Love is a numbers game

 I love you, I love you to five decimal places,

no I love you to PI recurring

And every iteration of your natural number

Gets my mathematical motor purring

I love your noughts and ones baby

I love your threes and eights

And I'm at sixes and sevens over your legs eleven

And that neatly brings us up to date

And what will be the date when I define your PI?

What slice may I take?

How can they say our love is pi in the sky

When it's a matter of the numbers you make

And I've cooked the books, no look

I've done my sums and the simple truth is

They've added up wrong

I love you baby so strong

Like a towering line graph

Like a frequency diagram

Like the calculus of knowing

You can square my circle

In radians of becoming

And polar coordinates

But there is one number that adds up to two

That's when you love me baby

Like I love you

Covid carol

 Talking of the sacrifices that we made during the covid serenade

When death danced amongst our ranks

And gulls called about our flanks

The army of the nation marched on

Talking of the penniless arcades, where jingle bells played

And all the Christmas tinsel displayed

But then there was no-one left

To share it with - two into one

Talking of the typos left at the printers that cut out all our vowels

Like a samurai cuts out his own bowels

In the final act of hari-kari

Well I ordered an uber taxi and stayed

Well out the way

Of love or death and taxes

Ever-after

Perhaps

If there were a case of him versus me

The God of Him would win the

War against the 'Me' disease

But we are all so sure that

some cure will be discovered

That we never took precautions

To ensure

Our own egos

Were covered

And the personal personality insurance went broke

After they gambled all their

Winnings on some private joke

That went up in smoke

Or fell flat on its face but it

Was even funnier that way than saving the

Whole human race

And I thought that I owed her a family

At least

I thought I could own her

I'd be her hairy beast

And protect her from the wild woods

But it did not work, it all ceased

Just as the rain is too beautiful

To Cut the shoulders of sheep

Who graze long after we've stopped

Talking of covid

And tunnels that never cease

Where we look for the light

But darkness is a comfort

And too much light is blinding

And I can only tell

What my shades are finding

Volatile vol-au-vents

 Volatile vol-au-vents

On bathroom tiled floors

Corners, and mourners outside coroner's doors

Closing time at funeral parlours

Where the dead are called

To rent out a coffin for the morning

By that afternoon

All death taxes will have been paid

But I thought I was a European corpse

One said

I answered

Brexit has effected us all my dear

Now at least you'll know your burial

In a church yard will be safe

From the common agricultural policy

And no more shall the other world be mapped

To four decimal places

And there will never again be a corner of a 

Foreign field that is forever England

Yesterday Girl

 I tried to call you Sarah, tried to call you

Yesterday, yesterday girl

Tomorrow is a land we can forget regret in

we can sip the sweet cup of grace

And heaven stepping in 

To demand space

For healing

They cut the drug, and share across

The mirror of this reality

Cut time into pills

You may swallow each day

Say

Don't bite off more than you can chew

And I call you Tuesday

Mrs Wednesday

Mother Thursday

Brother Friday

Like the monk

That I've become

Mum is the word

Nobody says

In our vows of silence

And forced forgetting

It's a self-inflicted violence

Against memories

Than stirs and stain

Like tanning of the leather brain

Folded in and on itself

And in each shelf

A book of time is stored

In the cerebral library

But in dementia, the librarian

Has gone mad

Is destroying volumes

Like evidence

Before the Nazis come

To accuse him

Of conspiracy, or herasy

Or speaking his mind

He knows the castle cannot keep

The monastery's library

And it cannot save

These treasures from time's ravages

And the revolution

That makes books obsolete

And turns the leaf of history

Into garbage on the street

And in what dignity is left to him

In self -determination

Before the mind-controllers take control

He sets a conflagration in the heart of the library

In the nerve centre of his soul

Until all knowledge of his life and love

Is lost in obliteration

And the total annihilation

Of his word capital

Until feeling is like a serpent

Swimming in a deep primordial bowl

Making monosyllabic lurchings

For meaning in its soul

And almost reaching expression

Of the reptillian mind

When finally all functioning ceases

Back into the husks we find

French Toast

Cows drop in the shucks

Flies blacken out the books

Matches light the fire

Under bushes of thorn

The parson passes hours

Handing out the flowers

Like prayers around the houses

But he still ties his boot

The time is like twine wound

Clocks go round and round

Minutes of the rainfall

Entered in the log of crooks

Meetings undercover

And above their lovers

Fall over in the fallen rain

Trying to get cute

Chosen cheeses tumble

From the turnstile table

Baroque and broken Rococco

Furniture lay in pieces

Breadcrumbs of the madams

Leaving trails for Hansel

And Gretel to come wandering

To the house of ill repute

Every ant will wire

A message to their mother

In code between the covers

They know no one can shoot

Chambermaids go hungry

Next to pigs potbellies

Freedom wears an iron mask

No questions can be asked

By the red army recruit

I hold you in decision

Of a natural derision

Open courts are far from

Penny worth arcades

Z cars make the freeway

Superstars on the highway

While singing bums sing myway

Out beyond the Christmas Parade

And St Patrick is in his tower 

struddling some snakes

For their only mistake

Was to justify their God

Dogs howl in the moonlight

Inside the garden of paradise

She is free from fire

And I am free from ice

If you see them coming,

You better ask for the magazine

They will shoot your picture

And leave your soul outside

The fruits of harbour waiver

Inside the semiquaver

Struck up upon a drum

Of black mirrors to the sun

And every hawk is heard

To cry in human words

The needs so babies come

Across the image

Of the one

Beebobanian

 Clock towers toll

On St Thomas's street

And the road of robbers

And the northern beat

And the rained on feet

And our scuffed souls

And shoes like rubber dummy controls

Who check our haste and fasten

Our foals

To the evening rains of a field

so dole

Out the laughs spoon up the gags

Let me hear them calling

For the last rags

Which report in dishwater type

Of crooning nags

And billowing bags

That blow from West to East

That hairy beast is howling still

In the moonlight of a window sill

And coming through the stamens teeth

Which grind in a dual mouth-breach

So he tells you once, he tells you twice

He is the Bird of paradise

Oh Beebobanian dog

With the banana body

Just the size of a mouse

Who says NaNa and slobbers rainbows

How is it that your garden still grows?

Coming up steady, coming up strong

From the heady reaches of a Red Babylon

The Red planet's dust in your paws

That you shake off, emerging in the breath he draws

Of that sweet Australian Sun

He drops like a grey hound

And away you run

House Call

 Give me all the dust and sewer waste

Give me the lust and screw her haste

And copy and paste her face

From one to another keeping chaste

And keeping mum

Keeping shtoom 

All in the bank vault in 

The corner of her room

And grace is saved

But I ask by whom?

And who can lace

The cocktail broom

With tears on her face

After a call on zoom

And a lover's disgrace

And a girl named doom

The colours trace

The rainbow's tomb

That end in a place

Like a golden loom

Unravelled replaced

The sun unpacks the moon

In shards which chase

A diamond's gloom