Ash

 I can't stand to see the Ashes fall

Though I know our backs are up against the wall

I can't stand to hear the Ashes fall

Another ax, another chain and ball

In our hands the keys to all

Will we understand when nature calls?

I can't stand to see the Ashes fall

All the Ash leaves, all their keys

Keys and locks, locks and keys

Another lock, one more key

Another prisoner is set free

In their limbs one disease

Take wind or whim, brings them to their knees

In our hand one more ball

In our mouths one last call

Who will answer the Ash's need?

See the fall of the twin bladed seed

One more flock of birds flown free

One more hawk flies across the sea

But one more knock on the Ash's door

Then another, then one time more

Can't you save the Ash from death's maw

Can't you help save just one more tree

Willow man

 Who is the willow man, the willow man, the willow man?

Yes who is the willow man, twisting underground?

Pushing up his willow hands, his willow hands, his willow hands

Pushing up his willow fists, willowman

He's been laying underground, underground, underground

He's been laying underground,for so very long

Sucking up the waters around, the waters around, the waters around, 

Sucking up the waters around his willowy tongue

Who is the willow man, the willow man, the willow man?

Who is the willow man laying in the marsh sun?

He's gonna rise up from the bog, from the swamp, from bog

He's gonna rise up from the swamp and take your willow hand

And hold onto the willow woman,  the willow woman,the willow woman,

And hold onto the willow woman, and they will dance their jig

They will jog along, and they will dance and the will sprig, and frig

And mighty all the swig, they will dance their wedding song

Yes who is the willow man,  the willow man,  the willow man, 

Yes who is the willow man, who has layed so long?

Taken for granted

 Taken for granted

Basic and slanted like a tree in the wind

Of the wood

Slanted like the wood

The basic income

The basic good

Taken for granted,

taken for granted

I can see the cure

But I don't want to take it

I'm high on life

and the ride

Is killing me

in spoonfuls

of sugar

She was just some image on the wall

Stuck like a poster

Beyond it all

Yet in the centre

Of the feeling

Mountains

Mountains are like nerve bundles tied up in knots

Tense packed strings of wires fossilized, baked

Bended, frozen

But before these feeling times of tumultuous floods

And bruising, burning, tortuous

Moments had been forgotten

They survived as eviscerated rocky facades

Flakes of time millimetres thick only

Lain down like rings in a tree

Buzzing in the Nerve tree

In the roots of the bundle of the body of the land.

Looking back

Hanging around on the pavement
The tarmac, the weeds in the road
Walking up the lane to meet my old friends
Playing games riding skateboards
Chasing about in the estate park
The boy Matthew Bennette telling tales about his bike
That it had special balance handle bars
So that when he tipped his bike
We could hear something rolling down the metal tube
But we all knew that he was a liar
And he had rolled up mud balls to put inside
So it sounded like he had some inbuilt technology
When all he had were his lies
It was funny anyway to hear him say it

There were hawthorn trees with black sloe berries
That grew in late summer and autumn
And elderberries that grew on Tom's farm
When you squashed them they looked like blood
And sometimes we fought the high stinging nettles like soldiers
Cutting them down with bamboo canes
And sometimes we climbed inside haybarns
And made dens inside the bales
Until they all tumbled down on Tom one day and a scaffold pole
Hit him on the head
And he ran out to his mum and dad with blood running down
And he never cried

Then in the fields around Meare out past Down house
We went walking for miles with Matthew wood
And we came back and watched western movies
And stayed over night in his outhouse
And he ate pork pies with so much ketchup
I could never believe or understand why
We played for hours on computer games, pinball wizards
Or Samurai
Cannon fodder and his brother Ben Wood
Was the best at many things
And he had a really good bike

And Stephen who lived on the levels
We used to get on in school
We laughed so hard about vampires
When we had to make a haunted house game
Then when I visited his house
It was full of Star Wars toys
I'd never seen so many in my entire life
And we played with them for hours
But really I never liked Star Wars
But the funniest thing about Stephen were his lies
We used to tell eachother stories
So many that we made up
Each more fantastic than the one before
So that when we told of what we saw
Neither could have believed their eyes
It ended one time with a story of what animals we had seen
Recently, maybe a deer he said
Maybe I had seen a hedgehog
He had seen a badger
And then suddenly he told me
He had seen a Gorilla in the ditch nearby his house
And possibly a vampire as well

Then there was Millbatch where nobody went
From Downs Orchard - the better class estate
Millbatch was the rough end
Where the older kids lived
And Matthew Lambert who was very tough
And his brother Roger who used to pull the legs
Off Daddy Long Legs in School
And now he is carer for Somerset County Council
Working with people with Learning Disabilities
Go figure

Then down on church road, where the water reservoir was
The plastic coated chicken wire mesh that you could reach inside
And that lane was were the bully kids played and made
Their dens there
And we watched out for them while making our own
But there were rumours and whispers around
That she blew somebody somewhere
That he beat someone else up
And little pieces of knowledge fill your brain
Like into a water cup
and it makes up your world as a child
It tells of the big towns out there
And of the boys and girls you thought were so wild
Who now all have grey in their hair

Weeping willow

 Weeping willow canopying the water

Silk assassins daughter

Shorter than a pine

Taller than I thought her

Filigree pedigree

Dogs bark acid tongues

And Ringing out the headaches

Thumbs through leaves

Of countless words

Whispered in the shushing eves

Hushing wind

Rushing, rushing then quiet mind

Meditative tree

Spindles, spider thread

The yarn droops

Like stiffened drool

Hardened into tools

The searching stalactites hand down

Divining rods detecting water sources

Sniffing out the wet stuff

Thirsty suckers thread

Weeping its drooping head

Sad maybe, or only inexhaustibly thirsty

Like it's been wandering in a desert for days

It will try any mirage, or true Oasis

Plumb any well

Where there's a weeping willow

There's a watery will

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

Acer Red

 Acer Acer dancing like a geisha

Star leaves cherry red

Dancing in the summer wind

Catch the current star fish seas

Like a carpet to the Oscars tread

Acer, Acer lipstick chaser

Kissing the sun with smacking lips

flashing and slashing, whip-lashing

red sashing

Bull ring matador

evading horns of the wind's thrashing

bloodied eyes bled

Through the aquarium of the conservatory

underwater, under wind

birds are fishes swimming

Geisha red Acer sea weed tree

Duck Pond

 

Deep in the duck pond

Where the green weed grows

And the straw is yellow

Next to the track,

Where the ivy creeps beneath the Alder and Willow

Which brush their stems and stem their flow back

Deep in the duck pond

Where the green weed grows

Ducks fight and splash about

It could be a war or a turn about

Or a pair of lovers in a spate

One who loves, the other who hates

But deep in the duck pond

They see to their deed

Where the willow weeps in the green duck weed

Down in the duck pond,

Where fellows blow their horn

And the little spirited sprout

Sings for the sweet summer corn

While the West wind blows

Then across it the Easterly is torn

All along the deep duck pond

Where all the birds were born

Severed heads on severed spikes

All seem dead but go ask the tyke

Shadows shake in the shallows like

The deep duck pond

Of the bad old Pike

He swims about, he asks not twice

He sees a snout, then snaps his vice

And there he has you, pulls you down

Into the depths of the duck pond to drown

Where hell is a spirit on the water

And the wind chills the slender necks of swans

And the rails with the moor hens daughter

Falls to the pails and the sweet shorn sun

Where the kale sways in the shallows

And the bulrushes blow their seed

Deep as heartache over the water

Of the deep duck pond with the green duck weed

More trees please

 The trees, the trees

Send them in

The ides of March are wearing thin

The pine and larch and ever green

Where are they now that I have seen?

The roads are bare, we cry take heed!

They can't bear our load

Or meet our need

No shadows now are drawing long

Only the night's blessings to keep us strong

Each day a furnace of solar fire

Baking the roads where cars are for hire

And more and more roads we lay down

In Roman fare of overcrowded town

And what of the so called wasteland?

These are not nothings we hold in our hand

Even a glebe or a bramble strewn field

Can be turned into a woodland of cooling heal

We think we can live just as we did before

But this is just folly of standing on threshold of the door

We either wait out side and decide our future dies

And that of generations yet unborn we sacrifice

Or we make a stand here and now 

and say no more building put away your spade and trowel

Let's reuse the old buildings let's plant more trees

Let's put our heads together and this problem might ease

Long shadows

 Long shadows

Long shadows

That fall across the field

When the blazing sun bows down to kneel

On the brow of the hill

Where Abraham brought Isaac

A son he would've killed

Long shadows, long shadows

But we have only begun

The slaughter house squealed

The dogs lost their bark

The trees they all peeled

As the day turned to dark

Long shadows

They fell from the sky

Like a lark

Long shadows

Long shadows

Cast by Noah's Ark

The Sea flood rises

And the oceans they broil

The sailors are drowned

Despite their hard toil

No mountains surrounded

No trees hanging low

But long shadows

Long shadows

Where did they go?

Just then the shadow

Of a wandering dove

Came dropping its parcel

Of heavenly love

An olive branch was offered

and Noah gripped it tight

Like long shadows

Long shadows that turn into night

Oh they sailed their ship on

Down through the strait

And the seas they receeded

And they arrived at the gate

A new Eden was breeded

And it was not too late

For long shadows,

Long shadows they marked out no fate

Only the will

To be rid of the past

To turn over new leaves

To smell the fresh grass

Of hillside as green and 

as lush it could last

While long shadows

Long shadows

The sun no longer cast

The heart's road

 When I go away I try to forget

All of those pieces of memories of regret

When I go away I can hold them at arm's length

And say you cannot hurt me, you cannot touch me

You cannot hurt me today

But I always come back, back to the fold

To the font of the cradle of birth

I always return to the home and the hearth

And the place where I first knew the hurt

Now you can be travelling a long weary time

You can be holding his hand or mine

And this can be our way together or apart

But that's just the road of the heart

When I am travelling down the country mile

I look for the clouds, then I burst into a smile

When the sun is all shining and the birds are in song

Then I'm reminded that nothing is wrong

When I am travelling along a steep hill

And the ridges are vast with an emptiness that chills

Then I see your hand in the sky high above

And I know it's all just a plan of your love

When I am travelling through dale and through den

And the trees they grow over and they are my ken

I know you're near me, because I feel at ease

With the summer behind me and the autumn's breeze

When I am travelling far from my home

I can forget all of those feelings I own

Nothing is stronger than the pull to return

From where I've been travelling the heart's road that burns

Willow crack and willow bend

 If I could see you mellow friend

Willow crack and willow bend

If I could hold you in the pen

But willow crack and willow bend

Though it doesn't fix or like new mend

Willow cracks and willow bends

The water is the willow's friend

Willow crack and willow bend

Willow weave over the seas

Willow weave, oh willow weave

Willow crack and willow bend

Willow keep my mellow friend

There are poplars growing straight

Willow crack and willow bend

But they never grow so late

As Willow cracks and willow bends

And there are Alder who drink and send

Their limbs out straight to the rainbow's end

Yet Willow crack and willow bend

I had love, I had a life

Willow crack, willow bend

But I did not make her my wife

Willow crack and willow bend

And so it was I gripped knife

Willow crack and willow bend

Then I heard her land in strife

Willow crack and willow bend

All I saw was bloody knife

Willow crack and willow bend

And bold blood was running twice

Oh willow crack and willow bend

In the meadow the butterflies

Yes willow crack and willow bend

I saw the old bull sitting nice

The sun did shine into his eyes

Upon his ring shone paradise

As he looked out into the light

Yes willow crack and Willow bend

And it was there that I saw the Spring

Willow crack and Willow sing

And all the marsh marigolds like bells did ring

Their yellow sound through everything

Oh Willow crack and willow bend

Yes willow drink to a long lost friend

Oh willow crack and willow bend

And willow thinks when will it end

I saw my love through a long glass lens

Willow crack and willow bend

And where my love goes I too must wend

Willow crack and willow bend

And come the rain over the moor

Yes willow crack and willow bend

I loved in vain, I shall love no more

Yes willow crack and willow bend

And all is pain, but I do adore

When willows crack and willows bend

The wind will gain and crows will craw

As willow cracks and willow bends

The lights the same but sometimes poor

When willow cracks and willow bends

The fields furrow like ripples ashore

Oh willow crack and willow bend

The road is long, so long for sure

The willow cracks and the willow bends

And the chaffinch speak, and they speak some more

The willow cracks, and the willow bends

I see jack and I see george, I see Jackdaws, I see Jackdaws

And I look back through the open door

The willow cracks and the willow bends

And I see paths that are no more

The willow cracks and willow bends

And in the attack of the coming war

The willow cracks and the willow bends

There are facts and then there's the score

As the willow cracks and bends no more

Watching

 Between this wooden land

Of stork trees stand

The wiley scuffs of dancing tufts

That play in diffuse light like

Spiked pineapple tops

The lesions of sore silver, shimmering lakes

Stretches of straits and waterscapes

Gaping wide gates that ask their

gormless question why

To their empty fields

Their loveless lovers

Who steal like deer in shadows

Before the dawn has struck

And the sun is still a stuck

Orange yolk yet to break

And spill its golden liquor down

Upon the valley

Where the green king river snakes

And hedges blaze in fires before

The eyes of wood anemones

Who listen in their disguise

Those beautiful flower spies

Woody the wood pecker

 Woody the wood pecker

Flies from tree to tree

And he brings his song

All day long

down to you and me

He knocks on wood

He knock knock, knocks on wood

And what do think he says?

He says this wood ain't no good

So he flies on over to another tree

Hanging there with the honey bee

Woody the wood pecker

Like a messenger

Flies down to tell me

Yes this wood is good

He says knock knock on wood

Just knock,knock knock on wood

Anytime that you feel good, 

just knock, knock, knock on wood

Oh he goes out just about every day

And he knocks his poor old head away

He goes knock knock, knocking on wood

Then he bangs his head up against another wall

He bangs his hard head until that dead tree falls

He says there now what'd I tell you this here tree is rotten

He says hey pal are you listening or have you just forgotten?

You now come with me, this tree ain't no good

So you better move on over to another tree

Keep knock knocking on wood

He goes knock knock, knock, knock-knock knocking on wood

He says this tree yes, that tree no, and the others ain't no good

So you better move on with me, just on over the hill

That's where you'll find me, looking for another tree

He goes knock knock, knock knock,knock-knock knocking on wood

He says this tree yes, that tree no, and the others ain't no good

He says I make a hole in every one

So I think I might find a bite

Just a little something to eat

Like a bug or a termite

You know when that old tree dies

Well lots of creatures crawl

Well they all make a tall order

Because I can't eats them all

You know I just knock, knock, knock.knock, I keep on knocking on wood

And one day one of them trees is gonna sound hollow and good

So how about you do like me, keep on knocking on doors

Because one of these days one door will open to you

And you'll get a round of applause

So woody says to me you know opportunity knocks

And I'm just about the best opportunist on these blocks

You don't need to give me a second chance, I'm always looking

And I'll be right there, because if it's not in one of these

Then there's sure to be one of them spare

Tupac vs Meare cats

I am so English

I never had no hoes

No jumping joes

No drive by blows

In my local estate where, god knows,

I deigned to go

Roughing it, slumming it

With the mother fucking G.I posers

In their faux army costumes

Make you wanna consume

The exhaust fumes yo

No I never had the bitches

All we had were rhynes and ditches

Making dens in the hedgerows

Down St Mary's road yo!

Never had no shootings

Just Matthew Bennet with his mountain bike 

and loose shoe strings

He told us he had a self-balancing handle bar

But he had rolled up balls of clay so they rattled in thar

Playing cops and robbers on the curb

Never messing with no herb

We never turned any tricks

Only skate boards and scalextrics

Never shot no breeze

Only climbed in the apple trees 

I only wanted to be good

Looking out for my neighbourhood

Then my friend said yo can you dig it? I said " I dug"

He said -What you wanna be litter bug

For?

He said it when he came into the hood

Where I used ride with Matthew Wood

And the boys from Down's Orchard estate

Yeah the were rebels acting like jail birds outside their front gate

But I knew the Kirlegate estate posse

Were a match for those carboard hussies

No we never had no guns

Except the water pistols

That we got from our mums, yo!

Got from our mums

We never had no bronx, the bloods or the crips

But what we had was Millbatch, Bradley James, Charlene Hares

Who sometimes wore jeans with rips

That was where you went if you wanted to catch

A tennis ball to the head

Come out in bumps

That was the mother fucking dumps

Instead we had fields to run in and play soldiers

We had peat mounds to climb and roll down and over

We had play fights that never amounted to much

Until one day love struck, put a spanner in the works

Because then we all had to grow up 

What in the world?

 The berries are bobbing on the rowan tree

The corn is cobbing, in the sweet acre breeze

And I am jobbing like a busy bee

But the parishioners all hold their tissues and sneeze

Oh what, what are we coming to?

What in the world is it coming to?

The flames are fanned, and the Earth's down the pan

And another horse passes on a Japanese fan

There's a statue that's a fallin'

A Greek vase is appallin'

Hiding from Apollo's gaze

Who wanders through the fallow glades

Thinking of him and looking for you

Oh what in the world are we coming to?

And the jumbo in the air is stallin'

In the sirens with long hair are callin'

Take me once, they say, take my cue

What in the world are we coming to?

I hold my breath and count to ten

But I'm afraid to open my mouth again

And if I see pigsties or sheep pens

I close my eyes and count my hens

The farm yard is all accounted true

Yet what in the world is it coming to?

And we all look lost in a maze

The shallow sharks, swim in the misty haze

And jellyfish sting, on the holidays

We all forgot were once sacred

It makes you think it's the end of days

With famine and pestilence and malaise

And summer time screams its short serenades

As the musicians all pack up their parades

What in the world are we coming to?

What in the world is it coming to?

When you hold out your hands

Then bring them together in praise

Some people leave you, and it's the pain that stays

Goblin Coombe

The wind blows through the glen
voices carried on the wind
Of good/bad choice we can't mend
Where the fairy folk are ken
Gnarled and knotted in the sleepy glen
Quick sharp tongues of ice
Slicing through squeaks of mice
Chattering squirrels, patridge, hen
Hear the voices of the little men
Goblin, goblin, Goblin Coombe
Eating the turkey oak
By the light of the moon
Smoking bark
And evergreen den
Far in the milky dark
Of Goblin Coombe again

Burning the Bridges in Budapest

They're burning the Bridges of Budapest
Watch as they all fall down
They're burning them slowly
Like a fire vest, you wear
Then jump in the river and drown

They're burning them slowly, they're burning them fast
all of those bridges not only, bridges to the past
Bridges to the future
Hopes and dreams
They're all falling into
The Danube streams

They're forgetting the town
Forgetting people too
They're burning the bridges down
That means you
Its time to get out before its all lost
Once the bridges are all burnt
You won't get across
There are tongues that are tied
Speaking languages many
There are beggars on the ground
Saving every penny
But its running around
Rolling down the hill
And the mob is in town
On a bridge burning bill

Don't ask me for a reason
I have none to confess
Just time and the season
Of restlessness
Spring is coming
I can feel it on the tides
They must be turning
Because their burning bridges and brides
They're holding up the stick men to the flame
They are setting light their heads
In confusion and blame
And we're all done for
In the final name game
Nobody gets out alive
But their burning bridges just the same

Bring it back home

Don't bring it through the fog
Don't bring it through the listless trees crying
Bring it on the back of the frog
Bring it from the prince that's dying

Don't bring it on your knees
Bring it on the carpet that is flying
Don't bring it in Ash keys
Bring it in the lockets of love sighing

I saw you in the stream
With water fairies about you pining
For the river logs
That passed them by so stream-lining

Come check with me again
Bounce your cheques off Big Ben
The balance of the city is sky-lining
I've seen about a friend
In the silouhetted end
Who is crossing off his list all those whining

So four score years and ten
That is what we will have then
By the time all words are down in-lining
The writer and his pen
As the cockrel and his hen
Will walk about the farmyard rhyming