What have we all become?

I see in your face the lines I can trace

Back to where we used to run

Through fields and streams in our childhood dreams

Oh what have we all become? 

What have we all become?

You knock on my door, but its not like before

Too many years have past under the sun

Oh what have we all become?

We keep ourselves, like books on the shelves

Some change, fade to dust and some survive,

But strange how time aids and still keeps alive

These things in us that remind of someone

What have we all become?

And it just doesn't seem real, all these things that I feel

They just seem like melodies that are yet to be sung

What have we all become?

All the faces I've seen, show all the things that have been

But darling we've hardly begun

Yet what have we all become?

There are roads that cross in the desert, and tracks that meet in between

And paths we have taken, though some are forsaken

And some are rivers yet to be swum

So what have we all become?

I cross my arms and I wonder, I ponder on those misty things

They come in frightening thunder, they strike like lightning stings

As in my mind all their images hung

What have we all become?

I hold out my palms to catch a falling drop, 

And water is like a balm, that makes the pain stop

But the thought still remains when it's gone

What have we all become?

Trying to move

 I tried to move you through the Meer

I tried to love you, that much is clear

But did I tug too hard at your ear

Or did I lug around my baggage of fear

Who is in control, is it me or is it it?

I see the magpie and the cuckoo spit

But who is calling the crow to quit

Is it why I forgo all kinds of shit

I paid my penalty, I paid my price

So why still the enemy lives in paradise

I bought my ticket, I didn't ask twice

Yet still you'd give me plenty of your ice

What is there that I forgot to tie

Was it your cross I bear or mine

Do you sing where the leaves dry

Or stop and bear the tears I cry

I have been where you are sitting

There were many reasons for my quitting

But they all stem out of a fear of committing

And it is clear it's the atom I'm splitting

It will explode in my hands as a bomb

It will unfold like the sands I comb

It will turn up in the sea shoal tombes

That are read by all the fish headed blondes

And I am leaning into their wake

From the ship of all my mistakes

But I am yet to climb aboard

Oh what is life about my lord? 

Four Years

 Well you know four years in a lifetime

Is not so long

When you’re a child your heart and legs are strong

And then you grow older

And you do school too

You know four years in a lifetime

Is just something you do

 

Four years in a love life

Is like writing a book

Its full of highs and lows

And you become easily hooked

And some days it gets so bad

You just can’t let go

Four years in a love life

Is still just something you do

 

Four years for a swallow as everyone knows

Is from the summer haze to the winter throes

And they sleep on the wing, and they follow rainbows

Four years for a swallow, time flies just so

 

Well four years for a beggar, will beggar belief

For the places he sleeps on edge of the streets

And on top of park benches, or under shop windows

Fours years for a beggar is like trying on clothes

 

Four years for a thief doing hard time

Is like stealing his soul, behind steel bars that bind

But if you steal a heart then you ought to know

Four years apart, is four years left behind

 

Four years for a king, when shadows climb his walls

Fours years of silence, when dark times befall

And his castle becomes dreary, and his heart suffers no fools

Four years for a king is like a trouble that calls

 

Four years for me, is not four years for you

Four years for a crow, is not four but two

For she flies ever straight just like an arrow

While time like a river meanders below

 

And if I were you, then my four would be two

And if you were I then my two would soon go

Down into nothing, when the sweet wind blows

Four years is a nothing for the flowers of the meadow

A Telling Time

 I've been out the back of the wrongside of tomorrow

And I've gotten back what I beg, steal or borrow

And although I might lack the eyes to see through sorrow

When my tears dry, where they lead I must follow

And nature cried in the heartland of the sun

The creator tried to bury what he had begun

But bring forth Mary, bring back Jesus the son

And all of those quarries of moon rock by the ton

They fill up my stocking, they go knocking at my door

They slide down the bannister, of the memories of before

And pull open the cannister, the rocket ship that endures

Through space I'm now the traveller to a love I adore

I see her in the gardens, in the pearly realms

Where queens walk in the park under the boughs of Elms

And who knew their shoulder sparks would hold tight the helm

As the nation's ship goes sailing, though darkness overwhelms

She is my Captain, I am her slave

And as we go sailing through disaster, I try to master each wave

But if someone throws me a lifeline, I know it's myself I must save

And in the process rescue all my hopes and dreams from the grave

Three blind mice

 It was blindingly obvious,

But I didn't have a blind thing to do

I didn't have the first idea, not muddied nor clear

I didn't have a pot to piss in

Or a cross to bear

But I had you in my horizons

And I will plot a course there

It was like the blind leading the blind

Down a blind alley trying to find

Their blind spot, caught on the trot

With a pig's hoof and blind to the truth

The proof was in the pudding

Of the third eye and when I swallowed it down

I saw I was a spy, who had been taken over

By a consortium of lies

About the epoch and blind-sightedness

That covers up our eyes

And no I can't look the truth in the face

Who ever could stare direct at our race

And say yes I love this or no I hate that

Whether we are compared to a pig, or compared to a cat

We are animals in the frame just the same

Except Darwin could never remember his name

And Hamlet made such otherwordly claims

That for his weakness to be blindness, was enough to shoulder his blame

And Oedipus rex he couldn't complain

Of the virtue of truth telling

The blind and the lame

The good and the bad and down right mad

Who married his mother and murdered his dad

A Brief Encounter

 I saw this pair of Y-fronts talking to a pair of frilly knickers in a railway station café

I thought it was strange, then the mist cleared and I could see

The set had rearranged

Now the Frilly knickers was giving the Y-fronts a wave

Must you go Frilly knickers?

I'm afraid I really must...you see your Y-fronts and my Frilly knickers

They really can't touch, there is...just...too much at stake.

You are married then? To another pair of Y-fronts?

Yes darling, but of course and so must you be too..to another pair of Frilly knickers?

I'm afraid that is the truth, sad but true, she is shopping as we speak I expect

in Miss Selfridges for a pair of bloomers

Bloomers, Gosh!

Yes, don't I know it.

And do you have children also?

I do...oh but my dearest Frilly knickers what we have is so special

Surely we mustn't let our chance slip away?

You must let me go Y fronts. What we have had was wonderful, but I must get on this train

Last train to Goring Streetly, about to depart.

My darling I shall never forget you

You will always be close to my heart Y-fronts

And I shall also keep the memory of your face, Frilly Knickers, close to my Y-fronts

As she boarded the train

I thought what are the chances?

I must have walked in on a remake of 

That scene from A Brief Encounter 

Worn out pieces of trash

 If you are sure you found them

If the motor turns or claims

Then the service that will start them

May turn a key inside your brain

If you stand with both arms folded you know

You're sure to stand in vain

But if you stand with both palms open

Then here's a hoping they'll be your refrain

Don't stick it to the Major

You know he doesn't care

Don't stick it to Jimmy carter

When you know that he won't barter

No you know his name

His name is on the lion's mane

His name is in the working bane

In the living pain

And dying drain

That flushes out apostles from imposters

And the dossiers from the monsters

And it brings all the monasteries to the brink of disasterous

Corpuscles who wait in corpus Christi forums

Or museums of rust

And anti-trust fund babies

Who run around with rabies

And curtain off the Habeus Corpus of the law

Until we all say you cannot touch the spirit anymore

And they die in the gutter of what they utter

As the trains roll on in utter contempt for the law

And the politicians splutter their gonorrhoea swollen spores

Over the poor and cough and cutter up

The fish heads above their doors

Who stand guard for the hard sailors

Who've gone left their wives in the arms

Of those they implore to do more

Than they would in their plaices

But not so yellow as their soles, they sold

For a quarter of a penny more

And this is the quarter of an hour mark to heaven.

This is dialectically opposed to forgiven, 

Gibbons of gibbous moons

And loons and ducks and geese of all Canada held spent

In the arms race with the moose

But she went on the ice and drowned in a barrel twice as tall as

The tallest apple bobber and then she felt

Like she might explode, she smelt it and then she did it