Jack and Jill

Now where has Jack gone?
He has left Jill
He's run off to the foreign legion
To climb a foreign hill

She stayed at home and wept
On many dark nights
In her cold bed where she never slept
But kept turned on the lights

Now Jack is a mystery
You can't predict his next move
His old life is history
His letters home prove

He was spotted in an Art gallery
It was Paris, the Louvre
He was looking long at the Mona Lisa
She never did move

He saw in her smile
A look like in Jill's
He had been walking mile after mile
Over many green hills
But they never were as green as
The ones he left behind
Nothing like Jill's Topaz eyes
In his diamond mind

So he kissed the Mona Lisa
And bid her fair well
He asked 'shall I be a man of peace now?'
But she replied 'I never kiss and tell'
So when the guards came running
And the alarms went off
Jack made for the Sun in
His arms Mona Lisa scoffed

Don't you know you can steal my heart
But you'll never know my smile
And it tore him into pieces
Mile after mile

As he ran back to Jill
and her maternity leaves
The pregnancy tree was wilting on her hill
She wore her heart on her sleeves

I live in a house with a red roof
I live there with Jill
Of my life I needed proof
She gave me permission to kill

A salt mine stood buried
Beneath the hill
Every night Jill's tears
Would fall into the well
This mine to fill

One day the miners rang the bell
They said we can't take no more salt
She looked around for Jack to blame or tell
But it was nobody's fault

Sometimes these things happen
Said Mona Lisa with a smile
You can tell I've cried a lot
And laughed for a good while

But Jill turned her face from Mona
To contemplate Jack
He had a dark brooding look
His roof had turned black

I belong in the Army he said
I think I must turn back
You know they're shooting deserters its a fact
I'll take my chances in the desert,
They don't know my face there
She said the desert is a terrible place
I think you will despair

I have to go, don't you see Jill
My mind, it is made up
So Jill watched him roll down the hill
As she cried tears into her broken cup

Beer gut

All of every kind,
The silence of the moon
The howling stars
And biting wind
The barking trees boom

A boulder the size of mars fills my living room
Leaves me feeling all the scars
From a life in the space age doom

Coming from a yielding country
To a likewise yielding dream
The gelding of a course of white horses
Bolted down the stream
And each Gnome who guarded
A quiet garden gate
Leaves his post for the ghost
Of a memory of love or hate

I have seen a million salmon swimming up a stream
And even fished upon the banks
of the river out of Eden
But who is there can tell me
Which way the river does flow?
When its too sour to taste, to bitter to remember now.

I cornered into the encounter with all the grace of an ox
The china shop was waiting for me to drop the box
But I could not let it go
I could not let it shatter
I was more than I did know
That it did not even matter

The carpenter was full of words
He was carving out a coffin
For all of them who spilled their words
In the act of coughin'
And even if she knew now
Somehow better than before
I remember what she said
Before every open door

A bitter taste

In the counting of taste buds
A new season is in bloom
The flowers of flavour have blossomed
Like Spring has stepped into a room

The long dark night of winter is over
The passing of the year
Death has claimed his last victim
What finger pointed, which had made the fear?

But fear made the man,
if ever the man made fear
It was left like a dripping tap
to torture a restless ear

In the cutting and the pasting
the documents were forged
And I passed over the border
Without the life on which I had gorged

Love in the river

I was walking in the wasteland of a certain kind of desire
Just talking with a face and thinking of a fire
I was moving with a grace and I walked a tight rope wire
Excluding the other place so I stand and sing with the choir

It was hard to find the words, just when they did not come
It was hard to reach beyond the place
That's hid behind the sun
In winter time the ice sheets fall like plates of glass
And armour up the cold sold streets
While the wind does pass

I have to let it go
I have to let it pass
The seasons and the snow
The face behind the glass

I have to say "You know"
And "this is how it was"
I have let the wild wind blow
And carry me through the pass

I am standing in a river
I am falling through a stream
Like a lover or a giver
In a most fantastic dream

Seasons in the sun

She sits in the sun
With her face to the rays
Just breathing in the light
Of the morning of the days

These days seem to come and go
So fast I can hardly tell
Whether I was built to last
In a world of blue bells

Each has its short season arising in the wood
Gathered on the hillside
by the lovers of the good


Each is a kind of hologram
For the state of being blessed
Each a holy program
Of songs I love the best

St George

I must become St George
and kill that awful dragon
He will become the death of me
If I don't race the wagon
I'll chase him out over sea
I'll bring his head back on a platter
Mother save the breath in me
To go and fight the dragon

You must go son
I've wished it
For a thousand love lorn days
Your brothers all have fished it
In the seas arms they've swayed
They've lost their lives to stop it
They've given all they had
Now you must make their sacrifice
You must choose good over bad

Mother I will fight him
Bring me my sword and shield
I'll cross over on the ships lanyard
Soon he will taste my steel

The going will be dangerous
You must cross the sea and desert
You must find the tower
Where his black heart sleeps
And put an end to his terrors

He will breathe fire and scorch you
You will fear his terrible wrath
But you must be so brave my son
You must give all that you have

I have nothing left to give
You are the last child of my womb
With you the legacy of your father ends
With you comes an end to the doom

After you die, as die you must
A stone statue will be raised
In your remembrance
To show how men fight to triumph
Over death
To leave but lives of stone

Only our words will triumph over death
For words are dead but brought to life
Through breath
Spoken then echoed through the chambers
Underneath, 

the vaults of a dying sun

Oh mother, now my time has come
I wish for one thing before I run
To love a woman, to live a life
Before I give this sacrifice

But son, your life is to one end
To murder the terrible, fearsome fiend
Who devours the land, brings pain and famine
Your purpose on earth is to kill the dragon

If I must go,
I give this kiss to you dear mother
But to my lover my bliss
She knows me, where I'd rather be
Than travelling alone, to meet my foe
Aboard this ship, to meet my destiny

Farewell then to England
Farewell my country green
Across the scorched and desert lands
I go,
To meet the dragon supreme

The bells did ring,
In the heat they sang
Of a thousand slain
Englishmen
But on he strode
Believing his road would not
be the same

Until through the smoke he sees
The black tower rising in misery
And patrolling all around it goes
That Dragon his most awful of foes

Come now dragon to battle you and me
Let me put an end to this misery
And then the dragon spoke
With fiery breath
And his scales shimmered
And he smelt of death

Saint George thrust his steed to the fray
And his steel sunk deep into the dragon that day
The clash of armour, the beat of wings
The terrible fire, and smell of burning things

Late the next day the smoke had cleared
The tower rose, but the sun appeared
The Dragon lay smitten on the scorched earth
And St George wandered back to the land of his birth

Farm Girl

There she goes cleaning the bathroom
Bending and spraying and wiping away
Grease falls from the tiles the sink
The warm water shower washes it away

Before this she was hoovering, tidying
polishing, picking up pieces
Like foraging, gleaning, until the carpet
furrows were clear
Until the fallow field could be left
Til next year
Farmer girl in the house
Keeping home, keeping mum
Keeping the mouse
And the tiger together at bay
Keeping order in that Sunday way

Meanwhile I was washing up
Just wiping the dirt, squeezing
The bottle
Squirting the liquid, herding the bubbles
In and out of every corner of the corrugated
Plastic lunch box
Around the sides of cooking pans
Up the walls of the stainless steel sink
That had turned orange with Bolognaise
And arranging the clean orderly utensils
And containers, in their rack to dry
It is the least I can do
And honestly also the most too
Right now with my knee.