Measure for measure/face-to-face

Britain is made up of classes
It is important you remember your place
If you have not been to the right school
Then you will be more like a disgrace

Those with privilege prosper
Those who have the right faces on
Their facebook account or Twitter
Will give a leg up to those they know
Then push the ladder down in your face

Small faces, large faces,
The Big heads of human races
The confidence crew
Who  backbite you
But it is all just to stay in the race

They don't care who they step on as they
Are making their way up
And even as they fall back down
Their friends are snatching their cup
And stealing their crown

This is Britain now, this is the green rolling hills
Of farmers lands, who have no plans to share
Only to exploit nature,
These are the Gentry who own the manor houses
Who play on the stock markets of the world
And roar like lions at all the church mouses
Who preach to them about religion
How it will save their souls
So they turn up to church on Sunday
To fill up the coffer's holes

And England's green and pleasant land is now
A feudal state, with more of the unfortunate
Precariats working as peasants to put food on their plate
And those with the upper hand
Who went to Oxbridge or Eton
Can dictate the rules, even news worthy opinion
And determine the course of the nation

And those without hope are those babes lying in the cradle
Because they have been born into Britain's lands
Where no charity could wager,
Them a better deal than
If they came from foreign lands
Because then they would be treated as tokenistic exceptions
And given places at the high tables

Wander out beyond its shores and you discover the corruption in every country
They say only in Britain can a person be honoured with equality
Yet in those wayward states, which are decreed,
The worst by liberal minds,
People's protection is enforced by a harsh brutality
Yet We in Britain have that same
sentiment of protection
Yet ours is backed up by far more ruthless crooks
Mostly who have gone to Eton
And of those their brutality is taught
In the school of hard knocks
That coming from the right family or background
Will ensure your measure of protection

It is better you come from foreign climes
So that you are not aware of the system
That grinds the working man down
That turns to dust the middle classes
That neither awards nor trusts
Nought but itself save tokenistic prizes
To save faces, small faces
Big faces savour the queen's graces
Who stands a top the totem pole that rocks
Us all to sleep in our places

And we are asleep, as a nation
We writhe, and toss and turn
But the pressure pushed down on the blanket
Smothers us, covers our faces
So we cannot breathe
The nanny state- that feeds us
That suckles us,
Then the tax system that takes it straight back again
When we have finally earnt enough
This is what necessitates the need for the classes
The leg up the socio-economic ladder
That gets you to a higher status
A better clientele,
The confidence crew of crooks
With the small faces

Then you go on holidays in the Caribbean
Find off-shore places with them
To hide your taxes,
And the secrecy grows and the clubs grow
Until we all wear masks to cover our faces

And they say face book is the great leveller
But it just enforces what already exists
The power structures
Then have greater powers
To manipulate the poorest
Like grist
To the mill
To grease the wheels
Of progress

The name of the rose

A lawyer is sweeping up the streets
Tidying the law suits away
He's leaving sentences down alleys
And finding evidence on motorways

And the judge is cleaning windows
Pronouncing all that is clean
As he wipes the soot from the slates
Drops the columns from a magazine

To the journalist who is always talking
In the cafes and the bars
To million dollar shoe shiners
Who have just parked their sports cars

And in between the sparkling gems
Of phineas Fogg who just stayed home
Are the television dinner house wives
Who are jetsetting around the world

And dogs who think that they are cats
Go chasing down the crows
Who know already that they are dogs
And have been lying down in the road

And it all boils down to the top
Which falls out the bottom of the bag
That the street cleaner found in his paper cup
As he signs another writ in the daily rag

Who knows who these people are
I'm damned if I should know
It's not up to me anyway
To adjudicate a dog from a crow

And even if I see them with my eyes
Can I smell them with my nose
Will I call a spade a spade
Or call another the name of the rose

Love on the run

Brown cows in the meadow
Following the sun
Brown cows in the meadow
Following the sun
Well black crows in the shadow
Got love on the run

Well we're like those cows baby
Just following the sun
Yes we are like those cows honey
Just following the sun
We don't know where we're going
But we've got love on the run

I went to church on Sunday
I said God bless my soul
I went to church on Sunday
Said god bless my soul
Well it will be worth it to me someday
Well I'm just a love sick fool

I tried to shoot you baby
But the bullets went right through
I tried to shoot you baby
But the bullets passed through
Now I drink you baby
I drink your love by the shotful

You kill me baby, you kill me everyday
You kill me baby, you kill me everyday
And you'll be killing me tomorrow
Just like you kill me today

Humanimal

It's a bad habit
So don't do it
You're not a rabbit
Get through it!
Yeah you're not an animal
So don't do it
It's a bad habit

You could be a Panda
Eating shoots and leaves
Then you see a tasty animal
Makes you give up what you believe
He's a vegetarian not a carnivore
And you're a human not an animal
So don't do it
It's a bad habit

You could be a Giraffe
On the prairie
Head in the clouds
Like a fairy
Well come back down to earth
See your human worth
You're not an animal
It's a bad habit

You could be a monkey
Throwing banana skins
Trying to trip up others
In their times of sin
Well you're not an animal
Since Adam and the fall
He bit the apple
It's a bad habit

You could be an elephant
With his long trunk
Happy when he's relevant
But not when he's a drunk
You see he forgot
To remember he's an animal
But you are not
Don't do it,
It's a bad habit

You could be a flammingo
Standing in the pink
He can stand on one leg
After he's had a drink
But he's an animal
Don't be a fool
Don't do it
It's a bad habit

So lock up the zoo
The human's out his cage
There'll be hell to pay
And put heaven in a rage
You're not an animal
So don't do it at all
It's a bad habit
For all creatures great and small

Omen Bird

Buzzard sitting on the high branch
Vulture of the corn
Hunched shoulders like a miser
Shrugging at the oncoming storm

Weather front like a spyglass
Into tomorrow's dawn
Buzzard sitting on a high branch
Calling his tidings to warn

Augur bird of all he's heard and seen
Calling to someone or something in the green
Buzzard sitting on the high branch
Waiting there with eyes keen

Buzzard sitting on a high branch
Waiting to get born
Well he hasn't got a nest of his own yet
But he's building one well shorn

Buzzard sitting on the high branch
Waiting there as the sky is torn
Thunder will come and the rain on the run
He'll still be sitting there by Sunday morn

Buzzard sitting on the high branch
Looking out into the sky
Waiting and wondering,
Wondering and a waitin'
But he never does know why

Bernie's Birthday

Like a busy bee she buzzes from flower to flower
Like a hairdresser she trims the fringes
On her gardening binges
She's parched from the hospital green
She needs some real corridors
Of nature's power
So she dives in
Like a swimmer
Like a garden warrior of weeds
Battling on her knees
Tooth and nail, clawing at the earth
For all she's worth
She is a crusader for the cause unseen
But to tame the wild,
To play the game with mother nature
We have all seen
But like a general she commands the daisies
To stand upright and strong
She waves her hands at daffodils
They turn away from their own reflection
In the pond
And look her way, the cabbages wilt under her
Intense gaze,
As the lettuces give up the ghost
Go to seed
Let us give thanks and praise
To the army of one
That is Bernie, battler of the weed
On her birthday

Static Swans

White swan black peat
What contrast of purity
The lamb bleats
The polar bear's ferocious teeth
Black swan white peat

Turn on, turn off
The television static
In a graveyard cough
So gravelly and grave and sooty
And sweep
So much blurring, fuzzy channels
I can get no sleep
White swan, black peat

Like a plesiosaurus
Of the ancient stage
Long necked nessy,
From Walter Scott's page
White knights, black page
Black night, white sheet
White swan, black peat