What I heard

 What I heard

When the lock was broken, 

Just like the rainbow that snapped in the sky

I heard the light was broken

I heard the boiler snapped 

I heard

Your heart was spoilin'

And the Judas wire was tapped

Give me back my Nazarine

Give me back my map

I'm lost in all this Halloween

And the kettle flex is wrapped

Talkin' of the corridors

The volcanoes

Opening their doors

Talkin' of the frog prince

I overheard the sailor wince

And cry in the lap

Of the crone

Who talked of ages come and gone

And how he shouted for his mum

I heard the wailing in the park

Of Jews whose news

Could paper a shark

And all the arabs stole the dark

And light the match

That glowed the spark

I left them there to smoulder

and bark

Like dogs at war who

Soldier and lark

All clouds above 

And rivers below

The colours run

From the rainbow

Wounded Bambi, take me to the garden

Through the mists the Bambi stalks

How softly does she tread

Her iron heart a mask of life

Her hooves of solid lead

And yet she bleeds

Her scalp is nicked

from her pelt a trickle of blood runs

And I can see her softly tread

as after her range the guns

They have her in their sights

She wanders through the park

And to the children's playpen

Where lifeless machines

They stand in the dark

On steel springs

Once they rocked to the children's voices laughing

The bunny, the fox

The dog that barks

And all were so enticing

But the children all have left now

They are gone and will not return

The barren mothers stare out to the sun

And watch as the night's candles burn

The plastic babies have come again from the factory

Of google processing

They march to the hum of the internet's drum

And the hearts are full of reproaching

What has become of the earth they cry

They whine and whinny as donkeys they sigh

And what have you left us but

The long goodbye

Under grey and gathering skies

And as the Baby cham bambi curls herself up on the

The asphalt of the playground

The other disney animals come to life

And spring from their unsprung anchors

They bounce and singing

And carol, they cajole and goad

Each other on

Who can bounce the highest or

Swing the fastest

And the merry-go-round spins on

Then they break free of the playground crashing

Through picket fences

And go bouncing off

down the roads

Of privet lined green hedges

Their heads are bobbing above garden walls

They leap and

Smash plant pots over and fall

Send cats and dogs

Screaming and howling and call

Oh to the mothers of recompenses

Where are your children

Now you barren ones

Where are the generations

Of the dying sun

Who will inherit the earth

From our mum

But yet the hunter with his

black gun

And the plastic babies are marching now

To the town of the barren

And brown paper bag proud

And they knock on the doors

Of the mothers endowed

With money but no second chances

They say take us on board

We will be your brood hoard

We who will never grow old

Remembrance Day

Oh the young who fell to the sword

Yes their ghosts will live on in perpetuity

No more wars no more death

No more living for greed

Our great grandfathers come back in our hour of need

And we are invested with their spirit

Their seed

We who will never grow old

We will work the garden

And till the soil

And build a world

Through blood sweat and toil

And nothing will be feared

For the climate won't boil

We will cool it with our heads

Screwed on like bottle necks

Cool it with our hands

Shuffled off the mortal coil

Duke Google and the Gaga machine

 The babies marched

four by four out of the door

The smell of cider was on them

But that was not what was so meanacing about them

They were a baby army for goodness sake

Who has ever heard of that?

Nobody will believe me

Never since the Dawn of time have babies managed to organize themselves

or keep to some kind of formation

Then I remembered duke google

All the babies were wearing

google watches with google ear pieces

Some even wore google glasses

Setting my receiver to the 

google frequency

and switching to google translate -baby talk

I listened in

Shepton Mallet is dust

All this will be yours

Go forth sons and daughters of Showerings

This is your world now

Take back the Eden that God gave us

Buildings may crumble

Industries collapse but Showerings

Will live on

Next there was some kind of philosophical

dialectic on the the teleology of things

"God put a cider tree into the garden of Eden

And he said to Eve pick it and know the Truth

And Eve did and she made the first cider

For Adam to taste

Adam thought it was good

And so he set up a cider factory

Showerings is built on that original site"

As I listened I thought, how interesting

I didn't know that

And then I shook my head and told myself

Look they are starting to convince me too,

I better turn this baby talk translator off

As soon as I did the noises were just gaga, goo goo etc

And I could relax

But to think these babies were just being brain washed by the Babycham Bambi

And Showerings for their own evil ends made me angry

Google had colluded as well allowing them to use their baby talk app

Duke Google was an investor in the company

And he stood to win a lot of land in England if

The baby army succeeded

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