He was judged by his scandals and not his candles
Saturday, 20 August 2022
Boris Johnson

Just like a movie scene
While I had the power
While I had the dream
I loved you in the tower
I loved you like a queen
But the snow kept on falling
And it was a snow white seen
It all seems like a movie scene
I should have seen you coming
You should have known where I'd been
But it doesn't really matter my queen
The dawn is early calling
And the night is so obscene
It all seems just like a movie scene
I feel I'm going somewhere but
I'm so dirty never clean
With all this guilt I have known
Things I have done, things I say but never mean
Just like in a movie scene
Will you hold me once again
Or let me fall into the stream
It all is unknown in the falling rain
Can you light a candle, help me remember my dream
Just like in a movie scene

Not yet
The red night setting
The lights are getting dim
I'm like a field mouse
And the thresher, the thresher is setting in
The storm is blowing wetter
And I'm soaked to the skin
Well I'm getting better, I bet
But I'm not there yet
The fireflies are fighting
With spitfires in the din
The kettle is testing the metal
Of the pressure cooker it is in
The tyres loose their fetters
And the wheels wildly spin
Well I would let her write me a letter of regret
But I'm not there yet
Don't forget me, I keep saying, repeating like a toy,
like an action man my setter is set only to destroy
Build a thing, make a win
And hold me close don't be coy
But I ducked the daisy cutter
When she picked me out with joy
Oh when I met her I was a debtor,
I will forget her, I will forget
But I'm not there yet

Concrete dreams
Come on raise this building
Like a Moses foundation
Pillars of Salt
And pillars of rock
The three little pigs in a housing shock
Negative equity of Goldilocks
Rising inflation forced onto bears
Some of them built Shepton Mallet
The town
Sheep rustlers, shearers,
Property of the crown
Strode was there with flowing hair
Looking down
Upon the poor who flocked to her door
Including the Ugly duckling
Black swan, white swan not seen anymore
Only on the pub signs swinging above the door
Periwinkle, weasel, wren and Robin
In the twisting clematis hob-gobble
Hoblin, goblin, shaven head
What dreams we have, when we are dead
Dying, trying to be new
Shepton Mallet, pallet crew
Shifting cider
Shifting saw
Bed pan, dustpan, bread pan more
Whistle down the truckers road
Hard granite town
Prince from a toad
Someone dreamt of a cinema
Another of a theatre
Built an enormous house
That turned into a monster
Some say its hideous, oh what an eye-sore
What do we need a fairy tale
We have Ugly post modernism to abhor
I'm not sure
It is a ball and chain
Tying the town down
It is almost a shame, almost a game
A mirror of the Church somehow
Except a warped being bent and contorted
Not given full form
Like a nineteen eighties computer game
Grasping at perfection
In replication, Ironic in it's supplication to
perfection, acknowledging limitation
Yet that was cool back then
Now it is a record of a time before
It is like a tetras castle fallen out of the sky
Landed like a giant parcel, some knowledge of
an American Apple pie
But incoherent and intransigent,
And in, in , in itself out of place
In congruent
But let's not worry ourselves
It was somebody else's concrete dream
And we no longer see the seams
It has been sewn into the fabric of life
Now it is a gym, it has turned into
It's own image of itself at last
A modern church - a temple to the body
The material wealth
Of protein and carbohydrate
Packed inside, prayed to
Heated up baked in the crucible
Of exercise and self-belief
The Great I, the great I am
As we climb mount Ego
On the steps
As we let off steam
As we lose sweat by the buckets
On the exercise bike
Perhaps we lose our selves
We forget the boredom of days
That put on the fat
We negate with positive prayer, the mantra, I will get there
One step at a time
Like a stair way to heaven
Built of tetras bricks
That have fallen down for our sake
To climb, to work out
Rearrange angles, remake
So perhaps this ex theatre really is our modern church
as close as we can make it
Though I am yet to see John the Baptist
Lift a Bar bell in there
Although you never can tell of course

Friday, 19 August 2022
More trees please
The trees, the trees
Send them in
The ides of March are wearing thin
The pine and larch and ever green
Where are they now that I have seen?
The roads are bare, we cry take heed!
They can't bear our load
Or meet our need
No shadows now are drawing long
Only the night's blessings to keep us strong
Each day a furnace of solar fire
Baking the roads where cars are for hire
And more and more roads we lay down
In Roman fare of overcrowded town
And what of the so called wasteland?
These are not nothings we hold in our hand
Even a glebe or a bramble strewn field
Can be turned into a woodland of cooling heal
We think we can live just as we did before
But this is just folly of standing on threshold of the door
We either wait out side and decide our future dies
And that of generations yet unborn we sacrifice
Or we make a stand here and now
and say no more building put away your spade and trowel
Let's reuse the old buildings let's plant more trees
Let's put our heads together and this problem might ease

Fly estate agent
Why don't flies become estate agents?
They seem to really like visiting my house
And letting themselves in, looking around
quickly from room to room
Then diving out a window

Thursday, 18 August 2022
Once upon a time in Shepton Mallet
Swooning in the afternoon
Following flies with my eyes
Hearing, clearing
The Foreign words
Hollow
She is standing there
Someone fragile
Yet strong
Every woman
Everywhere a vase
And I am the eye of Babylon
Piercing in the quickness of a care
Piercing in the shallows of the stream
Woken broken with a care, from a shallow dream
Lapping in the inch high water of life
It flows just about, just married wife
Just divorced, just about on speaking terms
Just
And cutting the kite string it floats up
Into the stratosphere and I no longer
Think I know my own face
I have forgotten it
And so will you one day
Cinderella works in the barbers
Sweeping up the hair
The Verger mutters to himself
As he spreads the butter knife
The collared dove is cooing
The Polish sit on gravestones
Their Labradors open doors
To the afterlife
The Queen of Sheba is up there
She used to be a harlot you know
The night comes in
Her clothes come off
And the world moves on with its show
Cleopatra works in Ladbrokes the gamblers
She's taking bets on the horses
Raising the stakes on a possible invasion
While Rapunzel is in the hairdressers
She's arguing with Cinderella
Buggs Bunny walks in looking for something funny
But they use the stick and not the carrot on him
The Dardanelles are the good fellas
Every town needs its gangsters
Here they are supplying drugs to minors
Here's Peter Pan stoned out of his mind
On the park bench, With Tinkerbelle
Sprawled in a Corner
Wendy saw them, then ran to the barbers
To tell them the Church was on fire
They rang hell's bells, the fire brigade
And came hurtling down the street on their engines
Their ladders were reaching up to the tower
Where Rapunzel was waiting
Prince Charming he came shouting
Ranting while running down stairs
What's all this I hear about farmers
And what's that I heard about bears?
Well the three bears have moved
Into the neighbourhood
And now Goldilocks goes to school in the wood
She tried to stay white, for they said they don't bite
But she ended up bitten quite good
Now Red Riding Hood is a mummy
And she works in the seven eleven
She's got to make sales targets this month
Or her little dwarves will have empty tummies
Oh yes she's relying on benefits
I mean her husband is an ex miner,
He mined all the coal, now it's snow white as his soul
And Snow White's has turned rather black
You see the wolf with baleful eyes
Something's eating him up deep inside
As he marauds down the street
Looking for meat, or just looking
For the life he was owed
Don't worry young man,
Oh young rabbit
For you're living in Shepton Mallet
It was tinsel town once
But now the time is upon us
And the clocks face has turned away from the sun
Even the sun dials are broken
And astronomy is all out of whack
I'd like a time machine, visit a time so green
When fairy tales didn't end up so black
