of the waves

The Bishop's hats, the white slaves

Driven by relentless whip

Driven kind or thirsty at the water's lip

I'm a high tide, and then a low

Pulled by the moon in tow

None can escape its sway

I'm waist deep in time

The further out I wade

Time's ocean laps the shore

And ripples underwater tones

If this air we breath is living

Then underwater is the sinking stone

Forever marking river bone

Ever reaching for the sunset

Scrambling an infinite egg

The gold we tried to gather

The rainbows loot we never get

Sun brows knitted, finally release

And time like a knife cuts us loose 

Into a land of blessed peace

Can we ever touch the sun

Or find the horizon

Some time when I am neck deep

I will look to you

To hold the tides of time back

Oh just before we both shall sleep

Beat the clock

 I was going to a fancy-dress party dressed as an egg timer

Then another friend said

We'd better start running if we we want to get there on time

I said who ever heard of an egg timer getting to a party on time

And she said it isn't cool is it?

I said no, now set me.

Alright she said and gave me a turn

We better start running she said

I've got calories to burn

So as I was running down a dark alley

A mugger stopped me and asked

Could I take his mugshot

I said it wasn't my cup of tea

And anyway I was hot

He said you're boiling mate, I think you're burning up

In fact I think you have a temperature

I said we are trying to beat the clock

He said let me help you and gave me a 

clock round the ear

I said I think you've cracked it

He said I think you're shell shocked

Well this other mugger then appeared

I said oh here's your brother from another mugger

He said no that's just my tea bag friend

I said well I guessed that should do it

I can see how this story  will end

No, no he said, I think you've misunderstood

We are on are way to the same party

But we got lost in the neighbourhood

So we ran on together, down blind alleys and

Dead ends

But finally we came to the right cul-de-sac 

they like to call daggers bends

I could the point they were trying to make

With a name like that it offends

And the wolf pack were glaring out their windows

Like they were hungry to make friends

Well I fought them tooth and claw

And finally we made it to the front door

Where the part was in full swing

Come on let's go in you said

But I haven't brought anything

Look you got here on time

And that isn't a crime

Not until your egg timer rings

The nick of time

 I was on my way

On my way down

I had no words to say

Booted out of town

But I met you, just as the clock chimed

Yes you found me just in the nick of time

I was caught between the devil and the blue,

Oh I was nearly drowned

But you reached out a hand 

And you took mine

And then I knew

Just like a king is crowned

That I met you just in the nick of time

Oh the jokes they do

Come from all around

And they make me feel

Like some kind of clown

But then I saw you, and a silence fell

And my movements became like a mime

I didn't need words because you could always tell

That when I met you it was just in the nick of time

Measuring time

 One foot in Hungary, one foot in the dark

One foot on a higher plain

One foot in the grave

Six feet of the millipede

The ant on a trampoline

One foot, Rabbit thumper

Hologram I've seen

One foot, two foot, three foot, four

Push me backwards through the open door

Too afraid to step through

Too afraid to fly

Too afraid to live,

You may be too afraid to die

Fear yes in feet, measured in inches or miles

Fear like a far away train

Rumbling for a while

Something on in the background

Through the static noise

I can hear a pin prick

Feel a pea through a mattress

Feel a foot or two

Round the clock

 The Queen is nine to five

No she is 95

Wanted dead or alive

 About the birds

The hollow man

Holds open his hand

And the sand falls

Ah where have I been in the blood filled night

Feasting on, drinking on blood

Organic in a panic

A feeding frenzy

This bottled cure

This open door

Called life

Slitting the gullet

Of the quivering mullet

Who freely swims

Free form

Catching waves and spears heads of the braves

In my teeth

And teaching the tides

Too brief

About time, and time's reef

Where corals and shoals

of Elephantine fish

Wade and wander

Like Hercules after

His epic battle

In the deeps

And sure though I would hunger for a rooted rubber

To erase the mistakes

But all is nothing

Bar the Aspen shake

And I awake from a dream

Where have I been

I woke up, I was dead

I climbed out of my grave

Why is everyone looking at me

Like that?

I reached up from the moist grave

The cold grave

I believe in the Spring

That all grows green

I believe the song birds sing

And tired arms swing

Eyes that were closed will open

And the egg that was whole

Will soon be broken

Where have I been?

Underground

My flesh is hanging from my bones

This thing called life still

Clings to me

Is not contained in the body

Though the body needs its feed

The spirit cries out and bleeds

If blood is life

I have lost mine

Yet still I live

Or hunger to live

Am I dead

Or is in wanting to live

The desire to be alive

Life

In that case even the dead can live

If they want it hard enough

Am I wanted dead or alive

Oh to be wanted

By a thing

A beast

A stranger

A hunter

Or a prey 

Who wants to be hunted

It is the wanting that matters

Conflict in time

 Well the ring it was broken

And well the geese they had flown

And it was as if we had never spoken

Like a breeze down a deep old well

But if you choose yours over mine

You got know it was just a conflict in time

And I saw the language of token

Being spoken at the grand hotel

And I saw the window was broken

Just like our love cast a spell

Well if you prove you need me and mine

I can say it feels just like a conflict in time

And the fuse was lit in the valley

And it lit up the dark caves as well

And the turn of the shaft of the drill cut the draft

From the miners who tell

Me all about the sun dials that they miss trapped down there in hell

But if you blow out their candle and laugh down the line

You can't stand there and tell me it was too much to handle

When we both know it was just a conflict in time

Yes I thought I knew how you were stuck

Yes I lifted the bell, that hung on your photograph

Of you riding right into hell,

And I rang you on the telegraph

But the operator complained of the knell

When she rang off your voice came so soft

Saying darling well why can't you tell

That it is not just how you left that night

It was the light down the stair well

That flickered on and off, like a witch's cough

And I needed you to stay on the line

Well what I need it doesn't matter she said then the line went dead, 

she hung off

I knew then why the angels fear to tread

Because it's all just a conflict in time

A Telling Time

 I've been out the back of the wrongside of tomorrow

And I've gotten back what I beg, steal or borrow

And although I might lack the eyes to see through sorrow

When my tears dry, where they lead I must follow

And nature cried in the heartland of the sun

The creator tried to bury what he had begun

But bring forth Mary, bring back Jesus the son

And all of those quarries of moon rock by the ton

They fill up my stocking, they go knocking at my door

They slide down the bannister, of the memories of before

And pull open the cannister, the rocket ship that endures

Through space I'm now the traveller to a love I adore

I see her in the gardens, in the pearly realms

Where queens walk in the park under the boughs of Elms

And who knew their shoulder sparks would hold tight the helm

As the nation's ship goes sailing, though darkness overwhelms

She is my Captain, I am her slave

And as we go sailing through disaster, I try to master each wave

But if someone throws me a lifeline, I know it's myself I must save

And in the process rescue all my hopes and dreams from the grave

Timeways

 If she could have waited, if she could have stopped

And seen what she was walking into

But that plate glass window

Of the future

Hit her square in the nose

She could see through it

But she could not touch the otherside

It was a bar to her outside world

And memory works like that

Memory of the event

Of the frame, the piece of time we call now

We say instant

But what is our concept of time  - but based on memory

And what is memory but an image, a sound or a smell

A taste, but what does it evoke

But a time,

So is time the conscious experience of the thing

Or the thing itself in space

And is time the bundle of emotions

Felt at her embrace

Or the unachievable other, the perfection in its place

Our idealized psychological conception

Of all the unrequited desires that we trace

Or our own projection of ourselves

Onto that other person's face

So what is time?

Why can the reality of now not be returned

Through some alchemy of science and art

To that sacred past

That hallowed space in youth

But it never can because in truth

Everything we have we lose

And yet light can travel at such a pace

That time seems not to pass through grace

And in this quantum intuition

Is where God and love can trace

And cross paths to weave a whirl wind

That connects beings across this great divide

So that feelings cannot hide

And all the martyrs who have died

Are reborn

And all the loves that ever danced at dawn

Are sworn again, not in vain

Nor in anguish or the pain of fear of loss

But to bear the cross

Of knowledge of this truth

As lightly as they bear the touch of rain

Upon their shoulders, on their roof

And in the soldier's heart

In the solders of the circuits of his brain

The electrons rearrange

And he sees her as if he always knew her

And always would in this way 

Once upon a time machine

 Once upon a time machine, I went walking 

In the bar

The bar broke bent

And shape-shifted

And time was called done

And after hours I slipped forth into the dead of night

The streets they were a dirty, empty of all the time of light

I asked the bobby on the beat could he spare the time

He looked at me from his high watch

Said I can spare you none

I asked the guard did he try hard to kill the time he had

But he was bereft for the time left

Had for him turned out bad

Next I walked along the road and met a friendly horse

He neighed and said of course I can because time is what I'm owed

I'm too long in the tooth and I'm in the knackers yard

If you are wise oh son me lad, you'll mind your time and guard

I moved on down with a whistle

Until I heard its answer spoke in vain

For I had come to the station

And at the platform stood a train

What time have you? I said aloud, the driver said quarter to eight

But I was speaking to the train said I, the driver said then you'll have to wait

This train has never been on time, this train was always late

Whether you asked it a question, whether you showed to it love or hate

The train will always arrive, just when it chooses to

And no man's watch can determine when it stops, not me, nor him or you

So with this explanation I looked up into the sky

And saw there bright circling birds above

And diamonds sparkling high

How long, how long must I wait

Before time shows me her hand

I'll hold it now said time to me

And with that time dropped her sand

And the hours seemed to pass in the glass

As I did tumble and fall

And night and day exchanged themselves

Like books upon their shelves

First I read the beginning lines

And then I read the end,

And all that I could see was time out of mind

And I knew time was my friend

So eventually the time did stop

The sand it ceased to fall

And I was stuck like a cuckoo clock

Poised, frozen upon a wall

I knew if I should step out now

My shadow would not follow

But what had I to lose,

But the lost time blues

So I did grit my teeth and swallow

The time is now said a voice

This what you must master

And know that in each time you have a choice

You may choose order or disaster

But none who know the outcome

Would have it any other way

For unless you are Cassandra

Then the future must seem a haze

Unfortunately I seem to have

Unfortunately I seem to have lost my socks
They have run down the drain
They have been swallowed by the vain rain
That falls on all these dry rocks

Unfortunately I seem to have lost my slippers
They seem to have been collected by the bin men
Who have taken them and rolled them in bitumen
For not they are rolled out like kippers

Unfortunately I seem to have lost my braces
They have been over run by snails
I left them in the garden next to the rails
And evidently the snails used them for their races

Unfortunately I seem to have lost my sense of timing
I do not know who took it maybe the raven
He took it on the wing when I was craven
And now I am braver, but the bell is chiming