Shepton's Social classes

 Ah they'd like to think they're all equal

With their community hall

That their musical apparatus

Is nothing but a money making machine

Go then to their counter and pay your silver dime

Thirty pieces ought to do it

But mind they better shine

For the devil's in the detail

Or he's hidden in plain sight

It's about the traps and pitfalls

That's how he leads you into plight

You think that you have joined them

Their mysterious homogenous set

Like a gel of becoming

The eager flesh eating ambitious pet

Has started to devour them

In fact it's eating them alive

I went to see them becoming

But they turned into a beehive

There are the tulips of the field

The well healed crew

Who have grown out of universities

designed to build the few

Who will always grab the top jobs

Who will always succeed

Perhaps because they are obsessed

With the professions they need

To give them some kind of haven

A home to call a nest

Or a chance to claw at Eden

And find indoors their rest

I should have known the doctors

In the houses by the poor

Oh who could play at good neighbours

When the animals are at the door

And then those transient musicians

Whose egos are their fuel

Or their sheep of instrumentalists

Who follow in true tormentalist 

school

Then there are solicitors, dedicated

And disciplined who rove around the town

In range rovers with their friends

The accountants on their wings' smiling crown

Happy to be deputized by the king

of the scene or queen

For they hold the keys to the bank vaults

And will only open them when they mean

Throwing down the gauntlet

The glove makers and drapers

Go around as carpetbaggers

For the local general elections

Campaigning also are the merchants

And investors in foreign steel

Who always have a plan

No matter how generous they feel

Because you know their philanthropic

Tendencies do mask

The hidden skill and dark intentions

About which we're all too afraid to ask

So accept their charity we do

And volunteer our time

In thought that free social credit

Is not a form of nepotistic crime

And yet it greases the wheels

Of this strange little town

That is simply a microcosm of 

Any city in England

With less interference or notice

From the higher governmental climbs

It's that these enterprising fellows

See some rich vein of self-making advantage

They they can tap into

So they leave the hurly burly of the city

And retreat into a safer queue

Where it won't take so long

To reach their life goals

And why deny them the attainment of pleasure

Even if it costs them their souls

But many go to church to absolve themselves

 of their crimes

For this has already been said before

It was best of times, it was the worst of times

So dig out your suitcases and threaten to leave it all

But you turn your head and see instead

That Rome still has time to rise and fall

So you may as well stick around

Long enough to see what happens

And what that will be

I can hardly see

For the log is still jammed in the cabins

We had a field day

Listen to the birds she'd say
I'm listening, I'm here I'm very much ok
In your loving arms
The touch of your lips
Makes me feel good
Up from my toes to my hips

In this world of over confidence
Arrogance and harm
She walks gently like a healing balm

She skips like a child
She sips at flowers
She let's me sleep for hours
Until I forget I'm in the wild

In a field, just a field
With Oak trees
A little wood stretching along the lower perimeter
The best place in the world for me

The only place her beautiful face
Can be forever
Like an  imprint of our bodies
That we left in the grass
When we leave

Good bye to that

I have been missing you
In the words of those unknown
I had thought our time was done
But you go and dig up a bone
It's ancient history
The thought is lost and gone
Well almost until archaeology
Of un-reason
Has brought it out in the light of the sun

I had thought I had lost
The last flames of the fire
The embers of a ghost of heat
Had burnt down in my desire
More than this
I'd said good bye
To all we'd known or done
It's just you had to dig up the bones
Again
And bring them out in the sun

Good bye my friend
Of those times gone
I can yearn dryly
Like one burnt in the sun
I can reach wildly
Or with dwindling desire
To touch the flame of our love
With the touch paper
catching fire

Fox trot

 The fox shot out of the entrance

And he sprang across the road

His wily wild head, lolling tonge hanging red

And a grin of his face saying overload

He grinned the laughing grin of a joker,

But crazy intelligence of a poker

Player from the barn, who takes chickens

By the yarn, tells of the wild dreams

Of a yoker

He cuts clean like a suit

Fires his brazen canons in salute

To the Sassy salty sea

Wearing orange sash of the bear

God-like as hesperides or Loki

A fallen angel star, picked up in a bar

Propped up by a whisky sour

The head of folded hair

The face of livid care

The wild wily fox crossed over

From SARS to Mars

 From SARS to Mars

So they came from out the rover

And in a great distress

The masters of their destiny

Or the Mistresses of distress

They saw and oh how phoney Phoebe

Lied in her nocturnal caress

Combing the skies like a pair of skis

Fitted for lifelessness

But come on home on your ponies

Oh you boys of the Wild West

For Mars is a showroom of the homies

And the people

Under some duress

They dress their Dunes in frills

And knickerbocker glories

Rock the Mars bar tune

And Roll in the Red sea stories

The man in the mask

The masks and the gloves

I needed ask, who it is she loves

And who wears the make up

and who wears the mask

Well the straw dogs bale

In the sun so pale

And there is a lipstick stain

On your mask

Who have you been kissing my love?

With your face so covered and blue

Whose clinically tested face accessory

Has been making contact with you?

Stay your distance

Don't over step the mark

Its full of hits and misses

But you've seen kisses in the dark

Now who, yes who

In the near or far

Do you love

The man in the mask?

And they said it's you

He's been talking to

They say that rumour has it

Well rumour owns the house on the hill

And rumour lives in your father's mansion

But rumour doesn't know well

Where your love does dwell

No, rumour only follows the current fashion

And he says fairwell, to the dale and the fell

And the man behind the mask

No he doesn't know well

Just who you do love

And rumour is afraid to ask

So suspicion does swell

In the circles they can't tell

Just who is the man in the mask

I will be writing this down

Some years from now

And the case of murder she wrote

Because its clear to see

When she is wild and free

Who the muses take to task

But only God knows

Which way the wind blows

And who is the man in the mask

The Brown Water Brook – Of a December train journey from Bristol to Aberystwyth

 Brown water in the brown brook

Flowing fast like a runaway crook

Swallowing hollows

Peaking on the tree lines

Of Alder, Ash and Willows

Grasses systemic in fields

Like primitive rice

Turning to boggy marsh land

And edges of birch bark

Damp and dark

With wet cloud covering everything

Up to the hill tops

Hedges black and dark,

Border fields there,

Crows in a pair

Tip toe and muzzle the earth with their beaks

Nowhere near the brown brook with the white crest peaks

Then the brook washes down again

And is seen from the train

Like a mane

Of a wild horse

Flowing down the mountain

Where Christmas tree shaped skeletons of birch fill a valley

Like forgotten Christmases past and lost to memory

Only sighted from a journey, East to West

To the Saturday noon, the moon past it’s best

And Ivied trees slender,

Others covered in moss

The dead brown of leaves

Lends a feeling strong with loss

And shadow to a crumpled land

By the wind and weather

Yet I am a changed man

Like the wind carrying a feather

It is a hope for the land

As back to view comes the brook singing

As it tributaries a larger river

As I see sheep on the hill side running

Scared from the train

The brown river running fast

With the falling rains

It is yellowy cream of churned butter,

The surface scum

That tumbles and turns

In troughs and gushes then

Like spreading fingers departs

And then it leaves the train’s route in yarn spools

To only standing water in pools

And Black slate walls

Damp

Then reeds and long grasses,

In the marshes by Macunthlyth

And Dovey Junction, fen land high

Firs in mist and fog and the sense of height

Mountain tops beyond sight

Hidden behind a curtain, a veil of white cloud

Then flat ground, flat as a fen

As the lay of an ocean bed

The wide flat river passes

Like a Mississippi over the plain

A solitary chapel on a promontory

Of a little headland into the flood bed

That is green with grass but not lush

Brown as well

And sculpted up into gentler hills

The brows of tarmac roads

And grey/white stone built houses

Start to populate and change the landscape

Into modern houses

Community greens and football grounds

Then the brown babbling brook appears again

And look as it follows the train

Down to the sea

Criss-crossing under bridges from

The crow’s path

Turning the Ystwyth

Into Aberystwyth