Poetry

Thursday, 7 February 2019

The Bag Song

Ransacked
Cul-de-sac
Everybody back-packed
Fanny pack, bum bag
Everybody carry a swag

All I have to say is that
Suitcases can make your bum look fat

Handbag, wag-bag
Baghdad satchel fad
Leather-case bootlace
Tie it satch-mo face
All I have to say is that
Bum bags make your bum look fat

Tie it, Zip it, no body rip it
Sainsbury's, Asda, home shop in Mazda
Sling it in, bring it in, fold it up,
Ring a ding
All I have to say is that
Carrier bags make your bum look fat

IKEA Tarpaulin, Marks and Spencer
Hempen thing
Fabric, magic, silk wool or plastic
Top end, bottom shelf
Pick one up, help yourself
Throw away society
If it doesn't fly, it isn't free
Nobody needs a bag (for life) for their health

Carpet baggin', carpet shaggin'
Brown paper bag of gin
Dumpster, thumpster, down and out gangster

On a plane vomit
Save yourself, breathe calm again
Feel like a comet
On a rise, then a fall
Visit the can, then bag it all
all I have to say is that
A body bag can make your bum look fat

On a mountain, in a fountain
Hike it, bike it, everybody like it
Advertise for sore-eyes, everyone economize
Too big, too small, over shoulder tennis ball
Hurricane too bad, Glaswegian Bawl bag
All I have to say is that some bags don’t make your bum
Look fat

String strap, chin-strap
Everybody brain rap
All I have to say is that
Purses don’t make your bum look fat

Purses, curses, everyone reverses
Inside, outside, make it black or white side
Lining, pining every bag defining
Each a different lining
All I have to say is that
Diamond studded handbags don’t make your bum look fat

Silver buckle, copper knuckle,
Knuckle duster, feather fluster
Pretty, frilly, every kind of silly
All I have to say is that laptop bags
Don’t make your bum look fat

Snake skin, fake skin, even keep a steak in
Make-up, lip stick, take up a dip stick
Micro-wave seal-able, Gold fish save
Its steal-able
All I have to say is that coconut shies
Don’t make your bum look fat

Man-bag, grab-a-bag, what a slag in  Baghdad
Make a point, turn a corner, light a joint
Feed a feeler, all I have to say is that
Metrosexuals can make your bum look fat

Here’s a bag, there’s a bag
Everybody Hacky-sack
Feed the lack, fill the black
Bag it, sag it, everybody hag it
All I have to say is that
Everybody makes out everybody else is fat

Sure, you disclaim it, you may even exclaim
Or claim it – its in the bag, it’s yours
Pull up your pants
Fill up your draws
Don’t try to shame it, explain it or name it
That bag is to blame for it
All I have to say is that
No bag can make your bum look fat

It doesn’t matter anyways
The writings on the motorways
The plane takes off
Another lands
It's all the same in a bag-less land
For nobody carries you
No dog collects its own poo
We all choose to use you
Even throw you out, abuse you
Oh bag, only a bag lady really does love you
Let’s leave it at that
Only a Bum can make a bag look fat


Wednesday, 6 February 2019

Pilgrim part II

I'm absolutely sure about the direction I'm moving
I don't doubt anymore
I'm straight as an arrow
As true as a bird
Its as clear as the marrow
Bound like somebody's word
The promises are kept
I can rely on someone
All the corners are swept
Nothing's left undone
And I can be sure
That I've won
In the lottery of life
My sun has shone
There's a truth I'm revealing
A covered up door
Some secret I've been concealing
But not anymore
I can be brave, I can be true
There's a life I can save
Its made for you
So come on to the wave
Its breaking on the shore
The moon pulls the tide
Like it always did before
And I can abide
In you I can trust
With God on my side
Nothing I do will rust
There's a gold vein inside
I tap to make sure
That its the treasure that I hide
That its heart is pure
So I'm absolutely convinced
There's no doubt in my mind
That the things that we are
Are all the things that I find

Pilgrim

I'm absolutely convinced
It makes no dint on my confidence
I'm a believer, a follower to the core
I'll follow you anywhere
Through any door
Follow in your footsteps
Every step of the way
From that true path, I will never sway

I'll swallow every word from you
Like its the bread of truth
I'll even swallow a sword for you
Without any need of proof
Walk across hot coals
Find my bare feet untouched
There is nothing I wouldn't do for you
No vow left unvouched

So I'm saying I'm all in
I'm totally behind you
I've got your back
I've been searching now I finally find you
I can keep on track
Follow your trail
Read the signs you left behind you
In my pursuit I shall not fail
Unflinching, no denial
No question of faith
On the Pilgrim's road mile after mile

I have to serve you master
Have to make you smile
I'm in your light
Despite any disaster
Through any trial
I'm at your feet begging
To be released from these chains
Break them, I must know you
To be one and the same thing
That I knew before
Unwavering wave
Of salvation to save
My heart and mind and soul
I am sure
I am in the ocean
But you are the shore


Tuesday, 5 February 2019

Knock on

So things went from bad to worse
You might say they snow balled
I was rushing for a train
It was a quarter to six on a Tuesday
After a little rain
The steps down to the underpass
Were damp in that new feeling way
And busy commuters were emerging
and swarming up the stairs the other way

As I approached the entrance
A woman stepped in my way
She was old and frail, so I left her
On her way, thinking I may
Side step her, I maneouvered in that direction
My momentum carrying me like a truck
Just out beyond the filling station
I was fast but not fast enough
For a not so young buck
Had stood in my way
And began his encumbered traverse
Down that royal highway of stairs
One might say, he considered himself king
Of it for that day, a king stuck not in forward, but reverse

Now I must say
Before I go any further
That I consider myself fair
In most circumstances demanding faith
And patience in another's ability
To climb or descend, I take a deep breath
And breathe deep, an internal sigh
Feeling in the next life I maybe rewarded
For such virtuous self-sacrifice
However I had already been this paragon
Of uncommon common sense
Probably at least twice before that day
One on my way up from Lehel (or the Hell)
To translate
Another I can't remember now
And this third on the way down at Corvin Negyed (the Crow)
And each time, I stepped in tow behind
I trudged like one of the lost souls
In the inferno
But in this instance- seeing as I was in a rush for paradise -the pub
(Which I actually call an English lesson)
I thought I might skip the purgatory
Of existence
That is the downward resistance to flow
That equals following a very slow fellow

So ladies and gentlemen of the jury
I ask you this
Is it right that I should be condemned
When feeling the need not to extend
My sorrows, I borrowed a leaf from the rabbit
and hopped the queue?
I leap-frogged -metaphorically speaking
Went around my obstacle to freedom
Like any sensible person would
My only mistake was this
I brushed him as I passed
I cannot believe it even constituted a nudge
Did he budge - no way
But he reacted like he was hurt by my affray
Like some wounded animal he began to howl
Like some howling banshee down to hell's bowel

I like the good Christian, I did not wish to engage
You might say I fled, but I did not fight that day
One has a sense sometimes of the murderous intention of folk
I have no doubt that he was capable of all kinds
Of horrible things if he had me in his yoke
But witnessing before in the eighth district a fight
Of a maddened man getting out of his car to yell
In the face of a passer by
I had sensed this feeling of his injustice, his injured sense of pride
That is really his general nervousness encumbered
By an instinctual feeling to fight
Unfortunately my own instinct did not show up in a similar light
And I chose the way of survival - I chose the path of flight

However when two opposing instincts do not agree on their way
What follows is a pursuit down through a subway
And if you can imagine I am not that young myself
Though not that old either nor lacking in legs
To put some distance between me and this red faced elf
I could tell he was behind me, because of all the yelling
and I surely received some quizzical looks
From astonished commuters passing
But that is the trouble with rush hour
As I immediately found
That I came up to a long queue of people waiting to enter the underground

By the time I had entered the escalator
I could still hear my foe
Shouting Blue murder - hey you, hey you
Though in Hungarian I suppose
What did he expect that I would turn and apologize?
By the time I did that he would have hit me
Or spat more insults into my eyes

There are times when I would have stood and fought
Or at least calmly tried to put my position and what I thought
But let's face it I do not speak Hungarian
And I was not about to repeat an encounter
With an enraged and nervous barbarian

Now I reached the platform
And panicked I had no where to go
The train had left in the direction I needed
And kept coming did my foe
My only chance therefore lay in boarding another train
One in the opposite direction
And my thoughts were not in vain

So in the calmest manner possible
So as not to stick out in the crowd
I briskly walked through onlookers
Hoping my pursuer too slow
And that I would lose him somehow
It even entered my brain
To embark a few carriages down
For the last thing I wanted
Was to be trapped in a car with a mad cow

The upshot was I got off at Kliniak
Shaken and somewhat stirred
But unlike James Bond I had no Martini
And the comparison is quite absurd
Next I re-boarded a different train
Travelling in the right direction
So as to make sure I was not followed
By a mad Turk intent on his own correction

Later in the lesson I did have a drink
And it was not that it tasted bitter
But that it gave me time to think
Should I have had more courage and at least socked my foe?
He was an older man and I do not think that was the way to go
Was it my fault? I confess yes
I should have behaved with more decorum
And less rashness
But alas I was rushing
And that is the scourge of the modern age
And it shows how even an English man
can in a foreign country, behave as a knave



Sunday, 3 February 2019

Easy Love

If you say that you need my love
What can I do but make it?
And if you say that I don't give enough
Then darling go on and take it
Oh make it, take it for goodness sake
Don't fake it

If you say that you've heard enough
That there's no more you can take of it
I can say that I learned of love
That summer by mistake of it
But its your love that I want above
All the others who partake of it
Oh make it take it for goodness sake
Don't fake it

They put you up on a pillar of love
Then like a tree they shake it
You fall down, lose your crown
On the low ground they break it
Oh make it, take it for goodness sake
Don't fake it

Make it, take it love's just a piece of cake
Ain't it?

Talk is Cheap

The clock is running low
and time is running out
We've got nowhere to go
And there's no need to scream and shout
So honey try to sleep
Because talk is cheap

There's a thousand reasons why
And a million stars in the sky
A country lane runs on mile after mile
Much like our love, I think and I have to smile
I love you too deep
But honey, talk is cheap

I've been walking in the land
Of the cold kiss
Almost blown my mind
On the chances that I've missed
But your love is one thing
I plan to keep
But honey, you know
Talk is cheap

Saturday, 2 February 2019

Cold Iron

Cold Iron, cold iron
Cold iron in the ground

They make you in a furnace
pour you molten in the mould
wait for your skin to harden
For your body to turn cold

Stand you up on the plinth
A statue of iron man found
Then they make another on an island
An Iron woman they give a crown
Tell her to hold a torch in her hand

Liberty
Cold Iron, cold iron lady
Why is your freedom so hard?
You stand on your island
Believing the future you've had read in your cards
Cold Iron, cold Iron
Will you turn into something real
Come down off your pedestal of metal
Show this iron man the way that you feel