Merry- go-bus

Round and round in circles
Like a merry go round
The bus is turning corners
Lights churning up with sound
Street names flash on the window
Fountains statues surround
Empty pavements
Others crusty with the crackling of busy bodies bustling
The loquacious lucky locket wearing window shoppers staring
The tourniquet led tourists twirling their turn styles dropping coins into slots
Or clocking off tickets like mechanical stocks
The stocking wearing spinsters who howl back at their dogs
And the merry go round bus turns around their world
Picking up penny pocket poor to the ribald rugged rich man's servant
The pale pored pasty pastiche of it technology tutorage
The tacky techno teens who train their caps to sit on backwards upon their tussled tops
Like some form of sea life existing in rock pools
Then heavy set hulks who heave their bulk
Towards the bulwarks of their barn door homes
To bed down with the oxen they weight lift in their sleep
And the pony tailed phony fellows whose pelt is hung across their shoulders
Like the Pawnee people
And rosy cheeked cherubim whom their mothers cherish in arms

Send me flowers

Send me flowers from her grave

You know I'm tired of being brave

I can hold no candles to a wave

Send me flowers from her grave

She has died but I can save

A piece alive I never gave

I'll tell you one thing I won't waive

Send me flowers from her grave

The world is lit in a special light

It comes where I sit these words to write

I could've hit I could have fight

But I keep it hid in myself tonight

The autumn rounds like a cannon ball

What goes up soon down must fall

And in its arc it forgets to call

The shallow shark of the swimming pool

So send me flowers from her grave

Promise me primrose salvage me sage

Pick me a bouquet of rosemary and thyme

And let me smell their scent divine

Tell me the names of love

What do you call it

Oh thingy you know

The the one with the black and yellow ribbon

Its driven in gold

Its a golden calf or Trojan horse

Or a microlite, a virus

Or is it a magical force

Its that thing on the tip of your tongue

The blood that drips from your ceiling when you are on your own

Reminding you of the skeleton you

Left buried in your closet

Or the corpse that keeps on giving everyone

Its own embodiment

Its that case of champagne you import

Thats cost you more in duty 

Than the Queen's winning horse

That she bet on Mr Nobody

On love's end

On Jezebel

On shower at the exit

Don't forget to Ring the bell

Its that word you must recall

I cannot say resell

Of course its a puffball

Like at level of a cell

I mean every body is at it

They're shouting down the street

Come on just stand up pout abit

The cockrel crows

And we all must meet

Some of them are cowards

And walk towards the heat

But then they run away again

When they smell the burning of their meat

They say is it hot in hear or is it hell?

Is it Her I'm inching beneath

In my slithering swell?

Is it Her or She whose heel is on my back

Is it she who rocked my cradle

And then put me on this wrack?

Is it four feet under

Or eleven fathoms deep

And can you still see Eden

Through a hole in your seat?

What of all these names for something none of us need

Or bleed

Yet if like some puritanical preacher

I suppose I am your teacher

And tell you it does not exist

Only flavours of a drifting sky only

THe dye cast in the eye

That makes them swell and run

I should say they know 

No better that blind spots on the sun

What when the light is behind me

My shadow's cast is long

Then all who care to mind me

Wile be treading upon someone

I am my shadow

He is me

And all these naughts and crosses

Merely games by which he sees

The one

As perchance the inventor is playing

Some games

With all of these

Names 

of love in a song

Songs of endearment, sweet heart

The whole world is fighting

Fighting fighting

The whole world fights

Give me all this love

The right the wrong

All the above

Fill not my world with hate

The world screws down on me

I leave through a side gate

I know I'm no Charles atlas

And John the Baptist 

Can carry my weight

They want my head on a silver platter

What's the matter with this world?

It got sold they say

But not everything that glitters is gold

Today like tomorrow 

Will be the same old sorrow

But I need the strength to swallow

And keep moving on

For Marguerite

All the places I travel to
Time is free at no cost
Ashton - from ashes to ashes
To the poet's wood (Audenshaw)
Where Auden talked with Bernard Shaw
Even the weavers wove their web
In Droylsden where waters ebb
Then flow into the miller's dough
of Milnrow
Thrashing at the fresh hay of Newhey
A deer stalker passed by the way of Derker
And a freeman took his land in Freehold
Who knows why you'd risk your success in Failsworth?
Newton Heath and Moston are the best towns to get lost in
In Monsall, they sell moon rock on a Sunday morning
In Crumpsall they can buy it back again out of season

Of course you can get your arrows fletched
And your bowstring stretched
in Bowker vale
And some pom-pom girls will make you bouquets
In Pomona
If you feel the need to rest a while
Drop anchor in Anchorage
Its a strong foothold for a gentleman suitor
On his way to Ladywell
Where the finest dames are known by name
To wash their hair
And chambermaids collect their buckets of water

Be careful of the Vikings who invaded long ago
We paid their levees like their toll
When we travelled on the Dane Road
And the wives of Stretford are hoiking up their britches
As they cross the waters
Tip-toeing to Timperley

The summer birds are nesting in the eves of Martinscroft
Because the green leaves grow in the withies of Wythenshaw

And everybody knows a rolling stone
Gathers no moss
It only feels its loss
When it stops
In the shade of shadow moss

strange days

Strange days

The window pane with sun rays

The nights are Stranger still

As winds and rain fall and fill

A stranger walks up a foreign hill

And love is strangest of all

Love is a stranger

You must kiss or kill

Choose one or the other

Both will settle the bill

Do you let a stranger pay

For your meal

Do you let another feel

What you feel?

And what when you're the stranger

Will you know how love feels

To be walking in a land

With a friend to lend a meal

Will you be let in the door

Of somebody's home

Or be left out in the field

To grow more hungry alone

roots

Roots of this city

This is the tree

The plants are the people

They settle they join 

Spread their fingers to the water

Feel the river

Some are born here by

Rights to die

Some have lived

Such separate lives

But their roots are set down

Like stones writ in blood

Deep in the heart of the ground

Where they tread

While acacia trees tower

Like the panel buildings above

And bees beside garden fences

Drone and buzz

My heart is in the river

The peace keeper of love

It sings all the sweeter 

For chestnut leaves above

That drop brown to the nutty ground

And crinkle when crushed

Like foot on a crown

wrought

Not everything we write is wrought
Not everything we find is sought
And not all that we buy is bought
Though the gold be sold for

And in Each one is side or slaught
The better which we might be taught
The sons or daughters of the naught
Who fossilize the cradle

Don't write me no more letters now
I have no eyes to read them
Don't send me flowers in a bough
I have no heart to feel them

And if my skin should fail me now
If my bones should break beneath
The onslaught of the waves of fate
I trust in you my teeth