Death cafes

 Turned away by death at the death cafe

As if death is a club that only some are welcome

Even death didn't want me

In their clique set

Don't die among us we are superior beings

Turned away by death

I'm gonna have to live forever

In your Stalinist bureaucracy

Of brutalist NHS workers

And elderly, old age home carers

Turned away by death

"Your time hasn't come yet

You have yet to reach the heights

That we would have wanted"

Perhaps when you do,

Will you let us know

Then we'll consider your petition

To be let in the doors of the Art bank

Where it's ruled

By indescretion

And the self destructive instinct of

The meek on the make 

who try and hold vigil with their later selves

In some phoney seances

Who claim to be so mystical, spiritual

Or marvellous

That their coy apprehensions

Don't mask their great pretensions

That they think themselves

Better than the average for

Placing retributions on their poor

patients who've they've somehow mishandled

These are the middle managers of 

The healthcare professions

They come down from Bristol or Brighton

Where their enlightened ideas

Glistened

And their ideas are meant to dazzle us

Into trusting their intuition

But they are the selfish slaves of a ruined institution

That NHS that just eats itself

And all who come into its revolutions

Like a planetary giant

Sucking hapless asteroids

And passing neutrons

But why lose sleep over those

idiots

It's best just to avoid doctors and the self-proclaimed healers

They are just avoiding the reality of death 

Like everyone else

Whether by television, drugs,

Alcohol

Or even walks in the countryside

Nothing bears witness

Like the soul in restitution

Just don't turn me away

From another bloody

Death cafe

ressurrection

Jewels

 The Great Heist

The Zeitgeist,

Walking the gallery corridors

Walking the faces

Looking a them through their bars

Prisoners in the Louvre museum

Take the jewels

Hanging from the necks of the mules

Hanging from the necks of the new Aristocracy

Was it the French Revolution?

Whose jewels were they?

When nothing is holding together democracy

When the threads of trust in humanity

Are breaking, rotting in the corruption of greed

Rotting in the complacency of money

What do these signs and icons of culture mean?

When culture is a society fraying at the seams

And what resonates are the drums of war

But war that is waged behind the scenes

And under the cover of a dark web

Of subterranean tunnels we've allowed them to burrow

Beneath our feet, within our homes, into our screens

We've creates these holes, this vacuum

No wonder them evil has grown 

in what nature abhors

In our crazy idea we could put the world on hold

When it was only the West that drove that myth

That it was greatest standing on the precipice

No wonder they stole the jewels from the museum

No one was guarding the national treasure

They complacently thought we live in a fluffy make-believe

There was no need to defend against evil

Conventional sinner

 I'm so conventional

It's not intentional

I'm a conventional sinner

Sit on the bench an all

Learning my French an all

I'm just a conventional sinner

I'm so conventional

Pick up my pension an all

Sit on the fence getting thinner

Nearly fall between bar stools

I can't hold my drink at all

And my conversation's all loser and winner

I just believe in what the last person said

That's the opinion that's stuck in my head

What does it matter if someone is dead

This is modern day Britain

Until they knock on my door

Asking for my signature

I'll be a conventional sinner

Holding my own counsel

With my four white walls

Oh I'm just a conventional sinner

Don't ask me if I think television is fair an all

If it truly represents our society

Or if it's all just engendered

Engineered false society

According to the narrative of the winner

They're the ones with the loudest voices,

Because that's how democracy works

It's not about fairness

Or some lies of equality

It's about shouting and strength and dominance

That's why I'm apolitical

call that conventional

I just don't see the point in invention

of winners

When we're all just sinners

Angel feet

 I sat there laughing

While you were sitting loving

And all of heaven fell

Like tears

And shattered like laughter

Around our feet

And I knew you to be an Angel

Who I did meet

And all was holy silent

Along the midnight street

Yet I sat there laughing

Not ready to believe

While you were sitting loving

Wearing my heart on your sleeve

I cried into my breakfast bowl

While you championed the weak

I swear that you had taken my soul

For I had forgotten how to speak

And all was loud and busy

Out on the daytime street

And I forgot what made me whole

While you had made ends meet

You were my Angel then

As I went on a midnight stroll

And future was only a figure of speech

And the past, a catching look

And the present some glimpse of my soul

I read about in books

How can you hold a candle

To me anymore? I burn

And low

The embers turn back to coal

And I can't think of you

No more

I heard an Angel's softly passing feet

 And I hid behind a door

To me my heart did beat

Maelstrom

 Well I fell down the maelstrom

Yes I followed you down

My ship was in a hail storm

Stronger than a cup of tea

And you were in a clipper

All the way from the China Sea

Well the maelstrom is a real big deal

It'll put hairs on your bum

And it'll make you feel

Like you don't have a mum

And you don't want a meal

So never come to the maelstrom

Now the female strum is of another order

It's like a collie so pet it but only the border

Because if you enter into that whirlpool

You'll never make it out alive

And you are a bloody fool

Now if you should succumb

Think only this of me

That there was some foreign whirlpool

Whipped up a writhing brothing sea

And into it went my log book

My sanity and me

Because you'll never be a shanty man

When you're a she shanty singer see

Yes she was a shanty man

She on the fence holding the can

Singing in her defence

I didn't lead you on

On down into the female strom

Get a hold of yourself

You bloody landlubber

And put back on the shelf

Your bloody soul rubber

The stars are all bucking

Because this ship is ducking

Down the rollicking rolling maelstrom

The Strawberry ship

 I used to work on the ship strawberry

A liner over from Cork

I would sit on the mainsail yard arm

And eat with my knife and fork

But since the wind's been a blowing

I think we've gone off course

It was a circumnavigation of the world

But now it seems like a race for one horse

Why do we follow the loudest

Like sheep in a valley we wail

Guide me home oh my shepherd

For I fear the blowing gale

But it's because we live in the bowels of the ship

And hardly have reason to rise

Above to the main deck

Where they say such we risk our neck

And will pay for it with our lives

It is the little gravity well

We must overcome

To escape the mouth of hell

And not be brought back into

Those shark infested waters

All invested by harlequins' daughters

Who think they're the Queens of the dell

Now our captain he got side tracked

He listened to the voice of the sirens

Who were calling to him back

Where they live  on their little island

Like stranded sheep he thought

I as their shepherd must rescue them

But it was a blood sport of course

And he ended up digesting them

And this indigestion brought him

Back to the strawberry liner

Where he was neither a finer captain

Nor a captain of liners

Only a tuner of tunes

Beyond hot air balloons

that look like submarine miners

Believe

 No, I don't think you should believe

In all the foreign lovers that you leave

The stars are a gate to a world unseen

No, I don't think you should believe in all you've seen

The penny drops but I can't believe

That you've opted for foreign leave

Since all the cops have buttoned sleeves

And all their tears make flowers sneeze

I should have stopped to wind the clocks

I should have held the nettle longer

I should have stopped in more docks

I should have been a fire brander

But colour me this way

Or paint me that

I'm just the ship's kettle or the ship's cat

Maybe I don't have the mettle

to swear or scat

But the lovers leave their answers

On my doormat

It's been hard to get going

And so hard to leave

But I can't believe it was snowing

On Adam and Eve

I can't believe where we're going

Is just a reprieve

I think the wind's blowing

And we are all just leaves