Cock and Bull Story

All the clocks have stopped
And the cardinals walk
Upon the court of the cock
And the Bull that talks
And we can't shut up the shop
Nor lock up the criminals who balk
At all the broken cups
That they drink from or tap with a fork

I thought you said you loved me
She said from behind the bars
But I was serving pastries
To pasty faced movie stars
And she was cleaning their apartments
And refilling their cars
As we talked of Hollywood departments
And walked down their boulevards

I thought you said you loved the silver screen display
That was better than make believe
Better than man made of clay
Even God appears there shifting behind the scenes
He's in the prison of the camera
That we capture and hold in our dreams

Jesus is failing as an extra,
he's been to two auditions
But the terminator director
Won't even cast him in an impossible mission
He's left kicking rocks in the parking lot
Collecting tips for parking actors' cars
Who once thought they'd seen him in a musical
Where he played some superstar

I faced into the distance,
And shook my fist at the storm
And said why must it end like this?
Oh lord I am tired of feeling so worn

And cursing the apocalypse
The Zombie actors come out on parade
They've heard there was a calypso line
For eclipsed actors who never get paid

And sure enough they all turned up
On set the very next day
They'd lost a lot of their make up
And their hair was turning grey

So they stepped back inside the prison
And the camera took off fifty years
They said now we look good by comparison
To the summation of all our fears

Suddenly from the distance a footballer turned up
Dribbling his ball, through all the holes
As if at the Ryder cup
Someone said its  Schumacher another it was Lewis Hamilton
But I knew for sure by his quick draw
That I was looking at Harrison ford
Jack Nicholson, took for advantage
A cake from the jaws of a lion
And shaking his mane, he said with some shame
That he wished he were Jenson Button

The flying ducks were caught out over the ninth hole
And eight weeks later, a great alligator
Was shot on the white House Lawn
A fishing he had been in Florida
A concertina kissed
The clouds they part, for those departed
On the rise of the steamy knoll

If anyone can control him
Perhaps his uncle should know
About all the conflagrations burning up in his soul
And if one artist, could talk to a skull
What would be said, from inside that head
And the reasons for the role call?

Similar if not for Schwarzenegger the whole
cast would have gone berserk
With unexpected losses, and time spent off work
And perhaps if their forefathers had known them
They would have signed a farewell to arms
But with the heroes going down to zero
Nobody is falling for their charms

And what if anything can be answered by
The legend of the gun-touting fool?
You've got to stick it to the man
Who made you in his image as his tool

Master of puppets

The shadows of the past
Play puppets on the wall
Strange animals run fast
Monsters are there ready to fall

My hands cannot hold them all
My fingers untie
I am tired of all the acting
Tired of the charade, the lie

I see her in grey approaching through the white
Each time I think I may stay
She turns on another light
And it illuminates my mistakes
It casts doubts' shadows against the wall

My own past is merged with her's
And I cannot see clearly at all

There must be some reason for its standing
This cinema of life
Like I am watching my own play unravel
Like she is an actress, And I am
An editor, making the cut with my knife

The scene of us together rolls around and around
The film reel feels, like a loose end
That must be tied
I am the puppet master
But I do not pull the strings
My shadows dance without my asking
They are autonomous things

Have I responsibility for what they do or say
After all am I not just a puppet myself
In this strange shadow puppet play?

Crying for Othello

The fire beneath my breast
Burns faster in Budapest
The times that call for jest
Are less
But the rolling robin calls
As fans kick footballs
Across the pitch of their tomorrow
Birds sleep on the wing
As the Martins or swallows
And all the half price houses fall
With the grace of a still standing wall
As the city park is built
After dark up to their necks in silt
Yet there's no use crying
Over milk that's spilt

The roses of my mind
Grow terse in time
Grow like nursery rhymes
Where crows fly out of my eyes
Lay their eggs of lies,
Somewhere deep in their sockets
Where I just cannot believe them
And deep in thoughts' pockets
Where I search for loose change
To make it through another day
Until they hatch these fledgling lies
Black birds that fly away

After them she shoots her arrows of truth
And they fall down everyone
In the field of bare looks
Where scarecrow glances
Hide winces in books
Convinces us that all eyes have hooks
And all eyes have fishes
That swim there waiting to be caught

Roses are Red

Roses are Red
So is your hair
When we walked up the hill
In the fresh morning air
to Gul Baba, looking like a saint
The walls in the background could
Do with a lick of paint
Yet that is Budapest - tired and torn
Living like fish in a bowl, new born
Swimming around staring goggle-eyed at things
The sweetness in a crisp packet blown up in the wind
The temperance of shadows that lends buildings their mood
The light plays and puppet hands of a life when its good

Your hands also played in the snow
Shifting it back and forth ceaseless cold show

Roses are red, they lay dormant and freeze
On the balconies of the mausoleum
Around the holy knees

They climb their way up hill
She rambles like a rose
They climb their way up the trellis of time
She flies straight as the crows
They all have their heads cut off by a prudent gardener
Prudence, leaves her shears at home
She watches as her red hair grows

The sky line skates beneath the cloud,
Out lines of the Parliament cry aloud
And roof tops, taking weight lifter bets
To prove how much white stuff they can hold
And the rose grows its thorns of the past
Prick us and we bleed our red onto the snow
That somehow we know will soon melt
And yet we can never forget

A white Christmas

In the snow we hide
Ourselves, our clothes
The white space inside
Unblemished by the knowledge
That the truth did stand on lies
Pure white as the snow drifts
Upon the roof top tiles

In single nature
We split ourselves like mitochondria
For every shaving of the self
Comes out its hypochondria
That every ailing Christmas Elf
Has before Santa seen himself
A reflection of eternal health
For the safe milk formula

And slowly, oh so slowly
Do the half truths come to light
Like little pimples bursting through
The red ring surrounds the head of white
If in this whiteness is the bad
Then bad must be squeezed out
Just let the rivers run red
Let the streams trickle with blood
The blood tells no lies at last
Blood cannot lie
It ties us to our distant past
Those swimming genes in nuclei

All at once I saw you

All at once I saw you
Like in a dream
Some vague notions of forgiveness
Mixed in an unrighteous stream
But its all on the dark side
Cold in the shadow of a mountain
Those mountains of youth
That just do not move
And won't allow you to love

So I brought you back to that mountain
and gave you a shovel and spade
And told you to start digging
A hole for forgiving
One tunnel that will let light into the shade

Some nights it seems so distant
That train whistle in the grove
The darkness in the valley of the thistle
Where the wild heather grows

Some nights it seems so invisible
Like ghosts, revealing themselves
Through the eves of the past
To make your love last
Down among the sleeves of book shelves

All at once I saw you
Like the moon from behind the clouds
Like I knew you were there
Some forest with a bear
Some trees with the thickness of crowds

Sahara Sarah

The day that I saw you in a single's bar
Was one of the happiest I must say so far
You had on a dress the colour of Ivory
I had a bone to pick with you
It was the elephant in the room
But I wasn't the poacher, there is the irony
Because when you spoke I lost my tusks
To your Savannah robbery, your African musk
Your Leopard skin hide, and the thorn in your side
I just couldn't pull out, like Daniel and the Lion
I tried to save you from dying, and you did the same
For me
When they threw me to the wolves, and the wolf whistles
and calls you had to endure, but you were sure-footed
And True
As the sky turned blue, and we could see through
All their games to the horizon

The Sun never sets, on our relationship, like the moon it gets
Wet in the ocean of night, and sails like a ship on the blind side
Of light, passing day hauled up at bay, then in the darkness
We pass, through the holes of each other's hearts
Like some invisible thread, like some camel that treads
Through the desert to the needle's eye