Thanks
give me True, true and the honey badgers
of destiny and the child of the sun
And the Empire of choices
Give me silence
Without voices,
But I did not ask for that
It just came
I am the town crier, big of heart
And girth hear me tell
My well trod tale
Down to the pitiless earth
I'll leave a few hair pins
Bends and turns
And twist like myrtle bushes
The thorn in the briar couldn't
Climb much higher
Than my story of which I birth
In corridors of power
Nameless towers
Where Hebrew nuns did shine
The walls they cower
In shadows shower their lines
I wrote down on their spindly veins
Which mortal mortar could complain
And read the runes and bled the lanes
That brought me there to you
They follow fleeting folly
Like fellows bellows and swallows
Breathing pigeons
In harmonica halls
And crumbling churches and catapulting rules
Like books from school by be-brollied kids
As the rain fell down
It fell in spatters that greyed the town
Left black the tarmac pavements
And shined the dustbin lids
But the Crayfish gang came round
On their motorbike steer pikes
whaling it up and down
The Saint Peter and Paul street
Fly away said I, fly, away
Peter and Paul,
Where have they gone my patron saints
Come back Peter,
Come back Paul
Give us some guidance,
Paint thinner Saint sinner
They stole it
They stealed it, and pocketed it
And pilloried and picked it
Out my throat
Oh we're all in the same boat you say
This is democracy we all have a voice
Not me, taken, not my choice
But surely shocking though it is
To fight with kids over a crisp packet floating in the
Air,
Who has it now? Crumbling tin
Sheep, and shops.
That's rat-ta tat-tat Mallet,
Chase that rat out-ta town
With a hammer swinging like
John the Baptist
At all the holy unholy ones
Who never live up
To what I have my mind
It takes ten years to learn to sing
To play anything creative
For the neurons to realign magnetically
I suppose
Like pigeon pose, like lay lines,
We follow
Down a rabbit hole or wishing well
Playing get well, with speed well
And Cabbage whites in circles
Always the dance of Madam Butterfly
The dance of white butterflies
Except they took it to Mells
The Krayfish gang
On the night of the New Moon
And I was wearing
The Pajamas of peace
And wonders will never cease
When you wear the pajamas of peace
And even the police, will stop and decease
and mop up their mullets in Shepton Mallet
And serve their skullet hair cuts
And their cutlets in skillets, and perfect palettes of cheese
And please what's the matter officer?
What's the platter, pita patta of tiny breaded knees
And pudding, and price cut butter
And cease Electricity and gas
Wonders will never cease
When I wear my pajamas of peace
But they still took it,
My voice, It was locked away by the bad boys in chains
In voiceless town of Mells
They had no voice, I had no choice
Now they have mine
The Krayfish boys
You better watch out the Krayfish brothers
Out to revenge their Cuttle-fish mother
Who was picked and pecked by chickens and parrots
Who left her marooned in the Town of carrots
And mocked her voice
And repeated it still like a gravelly husk
That bent at her will
Parrot fashion, pigeon livin'
Slim pickin's in the forest of wills
So she lost it, they kept her in a cage
The family and every day they pecked her bones
And sharpened their own bills on her
So they could speak
But all they did was mimic what they heard
Parrot, fashion, parrot fashion, what a bird
But what a fish they say, could give up her day
And life at sea to be kept like a voiceless canary
In a cage and never to sing
So they stole mine and gave it to her
Now she's singing in Mells
Where the witches will stir the cauldron of Kells
And books of demure
And the looks and the smells of opening doors
To foreign lands where they don't hurt anymore
And are happy
Oh happiness now there is the cure
Or is it yet another illusion
Brought on by the Parrot delusion of copying
All what others would have you be
Find your voice sir
Find it buried under the sea
The river runs from here
Under the road and across the Frithfield
And down beneath the prison walls
Just where the Krayfish gang used to be
Held tight like posterity Their
posteriors pushed up against walls,
Somewhere beneath the river runs deep
And their voices call
All the imprisoned voices carried away
Down the wells
back to the heart of the Mendips
Back down
The slippery rocks of Croscombe
Joining the Sheppey at Bowie
Down the Cathedral at Wells
And it joins the Bishops Palace moat
And these sinners voices
Find absolution in their daily ablutions
In the rivers and Wells
And then they spring up again
Free you see to be drunk deep
By a citizen and spoken
For the river will carry all our voices away one day
From the children playing in the park
To the dogs' bark
From the ducks' quacks
To the squawk of the lesser black-backed gulls
And the shop assistant girls in Martin McColls
And the tills which ring out in shrill thrill
Of all the useless money they eat
And all the football louts in pubs
And rubber dub dub three men in a tub at Mells
All their voices are going down the plug hole
Even the witch of Wookey hole
But hey will be held lock and key, no not stole
Kept safe in the memory of water, whole
As one
On their way out to the sea, the Bristol Channel
Where they will be churned and turned
And broiled and mixed with the Welsh voices
Of the Valleys and hills
The Brummie accents and yam yams of the black country
The dark Satanic Mills
And all the Irish voices floating in on the Irish sea
Swept around from Anglesey
And even the Scots
Who sail down the coast
And greedily spy the mainland
No voice is ever truly lost
It is drunk down again as rain
After the sea has sung it out in loss and pain
And in happiness has breathed it up to heaven
Where clouds are voice spirits come again
To reform and coalesce in a conference of words
And meanings and things spoken, or remembered
Of jokes told or cut short
Or lovers' whisperings
And they fall as rain in droplets on the land to be soaked up
To be felt on felt topped or broad brimmed hats
To be licked off the cheeks by thirsty tongues
To be drunk down deep, when the new day comes
And the mother turns on the taps
boils the kettle makes a cup of tea
And says to her child, how did you sleep?
