Poetry

Friday, 11 April 2025

Farewell to arms

 farewell all you people

you moses of light

farewell you scare mongers

who hunger to fight

farewell non-believers on your road of flight

And leave me to sweet slumbers

and the roses of night


I've been where you're standing

and seen what you see

And it's not for one moment

that I'd swap places with thee

It's all just a grossness of blatant hypocrisy

So go where you're going and leave what's mine to me


Farewell the soothsayers

False prophets of light

When the true dawn breaks

Then it will overcome the night

And if what you're knowing

to you seems right

Well those are just dead seeds you're sowing

Which will never reach the light


Good night to your lands

And your lanterns of peace

Bring out the war bands

Let their fighting never cease

For the foreign lands engulf in flames that increase

With each profit margin bearing the mark of the beast


I hope to see this land

Once recover its soul

And it will do in our hands

When we make steel and coal

And once again can raise a flag

of our sovereign self-control

To determine our course as it stands

Beyond the turbid rigmarole 

cats eyes

 In the beginning, it was all light, 

light of foot, speed of flight,
 love was winning, love was bright, 
we were beginning to feel the night,  
everything even, everything odd, 
all of it's believing in the path we have trod, 
through the city's lights

I've seen us changing like traffic lights, 
stars rearranging in the sky's night, 
crossing and weaving inside and out, 
but our thread always strong never leaves us in doubt

You've been my cat's eyes
When the city's lights go out

Where do we belong, except in the city of light?

Faces of people, places we've been, 
chases round steeples and somebody's dream,
 all of it equal in a love unseen
Until your eyes start shining
And I can see through the night
Beautiful cats eyes in the city of light

Cats eyes shining in the dark
cats eyes shining in park

I blink once, blink twice
I can't believe my sight
You're my cats eyes shining in the night
You show me your cats eyes
in the city of light

Your cats eyes, my oh my, oh my
Your cats eyes my, oh my, oh my

Monday, 7 April 2025

Mill on the Floss

 In olden times floss flowed freely through the countryside

Great rivers of the stuff as wide as the eye could ponder

And the people of the countryside, the poor folk

only had to shove their faces and their entire heads into the river to clean

Their teeth and wash out all the bad stuff and they all had bright shiny teeth

And didn't ever have to pay for dental care

But then one day climate change or else an evil king decided to turn off the source of the Floss

And we don't know where it is so that all could be found lying in the river bed or the marshes was this thin straggly string that folk inventively wound around bobbins and carried with them


Hence why now we have only this meagre reminder of what Floss once was.

The famous author George Eliot once wrote a tribute to the beauty and power of the Floss

Called Mill on the Floss which was in the days when the dental industry was so widely mechanized and industrialized they began making dental drills and tooth milling machines driven by it.

Please read it, it is interesting.

Sunday, 6 April 2025

Night Heron

 Night Heron, night heron

Always in the shades

The black sunglasses

The black leather jacket aids

Riding around on your motorbike

You're as cool as a kid on the make if you like

Mending your triumph in the back of the pub

Going out later to the rock n' roll club

Night Heron, Night Heron

Always a rebel to the core

Build up your gang around street corners

Go round knocking on old folks' doors

Then you grow older

And like to start fights

Start carrying a blade on dark Friday nights

Black metal motorcycle club

Black metal heart there's the rub

Revving your engine down a Sunday street

Ruffling feathers if you know what I mean

The other fella's heavier he's tough and lean

But you've got an image to uphold it ain't clean

You've gotta get dirty and down in the mud

You'll never reach thirty, you're covered in blood

As you go droop-winged back to your nest

The black metal heart is not pumping the best

The dark metal shades are broken in two

And they hang from your beak, beaten black and blue

And there's blood in your eye and spit on your face

And your black metal wing is twisted out of place

But you know where you're going because you have to stay strong

You're going to the nightclub where they sing rock n' roll songs

Because you love to jive and dance to the beat

You're still the night heron that's walking the street

Wednesday, 26 March 2025

Bogman

 I am back now where I want to be

Lord I can die easy

As long as you bury me

In this peaty realm

I’ll become a peat man

Preserved

Just like we observed

In the museum

 

They dug him up

Like a timber

I remember

The juices of the earth

Were his blood

The memories

Of geological time of birth

Of his mother back in Mr’s Noah’s flood

 

What of his love in the distant past

What of his family and friends

Who knew this brother of the black mud

And who knew of his final end?

Tuesday, 18 March 2025

Love robbing

 love robs  the robin red breast

Love robs the robin of his breast

Love tears the heart out of the nest

Love robs the robin of his red breast

Monday, 17 March 2025

When the sun goes down

 When the sun goes down

You've got nothing to say

You've got too many aches 

And pains from the day

When the sun goes down

You've gotta rest your brain

It ain't no use in thinking

When the sun goes down


When the sun goes down

There are too many ends

Left loose, going round the bend

When the sun goes down 

You've gotta make your bed

You've gotta put your

Weary feet up and rest your 

weary head


You gotta make like the chickens

And roost in the coop

When the sun goes down

Get out of the loop

When the sun goes down

You've gotta rest your tools

Because you know your mama

Didn't raise no fools


When the sun goes down

You've gotta put up your legs

You' don't make no omelette

Without breaking some eggs

When the sun goes down


When the sun goes down

Don't shatter the glass

Not everything built was built to last

When the sun goes down

Get some good sleep

All things will pass

Like the things in the deep

When the sun goes down