Laughing at bricks

 I'm going on holiday

A holiday in the car park

Well I know that crime doesn't pay

But a supermarket trolley can make a good lark

I sit in it and I joy ride

All through the parking bays

My friends hitch me up to the bumper of a truck

And Whoa! away we go

Sometimes I wonder about sunlight

If it is real or just in my dreams

Is it something I can touch

Is it a malleable thing?

If I put it in my fridge at night

Will it light up my Spring beans

Oh sometimes I wonder about sunlight

And what on earth it all means!

Sometimes I like to lay bricks

I like to sit and set stones

It gives me enormous satisfaction

To know that they all have a home

And that each is interlocking

Or can make a good path

Or it could be that they are all joking

And it takes a good brick to make me laugh

A cobble stone is not well known

One looks just like another

To be a famous cobble, you must be shined to a nobble

Like an elbow after a wrestle with a long-kneed giraffe

Oh but nothing can bend me over double

Nor give me a stitch in my carf

No nothing can make my knees wobble

Quite like brick can make me laugh

Sometimes I just have to see it sitting in the corner of a house

And I think to myself what a predicament, 

to be stuck firm as cheese block in the mouth of a mouse

Or like a crack (craic) in a pavement

No nothing can start the joggle of

The old jelly roll or make my belly toll

Like a church bell rung by an April fool

Or split my sides quite in half

Quite like a good brick can make me laugh

Boogie Bay

 Jezebelle the nun she cooks the books

She looks down the rifle sight

At words in her book

And each letter is like a light

She forgets to remember to write

When they come in the night

To seek out her quarters

And I have missed my train

I have kissed the rain

I have handed over my money

In the short haul plane

And they are tying on my parachute

So I may fall again

Now I hope 

That I land on my feet like a cat

And not head first into pain

The boogie nights

Of silent street

Rolling days of hilly sleep

That are gained in increments

Like slow orchestral movements

Let me take you to Boogie bay

And the starving

Staple of stolen care

Let me take you to boogie bay

We'll run our own kettle shop

And shine shoes there

We'll perform brain surgery

And give you a new heart

They'll take away your kidneys

And replace them with kid art

They'll shave your Jerico

And topple your Jeronimo

And Domino your diamonds

Through doorways in the dark

They'll break the crust of parkland

In a following

And their dialectics will make you fall apart

In dialogues eclectic, or electric like her smart

She'll click her fingers

Yes she will, she'll hurl you

From the apple cart

And stake a claim in corruptibles

Like a razor blade dart

And shore enough the sea will scoff

At all your glimmering jewels

She'll roll them til their edges scuff

And shine them like your shoes

So let me take you to boogie bay

Where the whales have the time

And they keep it in their tails

Where the mermaids do recline

And fat and folding sailors who

Have spent too long on land

Will look out of their sea side windows

And begin to make their plans

Let me take you to boogie bay

It cannot be more than a day away

And we will score our good time there

And we will hold aloft a flame

And flax and flecks

And shocks of seals will still be making play

When we go down hand in hand

To the sands of Boogie Bay

Still frames

 It was as I suspected the just desserts have been served

They let the cat out the bag

And the donkey in the manger

The roller disco, rollercoaster 

Of storytime is over

And its now the darkness of dusk

Creeping in

The shadows are falling all around the garden

And bathwater runs down the drain

Sirens are calling

Down streets never ending

In a heat that is lending

Confusion to a maze

But now the temperatures is dropping 

And the giant is returning back up the stairs

To his castle keep

The eagle's nest

Where they hatch the eggs

Of unrealism, in surrealist

Dadaeist jest

And floating along with Barbie 

In a parachute who falls

And floats in a kaleidoscopic test

I can see the television crews leading out their cables

Diners sitting down to tables,

Turning lights out

The call of the outside,

Some humming engines

Some slippery scudding of shoes

Some where a boar is snuffling a truffle

And somewhere a deer is bounding

I see the frame like a distant memory

Like a slow train coming

Round the mountain again

And I'm on the platform

Thinking I can remember you

Feeling all the hope falling through my fingers

Watching the rain water run down the drain

It is cold on the mountain, and lights are barely burning

But I must be strong to remember my name

And I think I answered all of your questions

But the one that lingers is why I snuffed out our flame

Elephant time/ elephantine

 

Doing my best in a shortfall, to be gone in a can of

Cortisol and hair spray

In tooth decay in nominal equities

And innumerable beauties

And telegraphic controversies of hook liners

That shape the turtle dove into some angelic being

And give her a golden egg imbibed with meaning

And when in actualness the forecast looked grim

Because high above antennae rooftops swam the peregrine

 

And even if these wolves are called the sea, and gems are not cut by diamond dromedary

Then the lump she was concealing in her peacock pouch

Was gemlike glistening

Heraldic and fizzling to be close to social exclusion 

And far from some happy place

To see in isolation solace

And yet to laugh in loneliness’s face

If that were the attainable state

I shouldn't care where the pendulum swings

And if I am a free bear

Then this forest of time

Should not be thickets of problems,

I should see the wood for the trees,

But slowly I see the hunter stalking me

Through the long grass

With his elephant in his spy glass

The elephant in the room

No one is talking about him

Just the way he likes it

He likes to be left alone

An elephant is always solitary when he's far from home

Though this doesn't mean he's made of stone

It just means he's packed his trunk is on his way

To where I could not say,

To what time or place

can you find him pining for the forest again

For the memory of ivory is like the scent of burning wood

And bonfires of his vanities,

And tusks of really doing good

And ears of imperfection for to listen

To malapropisms and feet like starved mosquitoes

Spread-eagled and flattened without blood

Pachyderm

The thermal tongue that licks the peanuts

And the snake bark skin

Like a tree trunk, gnarled and thick, as the crusts of earth

On which his feet are treading.

The Queen of the Aquamarine

 She's such a middle class mermaid

She shops in Ocean and aquarium tanks

She thanks

Her postman for the letters from the blue lagoon

And swims into the underwater banks

Now I saw you had dated her too

She lost a few of her scales to you

With me I think she piled on the pounds

But in the end she was landed by a fisherman from France

Whatever became of her famous tail?

It glimmered in the sun, and in the

Fish market sale

When I asked the fishmonger to remove

Tail and the head, 

I think he must have misunderstood what I said

Because now my mermaid is dead

She was a middle class mermaid

From the blue lagoon

But she hadn't been back there in a blue moon

She had a mum and dad, and a sister too

Who was so jealous she could swim

With the Penguins at the zoo

Well I loved her then,

And she became my wife

But I never did know how she would change my life

You she told me once the sea was waving at me

But I never realized this meant she wanted to be free

And I stole away in a yellow submarine

To track her down, the Queen of Aquamarine

Then I saw she'd found her promised land

Down beneath the waves in the arms of Aquaman

Well she was middleclass mermaid

With the sea breeze hair, that blew with fresh mint

Smell in the air

And her toothpaste soul, it was so clean

That beautful girl, the Queen of the Aquamarine

Who Knew?

 Princes and paupers, skivvies and skanks

One road down skint street another

Day in the worm field of pout

Porous as Jesus on the Sermon

On the mount

Serpico in trousers

And a snake in a mexican hat

And sheepskin corruption

In the belly of the crow

Crawling in lower orders of

skid row

And I see in the lights

That are beginning to glow

My reflection in the eyes

Of those I used to know

What are these cathedrals of doubt

That grow

Up from the sewers

Where trout eggs sew

And uncertain notes

On their organs blow

Around the city drain pipes

For surely this is the one place

That's left

A crescent on a jacket

A sin of lifelessness

A cordon-bleu accompaniment

To swordfish stew

Whom the unicorns have been cooking

Well who knew?

The Walrus in the dental church is checking out the labour

And counting all the costs

Of being a super-saver

And if you can't save the whales

THen Aquaman needs you

To be his PA and keep his filing cabinet

In good working order

I charged you up like a light sabour and shone you through the dark

And it met with many of the stars

Whose wars were not with me but with the skylark

Who sang to St Luke in his hot bath

Who raised cold lazarus from his bed of damp bark

And sent him off on his midnight

Canoe

Down the milky river, but again who knew?

Who knew of hercules and his labour too

Or of the midwife whose breath was overdue

And bank balances weighed

And babies in carts

And supermarket slaves

And children who swim with sharks

And the kettle is boiling over

Because its been filled to the brim

Now the tea has to brew

And every patience is a virtue

who knew?

I met a man with a can of worms down by the railroad edge

He said I've been down every road in the world

But I've never broken my pledge

But the roads have broken

And the cart wheels

The chariot charities are tokens

Of deal or no deal

And if you believe what was spoken 

Then it forces you to steal

What was never yours to take in the first place

Who knew?

Like dogs in the park

Where the homeless man slept

And he is in abject dejection

And my own parle with ennui

Amounts to a certain British-Russian defection

Someone wishes me dead he said

Then talked to a dog on the bone

He licked his chops

Then smacked his lips and said

Now I think I'll go home

But it was the case of the spy who loved me,

And she would never let him win

He may take diamonds, he may take pearls

But he'll take the heart of the girl

What a sin!

To love a foreign man from a foreign clime

And bend to the whim or rule of the crime

It's a moral defection

And inbred introspection

That leaves Frankenstein's monster

Scratching his chin

Who knew?

Maglodi ut

 I'm in the land where they walk down straight

The dogs are the gods behind the garden gate

And I'm in a condo with a bottle full of hate

The dogs in the farm yard

They double up late

Calling us angels, calling

Pigeons on the lamposts

Carex in the garden

Tumble down Hungarian

buildings that stand on

Their last legs

Well I went to walk where

the dead don't talk

And the living all are sighing

And the breeze like chalk

Cut in circles and forks

Around the ones who were crying

They said you're a marked man

We have you in our sights

I said "I am what I am, now don't

forget the plan-

I won't go down without a fight"

But then the tombstones baulked

Under their ivy leaf storks

At all their words that were dying

It's a living language, a honey tongue

And the bears are off fighting with the dragons

In the grit on the dirt road lying

with butterfly wings and dead acacia blossoms

 

I see the Roma women calling to their husbands

Convicts inside the prison

And they call back darling what I lack

Is the eyes for you to be seeing

"Your children are here, come on shout to your daddy

Don't you know that he is your Father

And you are his sons

Though many horizons

Have set while he's been in prison

The children are well, another says with a yell

We love you the mother prompts the little boy 

To holla'

He he cries back, I love ya, though the lack

Of seeing is like I'm dying

In this living hell, where everyday gels into

The next and the next one

And it's all just a rap

I've been caught in the trap

Of being a young gypsy man caught in the system

It's the same as well for those who ring the bell

The prison yard bell it is chiming

And their crawling along the floors

Their rapping at the doors

And those prison walls they are climbing

But the bell still tolls for one and all

The bells of freedom are a ringing

One day the siren calls, will not herald what befalls

Every young gypsy man in the system 

They come out again, the family, this time

Another young boy is with them, he is getting

bored and restless sitting on the grass

Scuffing his feet in the gravel

Sending up a shower of angry stones

To heaven

On my way back after they are gone

I see they have scrawled with pink and blue chalk

We love you Apa (father) on the side walk

While I hardly dare look or listen, but I must

To the sounds the men make in the prison

As the daylight dims on a hot Sunday evening

And they face another night in the cell

Without his family, whose graffiti on the pavement

Is the inverse of his own howling sentiments

To the government

This is justice, this is the consequence

For the criminal all life is denied

Outside visiting times, if there are any,

And the high prison wall that keeps him