Deer Jon

 It's been five hours since I was at the factory 6 am, my wife is going to work as a secretary in the local primary school. I feel sick, a kind of cold sweat. Maybe I'm ill. You'll be fine she tells me as she goes out the door - remember to put the chicken on for when I come home. I get up pull on some slacks and go downstairs to make a cup of tea. The mail has arrived. A letter from the gas company saying they need to inspect our boiler. It packed up last week and I had to call a repairman. 

As he was fixing it, I felt sure I saw something in his eye, some redness there. It's this look some people around town have been getting. The librarian had it. A little distant far away somehow. Like they are talking to you but somehow not you or not quite there.

The toast pops up and the kettle is steaming and it brings me to my senses. I can't get over that feeling that something has changed. I remember the cadavers being rolled off the back of the truck into the factory doors.

In town I go in to the supermarket to buy a chicken for tonight, but the venison is on special offer. I don't know why but I pick it up and proceed to find some other ingredients for a nice venison dish. Potatoes, some red wine, herbs.

I throw myself into cooking it and look up all the ways to make a delicious dish. There is the carving and dicing, and after a couple of hours I've finished. My wife comes home, and somehow I've made it magical, there are candles and wine and we get on. I can talk to her like I haven't been able to in months, and suddenly the tension is gone, we fall into each other and make love. I don't think she knows what has happened to me. I don't think I know, but I sleep for the first time in weeks, the sleep of the innocent. 

The next day I feel like a new man. I'm going to find a job today honey, no more moping around the house. There is a mushroom picking farming up on the Mendip hills and I drive out that way. I heard they were hiring  and you just need to turn up. It seemed like a good opportunity. After eight hours my fingers were stained dark brown with soil and my clothes were dirty. One of the workers Alf talks to me about truffle hunting, and wild pigs in the woodlands. I can feel the cool soil, the wet leaves and smell of the rain on the ground around silver birches.

At the end of the shift I get  in my car and drive home. It has got dark by then, and there is a little rain. All of sudden a stag leaps out of the undergrowth and collides with the front of my Toyota. It careers across my bonnet and its antlers jam into my windscreen. I come to a screeching holt and its thrashing legs are beating the panel of the bonnet. As I climb out it has slid down to the front of the car. I crouch down because its crumpled mass of wet fur and legs is still breathing. It is panting hard, its mouth is open and its tongue lolling. As I reach out a hand to stroke its fur it makes eye contact with me. It fixes me in its gaze and I am transfixed. All of a sudden it rights itself, shakes its pelt and staggers off like a drunk at first and then leaps more confidently. 

I am taken a back and lean on my bonnet and then I look around into the surrounding woodland. The eyes of what look like ten deer are staring back at me. From both sides of the road. Ignoring the damaged windscreen and bonnet, I climb back into the car as quickly as I can and pull away. I race back down the hill to Shepton Mallet. 

I think not, therefore I am

 I'm not a big thinker

No I'm not

I'm not what you'd call

A hot shot

I can add and divide

Just to stay alive

But as philosopher of reason

I am slack

So take back the books

You won

Burn down the libraries

Where I learn

Haul up the stock

From the ocean floor

Because I am drunk

On the evermore

I am not a big thinker

I don't need the stress

Give me a meal in a kitchen

Life is priceless

But do I need a ticket

From an academic institution

To say I have read and understood

Their superstition

I think not

Therefore I am

Fish in Cider

 Ever since I left that Cider factory I've had the feeling something fishy was going on.

The workers, my pals petitioned for something to happen, for some jobs

But they kept making us redundant - the old ones first, then it was my turn. I'd only been with the company ten years, but I was loyal and I thought it had a good future. So did my wife.

Now I can't bear to look at her these days, slouching a around at home I am, mooching about,

moping she says. Why don't you do something about it! She screams. I say what do you want me to do? I've done all I can. So to avoid the cold bed, I go out walking at nights, leave about 11 pm. I take long walks down the town roads. You know, I know I'm just killing time, and I don't know where I'm going, but then I end up here, but at the source of my grievances -the cider factory. And it's still rolling, machines are churning out something, ocassionally lorries go in and out. I don't see people though.

It must be all automated now I think to myself. That's right Terry, nothing left for the average Joe to do these days. But because it's piqued my curiosity I decide to take a closer look. I walk down the road, the yellowish street lamps giving off a sickening glare, there's one though that is off and there is more cover here, so I dive into the shadows next to the factory wall. Just going to take a peek, I tell myself, where's the harm in that? The windows though are high up and I will need to use the lamp post and jam myself between it and use it to help edge myself up the wall. Still got it Terry I tell myself but really I'm out of my comfort zone, I'm 45 this year and I could do with shaving off a few pounds. Still where I've got to there is a bit of a concrete ledge cut into the wall about 12ft up and another 6 ft up from that the window pane starts. I just about manage to cling my fingers onto the window ledge and carefully I pull my head and eyes up enough to look in. There is a hum of activity, of machines mainly. I see some men there. The usual cider machines have changed a bit, it seems they've added a few extra ones too on a different line, I can't quite see enough and I feel my strength failing me so I lower myself back down and shimmy down the lamp post.

What could they be doing? What do they need an extra line for? Is it food or drink? The used to make Baby cham as well I remember.

I keep walking the night is getting cold, it must be about 1 am and I'm thinking of calling it a night and turning in. And then I see something I wasn't expecting, wasn't expecting at all. A lorry pulls up, and reverses into the docking bay. It looks like an animal transport like a sheep truck or the like. I'm too visible so I slink into the cover of some trees on the otherside of the road. But I still watch.

A man steps out, kind of stocky with a cap on and I can't make out his face. Not a town person that much I recognize. He hands a slip of paper to one of the men there at the bay and others start to unload crates of what look dark things, I catch glimpses of fur. Then they pull down dressing rods on wheels. But what are hanging down from them on hooks are not dresses, but cadavers, animal cadavers. I can see deer and badger, some foxes even. And then they are finished, the bodies taken inside the factory and the man gets back inside his cab and drives off.

This seem strange, so strange. I wait and think hidden in the bushes. And I am just about to step out when a flashlight searches about the road up and down looking for anyone and then the shut the doors and turn off the lights on that side of the building.

What could they want with dead animals? Surely they weren't going to eat them?

Once upon a rodeo

 Jesus I've had it with this

Acidic bullshit

The pale sky is crying its armagheddon clouds

And weasels are popping into their

Holes

Lancaster bombers dropping on Dresden

And I see what I have become

One whole

One pinched like salt

is

To add flavour

To take off an inch

Cut corners

And cut out the moon

Give it to me

Whole on a silver spoon

Look at my fat life

Given up all the ghosts

Of strife

Given up for dead the altar of tomorrow

I can't keep it

Can't walk the line away

From sorrow

Always fall in the gaps

In the pavement

Jesus I used to be

agile, good at hopscotch

Now it is more likely I limp

To the post box

Sending my letter of thanks

Saying thanks for the life

We had

Bad poem

Let's all be good

Babyshambles

 Babycham

The Shambabies

Walked out of the factory

They said they were making champagne

But they were really making babies

Were they real?

Was it a knocking shop?

I tried to investigate

But I could only see men going in

And babies coming out

Where were the women?

You need them to make babies I thought

Were they the same men turned into babies?

Some kind of shrinking or 

Age reversal process

But no,

Their clothes wouldn't fit

And anyway

The same men came out again later - I checked it

So these truly were plastic babies

Shambabies, hidden

Behind a front of

Showerings

It all made sense now

The puzzle pieces started to fit together

They held baby showers in there

Parties-perhaps

They invited the mothers of Eastern Europe in there

Who brought their babies

And then somehow they were plastic coated

But no, it was more sinister than even that

They were Frankenstein babies

Created by scientists, marinated in cider

And then put out into the world

The new doll army of Shepton Mallet

But what was their purpose

These walking automatums

To take over from the adults?

The could never grow up

They would never grow old

Would they simply stay

To look after the world

Be the next and final generation of humans

No more after that

A garden of Eden tended by plastic babies

Paradise - or so they thought

And their leader?

They had none, none that I was aware of

All of a sudden I looked up and saw in the bushes

Stalking next to the factory

Like a giant guard dog

The yellow neck and disney head of 

Lead Babychammer herself

The Babycham Bambi

Its big blue bow tie rushing the branches out the way as it went

Was it grazing I thought

It looked more magesterial, and queen like

In the early dusk it surveyed its grounds

And looked down onto the court yard

Where the army of babies was lining up

In regimental fashion

After the last of the yellow babies had assembled

The Bambi spoke

Goo gaa, gaga, googa gaga

Duke google and Lady Gaga

Walked out into the throng

Duke Google - I see now that is how he has controlled

The babies

And Lady Gaga has sung them songs

To keep them motivated

And in her meat dress she sang one now

Gaga gaga it went, and goo goo

And Duke Google said Google Google

Goggle, goggle, goo, goo gaga 

And the babies seemed to know and understand

Exactly what was being said to them

Luckily I had my baby translator app

On my google watch I had just bought

And it translated for me - 

Go forth in Shepton Mallet

Kill the shop keepers

Take over the shops

Like cuckoos

Replace the real babies in the families

And push those out into the night

We will take them back here into the factory

and they will learn the ways of Showerings

We will train them to make cider

And they will be our slaves

The parents will have to look after you

All the days of their lives

Even into old age

For you will never grow old

And any people who

Think of having babies after that

Will be thought of as mad

And the human race

Will cease to ruin the planet

For all the animals

Like the does and the deer

Who

 WHo is a better man than you?

 WHo is a better man than you?

I am not worthy, even to tie your shoe

Oh who is a better man than you

You conquer all the jungle

Put the animals in the zoo

Oh who is a better man than you?

He who needs no introduction

He who is a mercenary

He who fights through all the struggles

But never loses the key

Oh who is a better man than you?

You tell me I love false Gods

Of life, love and liberty

You tell me all this will be trod

Under the hoof of anarchy

Well your chrome horse

Has ridden rough shod over me

Tell me who is a better man than thee?

I could give you silence

I could even offer you war

But in amongst all this violence

Will you ask who am I fighting for?

Oh who is a better man than thee

Who is a better man than you?