Building bridges or barriers

 30 years across a divide

Territorial suicide

If you see us let us go

How sweetly grow the snow drops

In the New Year's snow

30 years of treading walkers

Dogs on leashes and deer stalkers

Treading softly never stops

Over the hills of the Snow drops

Where you put your barriers down

Where you lay your claim to this town's

Hopes and dreams, her fields and streams

You cut in belts of Green and Brown

But you who judge and deem, and measure

Across our land it seems at your leisure

Saying this is ours and that is yours

Is one good way to start some wars

And if you should let greed rule your heart

Then throw away your beauty and art

For nothing sacred can be understood

Unless to live in peace in your own neighbourhood

And nothing built shall be bound

Unless by the folly of those around

Love gone astray

 I gave my girl to my best friend

Anyone could see how it would end

It would have been better if I had been killed

In an accident, a car bomb

Or some foreign field

To die romantically after

Having written some poems

But we had no war like Wilfred Owen

We had a plastic world to get lost in

And money from the 80s

That seemed like a ghosting

And a tech revolution

Where virtual reality

Took over the bedroom and living room

And all of your problems

Could disappear

If you hid in a game

If you smothered your tears

But I smothered my love to my shame

I killed it it's clear

Through a failure to launch

A failure of career

A failure to fight

A failure to try

And that is why

I'm the fall guy

And I play it straight

I play it grey

Because nothing is bright

And everyone's gay

And this world might

just stand in my way

But I'm shattered and broken

By love  gone astray

God knows I'm lonely now

Garden gnome

 I fell in love with a garden gnome

He was always there when I got home

Always listened when I was alone

That's how I fell in love

With my garden gnome

He's travelled far and wide

But now he prefers his pond side

To sit there hour after weary hour

And catch the fish beneath the lily flower

But I love my garden gnome

Though I know his heart is of stone

We've gone on many an excellent adventure

From the town of shepton to the county of bedfordshire

And even once to Paris and Rome

Oh how I do love my garden gnome

The constant gardener

 When you say you love her

Could you be together

Any wind or weather

The wind must blow alone

For the ivy on the wall will blacken

The brambles tie up in the bracken

The fireflies twist in flaxen

And the rooks cry out in a klaxon

And all, above it all

Don't you wish you were

The constant gardener

Have you ever fallen in love

With someone you work with?

Is it a case of just making the glove fit

Well if you've ever fallen in love with

Someone you work with

Was their husband a git or did they have

kids

Was there a bolt from the blue sky

That meant you were too nice a guy 

or too shy to try

When you're in love, in love with

Someone you work with

And you can't stay or leave the room

But you must be friends make play

Of doom and gloom

And laugh as if life is gay

When really it is grey

Until you say I love you

And she says it too

Until then you have to be 

the constant gardener

I wish I could be like

the constant gardener

dig

 Dig, dig

Stones from down below alone

The earth must be lonely

So full of holes

Missing some parts

Run through by rivers

Like a pin cushion the Mendips

The rain water's silver darts

Cutting a way

Shooting in the dark

Down below consciousness

Where proto-thought does spark

Primeval, not even

A feeling or a hunch

The rock and sill is breathing

But like an animal bunch

Crunching and mindless

Yet beautiful and measureless

Caverns of such exquisite beauty

Dig, dig feel the throb

You're near the pulse of the earth

The heart of nature, where

her life blood bursts

Forth upon the slimey organs

And the organelles, the vessels and the vapours

The aromatic aprons of silt and crustaceans

That move like slow crabs

That dive like whales and dolphins

Deep beneath the surface

Only to come up back for air

Blow hole, sinkhole

Gills and shark nurses

Chapter and verses

Of the sedimentary book

Read geology like a bible

First a dribble

Then a full flown bark

Nothing but the desire

To return back down to earth

Return back to the womb

Of Mother nature's birth

Smothering, something

Unnatural in this boring into her belly

Yet where else to live

When Strictly's on the telly

Mole men and rabbit soldiers

Dig down into the boulders

Following the veins

The bloodhounds gone to ground

Mole men and badger men sniffing out

The gold, the finds,

The fires of scent

Arousing burning coals of eyes

Glint of fire in the soul

The light that burns the brightest

In the passages of dark

Is the light of the human heart

Such decoration as in a basilica

Stalactites stretch into stalagmites

And columns form the rock salt body

Ectopic growth around the womb wall

Wolverines dig for streams

Standing panting in muddy pools

Surveying their discoveries like

Some pioneers of opalesque halls

Smooth marbled bowls

And balls rolled over one another

Like in a hip joint, the bones

Of the earth are polished

To a varnish finish

By the master craftsman-water 

Inside the garden

 The curtains are pulled tight

but you can look over the walls

Every morning and night

You just might

Leave the garden

The birds and bees are happy

On the flowers and the trees

All the starlings startle and freeze

But the trees know no disease

Inside the garden

Little mice tiptoe

Badgers go to and fro

Inside the garden

My love stands at the gate

And I say goodbye to hate

Inside the garden

You can get all you need

Be far from sin and greed

in the garden

Oh the sun always shines

Upon your spindly lines

In the garden

The anteaters thump

the grasshoppers jump

Inside the garden

Memory fades away

Like an elephant's grave

Inside the garden

You'll have no more fear or doubt

Even if it rains or there's a drought

Inside the garden

Aspirational pneumonia

 I..

uh...

really..huh..

want...uh

to be..

huuuhh

..huh..

...a doctor