My Grand father's feet

I never did know about my grandfathers feet
Well they trudged through the snow
Now buried six feet deep
Well I never did know about my grandfathers feet

Well he had six wives, and made six women weep
I never did know about my grandfather's feet
They say he left them somewhere where down
In Mexico,
Well with the poisonous Ivy and the Indian way
I still hear them stepping in a southern comfort sway
Dancing the Tango like a chimney sweep
Well I never did know about my grandfathers feet

I never did know about my grandfather's feet
Some are like the railroad line
They just want to repeat
And others are like the stoned crows sitting on
a tree top seat
Well who ever should where he did go
On his grandfatherly feet?

Every corner of the city

In every corner of the city

There's something going down

Round every bend

Somebody is painting the town

Someone's making a friend

What they have in common 

That's how the story ends

In another corner of the city

The mourners parade

Someone is fishing casting his line

Someone is cycling the tunes doing fine

In every corner another person

Is calling a friend

But nobody knows how the story

Will end

There's a corner of this city

Where the gargoyles glare

Down from their posts

At the hell down there

And on another roof top

An Angel's hand to a man extends

But nobody knows how the story

Ends 

Another side of the wall 

the graffiti artists call

Their tags spread over an older

Picture

They scrape it off into dust

Layers of paint like imaginations rust

And attempts to say what they need to express

Nobody shouting or trying to impress

Like giving a little as a branch that bends

This how the story ends

Once in a blue moon

I saw you out on the blue moon
You came and went
and were gone too soon
Don't invent a reason for your absensence
Just put it down to too much scotch
vermouth or absinth
Nothing going on here,
nothing to see
For a time I was feeling queer
But of that feeling I am free

Lost again as if
As if I had some golden globe
That I could hold and keep near
Like adoration sold

Then I saw you smile like a missile
Through the room
It burst in a candle light
A wicker wax gloom
But the globe kept spinning around
As if a ball on a loom
And each Silver thread was spun
Turned into another moon

Blue was the colour
Then blood red
Then green
And from that I knew an absinth fairy near
Or else a Goblin queen
And she kept up her calling
Her temptation dream
And you were still there smiling
Like the cat who got the cream

Dandelion kiss

Everything felt like childhood
The stinging night does sing
About times that I have lost
And about songs that I did sing
The rocks are by the lily
And the stream flows to the sea
And each and every butterfly
Beats its wings to be free

Now the day is like a cumbersome
Toad that I must roll
All along the footpath that is made of gold
And she is like a flower
Growing by the road
I pick her for an hour
Before I blow away her soul

There are headlights in the evening
The foglights shining bright
And I stand up from the ceiling
To the morning's drowning light
French windows are blowing open
And the wind begins to call
These memories into being
From a world outside so cold

I hold her in my pocket
This flower of memory
And I will not forget her
Nor shall she forget me

The day is growing brighter
And the sun begins to shout
About the doors that we left open
When I decided to walk out
Ah but these slides are frozen
And the reel has turned on
And all the vases are broken
And now my flower is gone

Just one final word
Before I do pass on
The singing of the bird
In the lyrics of a song
She was like a Dandelion
Waving her crazy head
And I kissed her in the morning
Until I left her bed
So blow away my kisses
Like the seeds of a Dandelion head
The wind will take my thought dreams
To another land instead

Truly Deeply

I'm fed up with trying to be deep
I'm really sick of it
There's nothing else I need but sleep
But I can't get a stick of it
It's the dripping of the drain pipe
Or the falling of the rain
Call it the windows that need a wipe
Or any other name
The shame of it is maddening
The curse is just the same
And if you try to tell your dad
He just speaks his words in vain

Yes I'm fed up with being deep
I'm not afraid to admit it
It takes a deep man to say he's shallow
And I'm in such low waters
That I could paddle
In fact I could wade to the shore
And remain on dry land
There's nothing much to search for anymore
There's no hidden treasure
In the ocean bed's sand
Perhaps there once was a ship of Victory
But she's long been sunk and salvaged
Her cargo's been reclaimed
No I'm sick to the back teeth of being deep
I want all my poetry renamed

It should be named the pill
Or the heavy eye-lidder
The drowsy smell of flowers
That makes the driver veer off course
On a skidder
And the car crash wreck is a double decker
Like the Ship that sunk in the sleep
Oh yes I've had it up to the neck
Like the drumming wood pecker
I'm so sick of trying to be deep

Ocean's eleven -or Rhyme of the ancient mariner Revisited

I set off for eleven oceans

After I'd sailed seven seas

Four more I could not fail

I thought it would be a breeze

I was a lonesome vagabond

in search of riches, tourism and drink

But on that eleventh ocean

was where my ship did sink

A-drowning I was ship-wrecked

my raft it was marooned

upon the shore of a far off Isle

by a whale I had Harpooned

For where is this poor countree

that ye have towed me to?

He said well lonesome vagabond

I've towed ye to Peru

Peru I said and startled up

Where canst a man walk home?

Neigh dear lonesome Mariner

For too far have ye now roamed

But Lo what Majestic sky turned out

When I did turn me Head

For Heaven displayed a plethora of stars

One if followed must home me led

To orient I fixed the whale

Again out on the ocean

And told him hence to beat his tail

And thus from this dark Isle we shall give motion

And so on the crew of one did wend

It's starlit toiling passion

For the sea was as green as a wild monster

Calling my heart's courage to ration

Never a boat had thus put sail

Upon these treacherous seas

Nor chart or map to orient

Our pathless way to ease

We journeyed on without rainfall,

Our mouths were parched as sands

And the rats which fled from my raft

The searing heat they could not stand

Then to me appeared a visage of a friend

One I had known but now long lost

A man I had betrayed in love

And now before me visited his ghost

Accusing eyes they pierced me

And cut me to the quick

That I should live, while he had died

No candle burns a faster wick

Then flames in cohorts filled the scene

And seemed to set a light the timber

And in each flame a visage appeared

Of a man who was my crew member

They called to me and cried still worse

Why have you forsaken your brothers?

Because your life and ours were tied together

Now our deaths will be your curse

So, on I fled, crying “take me away from this guilt”

And soon from the air came a wandering dove

The evil which gave voice to these spirits

Had been dissolved by a face of love

The dove joined my vessel and led the

Whale towards dark cliffs,

“It is land “I cried

And so grateful was I

That no line written could tell of my bliss

Thank you said I, but then down did he die

Exhausted upon the deck

My future still lay in the balance, so for luck

I wore the bird around my neck

The Island was old and grey from a distance

But with speed became more familiar

It was the very spot I had sailed from

In June fifteen long years past clear

The wedding guests had arrived and there

I went with utmost haste

Now to you I regale my tale

Of eleven ocean's to which I lay waste

Meet me on the island

Meet me on the island
I'm drowning, I'm drowning
Meet me on the island
Of a thousand crownings

A thousand brown hens
Crowing the morning
A thousand cockrels
Cock adoodling a warning
Meet me on the island
Of sacrifice
Meet me on the island
Called paradise

I've been over the cold iron bridge
And I've been stuck on
a hot fiery ridge
Been too close to the sun
On my midnight run
Been down to the brook
To read a book
And lay down by the stream
To take sometime to dream
Now meet me on the island
We live in the promised land

We'll row over there one night
Under cover, out of sight
And draw our bows from the withies
And we'll stretch our strings
From twine that bark brings
And make a harp that sings
In the starlight

And you'll brood in the rude rushes
In a hood where you stood under crushes
Of the night when it fell
When we heard the tolling bell
Ring out like a warning through the reeds

So meet me on the island
Where all of it bleeds
And it mixes in the river
And its carried in the flood
I can see your eyes full of water too
Like you could cry by the riverbank
But darling can't you tell
The island is ours as well
So let's keep it a secret
And give thanks
To keep it


Kick out the kites
And Deliver the doves
The gulls are so bright
Silouhetted crosses above
Where the crows crowd in a parliament
And parle about the world outside their branches
They sit on the wires,
like old men around fires
Discussing the government
Like cowboys on ranches