People of Croscombe

 People from Croscombe

They barter and they bite

Just like Romans in an amphitheatre tonight

Oh people from Croscombe

They'd sell their grandmother's teeth

And still get a second estimate

For their own financial relief

Now I'm not saying people from Croscombe

Are cheap, it's just that they're mean

And will scramble round for every pound

And penny, even raid the wishing well

But that's just what comes from living in a dell

Like Croscombe

People from Croscombe

They strain for the Sun, because you see they never 

Really get it, they have to strain their necks at it

And they grow tall and thin like Sun flowers

People from Croscombe are heliotropes

They clamber over their neighbours' walls

They're so tightly packed like cattle in stalls

And have no greater pleasure than to bicker

Or discuss their neighbour's lives

There's nothing more satisfying than

Chit chat with the promise of knives

And vengeance is a dish best served cold

They've learnt that from living in some other metropole

Like London or Bristol any number you care to mention

But they've never forgotten their just desserts

Revenge for what was meted out to them by extension

And now they're in the bear pit, in the colosseum

They can watch their neighbours getting eaten alive by lions

Or they can bet on gladiators

For once they heard about a place called Rome

That there was some foreign power better

And they'll pay their tax and all

Be so tactical until their Emperor 

summons their services by letter

And then they'll dob in their neighbours 

For traitors

People in Croscombe, but that's only what

I've heard of them

I don't tend to think of them

Very much at all

They just ask me for an estimate

I say I'll see you at four

Then they want a quotation

I recite shakespeare 

When that doesn't satisfy

I try Mark Antony and Cleopatra

Then they get offended and say

 I only try to flatter

Oh I can't seem to gather

What the people of Croscombe

want at all

stormy night

 There's a baby crying in the storm

Crying save me Mama, I'm tired of being born

What is there in this whole world

Worth saving?

There's a man knowing,

Maybe thinking too much

Holding his woman

Away from his touch

Because, well the  half world is

Starving

And the storm blows on

And the baby's still crying

On a dark wet street

Where the mother is trying

To give it comfort and heat

And she tells it hush, don't cry

This world is dying

In these ruins you are lying

But you'll grow strong 

one day it won't be long

You'll build this world again

You'll do a better job than I

But I tried

And the storm blows on

And another baby, in a another town

is born  

The Hurricane's day off

 The Hurricane's day off

Oh take a day off won't you?

Stop blowing, I'm tired of hearing your moaning

The Hurricane rested with a pina colada

Down in Bermuda or in the Bahamas

Brahms wrote his Hungarian dances

All the jiggling ceased

The palm trees stopped waving in the dusk

The wild boars slept in the forests

I throw out my feelings in disgust

The Hurricane blew in gusts

Almost perspiring

Just smoking

Like an iguana

Lazy lizard lounge

Hurricane took a day off

To lie in the ocean sun

 

Death Cafe two

 Joseph and Mary at the death cafe

Discussing how

Their child is faring

Ghandi and Martin Luther King

Thinking of a trial at the big

Board Spring

Who has the keys to democracy

Or who has the keys to suffering?

Who has the keys?

They're in authority

Superiority extreme

But do they come to the death cafe?

Let's talk about capitulation

Let's talk about capital punishment

Let's give death row

A swing

By

On our way

To better things

Let's walk in light

In the path of Jesus

Let's throw out the blanket

Even though it freezes us

For to be cold is better

Than the warmth of sin

Oh let's talk about death

And other things

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