300 years a statue

What gets to me about pulling down statues, is that it was allowed by the police, presumably as a thought out method, that they did not want to have a riot on their hands that they could not control, or be accused of police brutality in resisting the action of pulling it down. So in a sense it was sacrificed for the greater good. What does it matter, it was just a statue, I mean a racially potent, and provocative piece of public art that representing oppression of black people. Yet it had been doing that for a very long time, and it also represented history. My fear is the message sent is that when ever any particularly angry mob is in enough numbers, then the Police in Bristol will allow whatever destruction of property the mob /crowd leaders/ protesters feel justifies their violent attention and that this will be permitted. So that if a far right group also decides it wants to countermand its own protest and focus its attention on some public building, public artwork it feels insults its beliefs, then this mass action, and mob-rule is the best way to accomplish its aims, and the police would be within their rights to stand back and allow this, because it is the will of the mob, and it fears future repercussions if it does not relent.

All glory fades

What is this:
What is this key to no love
To no life
When they are burning the shops
And marching down the street
Of liberty

What is this pied sky
This chessboard we must walk
Or fly
With these chains
That bind us
Or tie us down

We are not machines
Oh statue, statue
Statue of you
That holds
All the flags of the city
All the flowers blooming pretty
Down the street of liberty

Who are these men on plinths
And Pedestals
Whom we look up to
And hold enthrall
What chains have they tied
Or bonds shattered
Whose lives once lived
Now died, what mattered
Was love

But all glory fades
As the bronze
That loses its lustre
Unlike the stars that cluster
In the constellations of space
And at least that look
Will get wiped off your face
In the end
At the end of the line
When they hook
You out the pond

Heaven's above

These clouds are like an empire when you look at them
Like heaven has rose up in desire
And let their Angels sing
The tribunes and the Seraphim,
The arcangels too
All of them
Are up high singing
Singing just for you

Oh Heaven is a steel drum
Its a pearly gate
Its a mountain of white chewing gum
Bubbling on a hot plate
Its stuck to earth like virtue
Like a message of love
That gets to you
Oh hear those Angels singing above
Singing just for you

See those rolling mountains
Turning over the hills
Climbing down
Like cats on curtains
Crawling over to you
Purring in their circumstance
Obeyance and their fates
Oh don't you hear them singing for you
Outside St Peter's gates

Still in love with you

The dogs have driven us from the fields
The shakes spears waggle
Their gaggle of geese
The dome is revelaed
By a cloud of grace
And I'm still in love with you

The tunes are coloured by a cornered brow
Which furrows in the fields
As a new born cow
And telephones ring but don't pull ploughs
And i'm still in love with you

The shoes are worn by police dogs shorn
Of all their vows and the holy thorn
Which draw and bow along stately lawns
And I'm still in love with you

Don't give me excuses, I can't bear lies
My shoulders are broad but no Yorkshire ties
I would loosen my tongue with a barrel of Whys
And I'm still in love with you

The fires keep burning down in New Orleans
The shops are looted, the bars are clean
And I drank you down but you were mean
And I'm still in love with you

The demon in cider

Here's one
The men walk into the bar
They drink all day
Then one vomits

The south African is a sports fan
He says listen I can drink you under the table
He drinks
The other copies,
Pint for pint of fosters
Or is it cider
Then after ten pints the other vomits

He walks out sick of Sport
And bullish South African rhetoric
Walks home
But he falls off the road
Sideways
Like Benny Hill
Into the ditch

He comes to in a stinging nettle patch
Disorientated
He falls over a barbed wired fence
Into more nettles
Loses his coat
Remembers what he saw in a survival film
About being lost in the jungle (well, it is dark afterall)
So Walks in a semi circle through
A large hemisphere of
You guessed it...
More nettles
To reach the same barbed wire fence
10 metres down the road
He falls over it again (in reverse)
And climbs back onto the road coatless
In the dark
He walks back home
Only the home he thinks
He is walking to turns out to be the
Same pub he vomitted in
about an hour ago

The South African has gone home
He meets a bee keeper
Sitting at a picnic table
Who offers him
Another cider
They drink.
Then a lift home
He goes to another pub
Has one more drink
Then arrives home
To find he can't find his door key
(because he hid it in the wheel arch of his car)
Luckily a side door is open
Which leads up
Some stairs and to the airing cupboard where there
Is a boiler
Which he hugs
To keep warm and falls asleep
Then wakes up near dawn
When he remembers where
he
Hid
his
Keys
or his kidneys

Everyday beauty

Its an equanimity of
beauty and the beast
Its the dividing line
Of Snow white
And her release
Its the pin prick
The seamtresses' needle
Its the sweet surrender
Of the poisoned apple
Its everyday beauty that walks the same line
Everyday beauty has me dying all the time

Its the porridge cooling in the bears' bowls
Its the beanstalk falling out of control
Its a giant falling onto the land
And everybody going about their business
Like before
Like they understand
Its the estate agent who
Sold the witch her cottage
In the forgotten wood
Where feminine beauty was besotted
With the everyday sweetness
Of kindness misunderstood
Like the disguise of the wolf
In red riding hood
Its the everyday that gets swept under the carpet
Where the woodworm crawl
And cinderella finds it
Its her own image
In a crystal chandellier
That gets reflected around the ball room
When the prince appears
Its the everyday that some how fits
In every single soul through the fog
That slips

And the moon was riding high

Would you please God
I am shaking
Would you
Please turn that racket off
Its noises, dear God
The moon is breaking
Like an egg
The metallic clouds
Are shimmering
Like Alsatians in the wind
And I am bristling
With the thoughts of you
Rattling underneath my skin
And the nerves of this place
To be full of grace
Yet it is so hard to sin
It is you in the mirror
The distant glimmer
Of History stepping in

Oh Would you,
Could you not forgive
Could you not join in
The dance with me
This time
For one last spin
Oh could you, would you
Could you, would you
Not join in the dance with
me