Mr Winter

 Mr Winter

In the height of summer

Hear the summer crows

Cast off black In white dove flight

The fashion

Of the rainbows

Mr Winter walks on splinters

Are they pressing in your toes?

What with hinter lands

And tomorrows

How does your garden grow?

Cold as is your frosty fridge

Dark as ivy briar

But in the cold the albertine rose

Shows in summer flower

How goes it now Mr Winter

Will you shed your coat of black

Come out into the sunshine

Feel the sun's warmth on your back

Come now, come now Winter

Oh once cosy in sad memory

No body thought

They could love again

When your heart is in the ashes' keys

Search in the charred wreckage

The wood that's blackened and burned

Somewhere there may still be the embers

From which Mr Summer may return

Like elephants on ice

 The sun goes down over the street

The crepuscular creepers walking

the beat

Light head lice

The head lights are yet to turn on

In the Somerset Town

They call Babylon

The colours so chrome

Oh I wish they were yellow

Magnesium white lights

The glare of the mellow

And stroking the firelight

The RAC fellow

Goes hammer and tongs

and bellows

The sodium sipped at the supper of kings

Of the control of the periodic table of things

And song of the elements

And elephant wings

But who ever saw an elephant

Fly?

 inside she sings

And who knew the tide lines

And the marks that love brings

On Muriel Sparks

Or Ann summer's stings

And filing for divorce at the court of Great Kings

The Queen has been fought

But she has lost what he brings

Oh take me, elephant, thick of skin

To be your lawfully anointed wife

Oh Mouse husband I do, I do, I do

Now where shall we live?

This house is not big enough for two

I being an elephant I could fill a room

And you being a mouse could barely squeeze in

We must invest in a super saver sofa

And super soaker cheeses

And supper saving goffers

And Puppet waving breezes

And suffer saviours and their sabres

Suffer saboteurs and wheezes

Who would hold their noses

At supermarket freezes

But Jesus, please us and means us, beans us

And holy communion crumbs of busted breeze-block kinesis

Come on commoners come on please

Shake a leg at the foreigners who go between the fleas

And suck up your carpet hairs of all your finger nails

And sneezing snares at the market wares

Coralled, cajolled over controlled by forces

Of Minsk, and rinks of ice, and risks that slip on rice

And dice are rolled down to the bone of hip, skip and suffice

Town and out

 Hurt no more

Don't let it

Hurt anymore

We live in cities I wish that I

lived in one

But I live in the countryside

And I'm almost a bum

So in the countryside

Nothing happens at all

Except sheep get shagged

And people break all the rules

Stones fall down

From the top of the wall

And cats make friends

But then they never will call

And we live in our virtual worlds

But no one really cares

Because in effect

We've already died anyway

In our real lives

Outside the box 

Or the laptop screen

There is a nuclear winter in our dreams

Kaleidoscope visions

 Free Dominican

Franco Ghanaian Haribo state

Forge, Forgot Ten, eleven, twelve

Indignance for victory

Vicars voweling fouls at vocal clubs

And bowling greens wear spreads of tea leaves

Predict Octopus edicts and Suliman tribes Derisive of Goalies'

Shadows

Linking shallows in epic waterways of galois glories

Versai versisimilitudes, look in longitudes

Of space nuns distracted tractor drivers collide

Headlong into herds

Whose echoes echo up Ravines

And look this green and pleasant land is ours

But what but how

What boundaries now

Dictate

The freedom of the classes?

The lower drink

And stink in pubs with grubs, and play their records loud in the

Street

And party

In their private public spaces

That suit their boundaries when it favours

Same as the gentlemen farmers

Who protect their borders with shot guns

And Retrievers, revolvers

Sheep dog scotties

Yet for one land is green and rolling

For the other it is grey and folding

All enveloping like

And envelope around them

In the concertina town

Whose

accordion breathing, heaving heavy concrete sounds

Play double in the street

Then in their beds

As they try to sleep

The farmer with his sheep and cows

Makes nightly vows in dreams

To Noah

Who will save them all

On his ark

Yet he drives them to slaughter one and all

The next morn

Showing no quarter

Just in dreams

as green and pleasant as the land he owns

As perfect down to the bone

Its marrow and its fat

Is sucked

Yet replenishes after all that

Every Springtime season

After he has sprayed it with pesticides

or coated with his pledge

He gives it rest in fallow shallow

Hedge

Where he bets his future years

In weight and balances

Pounds and ounces

And giving and receiving

Goes to town his own

The animals are fed

And another day will

dawn

In the Cow shed

Another calf is born

As in the closed quarters of the sacred cloistered halls

Of the town the mighty ministrels

Sing of bread and circuses

Like they were tangible items

For sale in Sainsbury's

But no not the retro fitted garbage these days

Blame your uncle for your parents

Don't care

Looking back

Hanging around on the pavement
The tarmac, the weeds in the road
Walking up the lane to meet my old friends
Playing games riding skateboards
Chasing about in the estate park
The boy Matthew Bennette telling tales about his bike
That it had special balance handle bars
So that when he tipped his bike
We could hear something rolling down the metal tube
But we all knew that he was a liar
And he had rolled up mud balls to put inside
So it sounded like he had some inbuilt technology
When all he had were his lies
It was funny anyway to hear him say it

There were hawthorn trees with black sloe berries
That grew in late summer and autumn
And elderberries that grew on Tom's farm
When you squashed them they looked like blood
And sometimes we fought the high stinging nettles like soldiers
Cutting them down with bamboo canes
And sometimes we climbed inside haybarns
And made dens inside the bales
Until they all tumbled down on Tom one day and a scaffold pole
Hit him on the head
And he ran out to his mum and dad with blood running down
And he never cried

Then in the fields around Meare out past Down house
We went walking for miles with Matthew wood
And we came back and watched western movies
And stayed over night in his outhouse
And he ate pork pies with so much ketchup
I could never believe or understand why
We played for hours on computer games, pinball wizards
Or Samurai
Cannon fodder and his brother Ben Wood
Was the best at many things
And he had a really good bike

And Stephen who lived on the levels
We used to get on in school
We laughed so hard about vampires
When we had to make a haunted house game
Then when I visited his house
It was full of Star Wars toys
I'd never seen so many in my entire life
And we played with them for hours
But really I never liked Star Wars
But the funniest thing about Stephen were his lies
We used to tell eachother stories
So many that we made up
Each more fantastic than the one before
So that when we told of what we saw
Neither could have believed their eyes
It ended one time with a story of what animals we had seen
Recently, maybe a deer he said
Maybe I had seen a hedgehog
He had seen a badger
And then suddenly he told me
He had seen a Gorilla in the ditch nearby his house
And possibly a vampire as well

Then there was Millbatch where nobody went
From Downs Orchard - the better class estate
Millbatch was the rough end
Where the older kids lived
And Matthew Lambert who was very tough
And his brother Roger who used to pull the legs
Off Daddy Long Legs in School
And now he is carer for Somerset County Council
Working with people with Learning Disabilities
Go figure

Then down on church road, where the water reservoir was
The plastic coated chicken wire mesh that you could reach inside
And that lane was were the bully kids played and made
Their dens there
And we watched out for them while making our own
But there were rumours and whispers around
That she blew somebody somewhere
That he beat someone else up
And little pieces of knowledge fill your brain
Like into a water cup
and it makes up your world as a child
It tells of the big towns out there
And of the boys and girls you thought were so wild
Who now all have grey in their hair

Blow, blow

Sunday afternoon blow job
In the park
She knelt down
In her white dressing gown
And the wind it blew
And the dogs they did bark

The train rattled past
And I was there
I'd never seen that kind of thing before
Maybe in a movie
Or by the library door
But this was Sunday afternoon
In the park

Oh the birds they sang
The cows did fart
The window cleaners
have finished their part
And as they rubbed them clean
The rain did start
It was Sunday afternoon
Blow job in the park

Blow, blow, the trees did go
The leaves did seem to say
Blow my way
Like a railway whistle
Like a thistle
On a long highway
And she blew, blew, blew
Til her face went so red
And I thought I'd
Never seen such green
Giving head
It was blue as the sky
And after they lay
The park bench was drenched
In their words unsaid

Little pearls of wisdom
It could have been that
The love anyway
In that afternoon park
Was soon like the bark
Blown away
I saw her cry
That fell from her mouth

Truth 2

 It was hidden behind a facade 

It was the tree lost in the wood of lies

I was blind to it, didn't want to hear it

Even closed my ears and eyes

I didn't want to even understand

So I stuck my head in the sand

 

But it was ferreted out, it was winkled out

And prized apart like an oyster to reveal its pearl

It was weighed in the hand, on the scales of justice

It has been weighed against the purest gold in the world

And found to be of perfect carat, 

It is better than the finest wine of the best clarit

It has the clarity of a diamond

It shines a light, but not through a prism,

It is harder than the hardest criminal in the toughest prison

It does not dance like an ephemeral rainbow

When it stands, it stands tall, casts a long shadow

And people run from it in fear, other's hide in its shade

Still some would give their dying tear, for a drop of it to be made

  

It is hard to pin down, like a pin ball

weighs heavy as a crown, when it from the King's head it falls

It changes shape like a wraith, or a ghost coming through a wall

But in reality it never changes, like time itself or nothing at all

It is fact incarnate, it is the living flesh of an idea of man

But then women know it, as too a child can

It requires, like the pearl, grit to make it stick

Courage to tell it, the skill to make it disappear as if a magic trick

But like a weight-lifter's load, it is a relief to get it off your chest

It is the long and lonely road, where your belief in it is put to the test

And often involves fits of tears, and smeared make-up and tissues

In hospital waiting rooms, or beside beds

It is easy to fake it, vanity imitates it, but then the mirror breaks

The axe falls, and it is reflected in the splinters, a hologram, a whole

As the narcissus must crawl back inside his hole

It is pure, it is the most valuable treasure we own

Yet it cannot truly be sold

Because when this is tried it disappears

Below the fold

And isn't seen for days

It is on the run

Like a snow abll rolling down a hill

In the end creates an avalanche

Then all the dominoes fall in its wake

Like match stick trees after a volcanic blast

To others it is a tradable commodity

Because someone will pay top dollar for it

But when they have it, they only wish to hide it again

And cover ups are cheaper when they are smoked

With a pack of lies

It is like a ticking bomb then, liable to explode

In their hands

Or like a burning match it will burn the fingers

Of the one holding it, yes, it is sometimes fire

And sometimes ice, because they die with it.

They take it to their graves.

And then the trail runs cold, 

But if we let ourselves sell it so cheaply

We sell with it our souls.

It comes out in the wash

With the dirty linen

It is the skeleton in the closet

To be discovered by the bin men

It is told in halves, in pieces of a puzzle

It is hinted at by clues or by fingerprints on a muzzle

It sometimes can seem dark, though often loud as a dog's bark

And like a dog with bone at play, it too must have its day

 

It is free to everyone whether a king or a slave,

Yet it can cost the earth, or it can cost a close shave,

It can slip from your hands when you don't watch it

You must keep your eye on the ball, you must be brave

It is the writing on the wall, it is the writing on your grave

Most of all if you speak it then a life you might save