Six Flicks

It seems like a gossamer of design
Like a needle in between the
Feeder and the spine
Like a tap root pulled up
Or a bean stalk to climb
Its a special condition
Of remission in my mind

There are six flicks showing at the cinema
Seven crooks in the books waiting at the bar
And I don't want a be a liar
But I just burnt down the cas ba
For the manageress was indistress
Over the painting of the tar

I fell through the floor
Eiffel true but but poor
In design of the infinite
The night and the sinews spent
And twisted in the age of someone sure

I courted the dream of an Geronitus
He laughed and split coconuts with his
Master's whip
He held in his hand the candle for the vandel
He held under knee the key
And he fell from the plinth
Where they dug up his bones
And framed them as me

I saw you wish in the harbour
And heard of love fish in labour
She drew up her wings
And spilled out her things
Until I saw all the stone babies of earth

Of course the river was rough
And its worth should have been reason enough
But asylum I found none
In the guise of a nun
The phylum of trees left me
Pith in my gun
And it all went silent after the big bang
And the trees swooned softly
Under a dying sun
As the Cathedral bells tolled
For the breaking of the day
When Christ walked on the eggshells
Of all the sinners that he had saved

And it came like this
In the fourth and Fifth
Centuries of New Palestine
The choirs of angels sang to briars
And the sandboxes refilled themselves

Of course they did he said in a moan
The loveless ponies had shelf proofed the stone
And the stone had hardened to a roof of rock
That was built upon pillars of sand

I cut the bone and marked myself
Dug a new grave and filled with my doubt
Earned my chrysalis turned
Off the water spout
And suffered the chains of freedom

Song of a New Man

The fisherman’s line he throws

Into the river its cast

I had to let it go

I had to let it pass

The rain hangs its bow

Across the sun’s looking glass

But I had to let it go

I had to let it pass

The sedge lay down in the flow

They lay like tired grass

I had to let them go

I had to let them pass

The gulls were gliding low

Across the fields of glass

I had to let them go

I had to let them pass

She stood white in the snow

And all Christmas seemed like a farce

I had to let it go

And I had to let it pass

Jesus came in tow

He sat in the midnight mass

He never let me go

He never let me pass

The river runs so slow

And then it runs too fast

I had to let it go

I had to let it pass

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