Trouser Song

 Did you get dressed to day?

Did you put on your clothes?

Did you wash your hands?

Did you blow your nose?

Did you get dressed today ready for work

Oh come on mate, you can tell me straight

did you forget your trousers?

Did you check your waist coat

For spectacles and watch,

Did you test your suspenders?

Did you pull up your socks?

Did you get dressed for what could be and what could surely not?

Oh come on mate you can tell me straight

did you forget your trousers?

Come on you can tell me

If you didn't put your trousers on

We were on that old zoom call

And it's best not to flounder in song

If you can get up right now

And show me I won't be siding with the doubters

So come on mate, you can tell me straight 

Did you forget your trousers?

Don't worry, only pulling your leg!

Watching

 Between this wooden land

Of stork trees stand

The wiley scuffs of dancing tufts

That play in diffuse light like

Spiked pineapple tops

The lesions of sore silver, shimmering lakes

Stretches of straits and waterscapes

Gaping wide gates that ask their

gormless question why

To their empty fields

Their loveless lovers

Who steal like deer in shadows

Before the dawn has struck

And the sun is still a stuck

Orange yolk yet to break

And spill its golden liquor down

Upon the valley

Where the green king river snakes

And hedges blaze in fires before

The eyes of wood anemones

Who listen in their disguise

Those beautiful flower spies

Wild Swans

 Strange are the times, junta of the mind

Seized and sacked and bound

By invaders

Holy crosses fall, flags from Jerusalem's wall

And the clocks that keep running in circles

Take me back to a time

When all was easy sunshine

When we never faltered nor fell

Only down into sand

Take me back to the shore

Where the sea rushed corals

And all I did was lie on my back and floated

There must be a place like that

For you and me, my country Jack

Living free, sun on our backs

Birds through the sky somersaulting

There are ways and there are beasts

Making hay while others sleep

Inside the tree, the old knarled tree

Singing woodwork, woodwork for me

And out the woodwork

See them come

Like a stone that someone flung

Catapaulted, heaven vaulting

Wild swans, wild swans

See them skate on icey lake

See them make their last mistake

In the desert of the sun

Living as peasants for the holy one

There must be a time to fly

And there must be a time to die

When all your songs on earth are sung

That last will be your swan song

Wild swans, wild swans,

Through the grey clouds

To the land of song

In the heavens flying free

Wild swans I wish I could be

Give me life and give me joy

To always love and not destroy

This precious thing Earth's not a toy

That I can play with like a boy

I must be strong, must carry on

Through the heart land of the song

And sing on my tune of joy

Wild swans, wild swan

All bets are off (2)

 All bets are off

All tinctures too

And the milk is sour

and the bread is like glue

And the body's power has returned to the zoo

Where its animal instincts

Have cut a hole through

The fence

Oh what a thing to do

And the hunters watch

The men in towers

Who call off the search

For the middens two

And maidens lurched

With the carriage crew

As the parrot fell off his perch

And flew back to the zoo

All bets are off

And now I am too

The Gods in the church

Don't know what to do

And the fires scorch

And the torches chew

Up light and darkness

Of the school yard crew

Oh I need a rehearsal to drive on the act

I need a reversal of a graveyard fact

That we all are dying and the museums are packed

With spectators and nurses nursing the artefacts

And sculptures are crowing and cockerels too

And it's all in the not knowing of what to do

All bets are off

And I'm off too

I'm going to church where the sky is blue

And the crucifix is reversed and man is a God

And I walk like Jesus across the seas of sod

But I don't sink through

I don't know what to do

All bets are off

And now I am too

The bet is on

 I bet you did, I bet you spotted

The pig

I bet you potted the dig

With all sorts of paraphanalia

Regally adorned the azures

In blues and pinks

Little tropical sunset

In a mood of long longing

Frog spawning through the hawthorn

In horned devil detail

Of particular garland

Ornately ordained

Conupiscence of arabesque curves

Oh how long, how long I ask you

Now

Must I wait

Under her thumb

 She's got them under her thumb

Oh and all the roses

And the garden hoses

Oh the green grasses and flowers in bloom

And oh they are so well trained

Under her eye's strain

Yes she has them under her thumb

And with her green fingers, she moves like a

feeling lingers, a cloud of pollen

A haze of sun

And all in the rein of

The land girl we're in praise of

Yes she has them under her thumb

To dig for victory, see the stars sing for me

Hear the sound of trumpets at dawn

Raise a model army from the levels

Where folk are barmy, instil the yoke of loyalty

upon someone

Yes she's got them under her thumb

They love her in the salt quays

Where stevendores unload the ferries

See the cargo from the land of the endless sun

No one knows her true name, she carries only her own flame

The ships of a slavery, are rubbed from the sum

And Walking in the graveyard

You'll find her skeleton playing hard

For the piano keys are all under her thumb

And then we saw dragons

Before the flood

And then there were Dragons

And after the time

Of the rolling wagons

And I caught a mouse inside it's wheels

And the mouse did squeak

And the wheel squealed

And the spokes did speak

And the folk did feel

That it was no joke

That life was a wound that would not heal

Because before the flood there were no wagons

Then we started our journey

And it was then that we saw dragons

And St George did come

For we needed a dragon slayer

And saint Joan did hum

As we needed a scale player

And we played down the back of the dragon's keys

And he sang in his scales

But he never scaled me

Because when we were one, we were giants back then

Tall as house and eaters of men

And they sang as they doused their moustaches with wine

Of the sheep that they'd stolen, and then swallowed the swine

But the giants had never before seen a dragon

And wagons were rolling to the westerly horizon

And the days were getting longer, and the clouds were long streaks in blue

And above them soared the dragons that I had looked right through

It had been in a time of mists and of magic

And they swallowed the pill of drug that was tragic

That hazy pot of gold at the end of the rainbow

That cure for the world's soul, that takes happiness out of shadow

And the clouds parted then as the sun burst through

Surprising the giants who had just knawed through

The bones of a pleasant neanderthal man

Who had been operating machinery at a poetry slam

And he got his fingers caught in the web of a spider

And he began to talk and walk like he was an outsider

So soon they cast him out of bounds for the best

And he became a traveller to the grounds of the west