Un-tied nations

 I'm an amateur at pentameter

I'm no professional at confessional

Not one's paying me for playing me

It's just a guest appearance in a sitcom

What it's saying to me is try harder

Or don;t try at all

so I shan't,

There's no such word as can't

But there is his Critique of pure reason

It went over my head like a duck

in shooting season

I can't see myself in the pub

It's an anxiety of rubber dub dub

I never wanted it

I'm hoping a bit of inspiration

But we're living in an untied nation

Nothin in the draw, but a lot screws and rubber bands

Oasis are a rubber band you pull them apart and they come back together again

My family are a rubber band stretched over the world

But I'm guessing the tension's too strong

When one of us dies, perish the thought,

Either we'll snap or be pulled back in again

just a collection of loops or strings

vibrating at a common ground

the speed of love and sound

Except back then we were a rubber band ball

and bounced along until it all unravelled

As it must all good things come to dust

And to distant places travelled

Our family of rubber bands

It always was a stretch

Like a game of throw and fetch

Bring back the stick to papa

Wait like a loyal puppy 

At your owner's feet

Give power to the one's you trust and

To those kings of the street

But I was too trusting by far

Hare on a broken spring

 C There's a man on the Am hill

G Getting away from it C all

C Trying to connect to some Am place and time before the G fall

F Looking to the horizon for C some hope

C Waiting for the C sun to be G rising F

Am For the moon F to let down Am  a ladder F rope

 Am To get outta F here, out Am of this F town

And C he's looking in a mirror G as the night comes C down Fmaj7 Csus4 C

A mirror of who he is,

Doesn't like what he sees

At last the tides slip away from the shore

And I've got to sail on that ship

I know there's nothing left to lose

I'm just like that man on the hill

Waiting for his fill

The Great Now

 The Great now

Is a feeling somehow

Of being alone

But not lonely

The Great now

I can't touch it somehow

I just know that when I'm alone

It's you who I love only

It's the great now

The time of our lives

In moments

somehow your words survive

In the secrets you share

Of your heart and its care

I know I'll miss you somehow

In the great now

You can't step in the same river twice

You can't turn back the clock in this life

So forgive me if I tried to reach out and hold

Something burning hot like love that would scold

And leave me cold

In the great now

But I'll walk on in song

I'll write you a line

From time to time

And if you should think of me

Again somehow

Maybe look me up in the Great now

Black Crow

 Down from a chimney the young crow fell

Down, down into hell

Trapped he thought no more to tell

But then

He heard 

The guitar knell

Ringing like a fire bell

To the rescue here I am

I dug up through the old ash pile

Dead ash tree

Burning flash free

Twigs and mortar fell around

But not a sight of Crow I found

Then a little voice called out

Here I am

Sometimes a bird falls in the land

Will of Odin's none can fathom

Was he real or was he a phantom

Then I had a bird in my hand

Cheap, cheap

It's all so cheap

You thought it was 

The Grim reaper's reap

But from ashes to ashes

No more The phoenix crow

Rose proud

Evil bird

They said

But that was all in my head 

Your nest wasn't the best

I'm gonna help you out of this

I'm gonna clear out all

The twigs and rubbish

You were so Young

So far yet to fly

How could I let you die

Flew out the window

Tried to get out

But it was shut

Black crow

I want to help you

Black crow

Black crow

There was bird in the fireplace

He had eyes that were black as the coal

pierced my soul

I thought 

through and through

You were just the babies

They said you were Cro man

Crow man

Cro-Magnon man

In a sphagnum moss land

Catherine's Wheel

 Sparks in the night

Everywhere around

Like lights in the dark

Across the country through the town

Well will you come on my carousel baby

Will you keep me turning around

Oh there is something that I can feel

When you set off my Catherine wheel

Oh Cathy come home to me Cathy

Come on fly through the whistling air

Where there is a will then there is a way

Oh Catherine turn my wind mill's sails

Make my millstone grind down the grain

We'll bake our sour dough loaves again

And in the morning sail away

Oh Catherine's real, shining like a firework

Catherine take the wheel

And drive our love onto foreign ground

Where we've never been

And they'll never find us

Refining the claws of a Hawk

Into Talons, oh Catherine

A day at the races

 The cursor, I curse her

But what is the use Marks and Spencers dancer

Or model of truth

Her M and S soul is a thing I aspire to

Probably it's not love

It's just social clamouring

Or climbing

It's my inferiority of shopping at Aldi not Tescos

It's the rich poor gap writ large on my soul

I don't reflect her

She has a light for sure

An established middle classness

Of my step mother

What was I expected to be ?

A gardener at the National Trust would have been acceptable

But I never wanted that

If career life is not to be a failure

Perhaps I'll try and shake it

Or fake it til I make it

To shop in M and S more than once

a year

But that is really success in Britain

Being able to attain and maintain the same social class as your parents

Measure yourself in money, in houses and cars

He's got it comfortably

With my job I'll struggle

And even with a token degree

All I've ever done is hustle

It doesn't ever spell a day at the beach or a retirement home

Just to rest at peace alone

Would be an achievement

But I'm always off to shoot and skin another beaver

Maybe I should just move back to Canada

And leave her

deep sea trawling in shallow bed rivers

 Hipsters with sisters

What of the brothers with lobsters?

The mothers with prawns and shrimp BBQs?

What of the artsy fartsy fantasy banksy's

That fill up the treadmills in the gums for life

What of the lettuce fetishists

The cattle protectorists

What of brassica rubbing in the alchemist's allotments?

Give me a fashionista at Easter spring collection

But not summer in the wings of aerodrome convention

Give me necklaces at neap tide and bear hugs in Autumn

By big wall men who fill in gaps in the mortar

Supporting acts in Tarot card decks

Spun like lattices of gossamer spider webs

Not the main act, not the leading role

That takes class and control

Not my be sugared soul

Mary Poppin it on the dance floor

Around her handbag

Even if it was a glad rag

Where have all the hipsters awaiting hip ops gone

Long time in passing

Give me books I can delve in and dip my toes in

Reading like a bunting

A wag tail

I've been a dumb bumble bee dancing around strange flowers

Got hooked on a nectar

And locked up in towers

And it's been a mistake just to follow

Attraction

For that leads to dissatisfaction of soul

The farmers are nursing their night time herds

Weaning off mother's milk

It's been a diary of dairies

And I've not written a word in blood

But I've slaughtered most of the sacred cows

Around here 

And now I'm an outcast of my own design

I'm just getting ready to cut my ties

For none of these people reflect my style

I'm more a man on a hill

 seeing nothing but mirrors 

for miles and miles

I don't like what I see

But I've been lost in a maze

A minotaur's minor tour

of buses of summer haze