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

Collectibles

 She was just another piece in his collection

Just another exhibit possession

But the crowning glory the coda of his life

The music played on it was the music

Of his hot wife

The only thing was she never possessed a soul

She was a beautiful China doll

She was a Russian doll of many selves

Strip back the onion layer

There she same person but smaller

younger, more child-like when sick

She was just like the ballerina

Dancing on the music box stick

Dancing to his records

She wanted to be owned, looked after

She was afraid of death

And old age. Time was a jester

Who played a cruel trick

Despite her beauty 

Or in spite of it

He took away that which she was most

vain about, proud of

Her smile

Which blazed like a sunrise

Across her face

Yet he was equally vain

For having her in his collection

Keeping her in her place

In the glass cabinet

Is love the freedom of expression

Allowing the bird to leave its cage

To fly where she wishes

And with whom she chooses

No for it's a social contract

It has bounds and limits

Perhaps I was beating the bounds

As they still do, to frighten the birds into the sky

Where they can be shot down by

The hunters

I asked her what would you like to drink?

She said "Your soul"

I think she already has drunk mine

She has kept herself young

At my life's expense

And drunk up my blood 

Like wine

Rancour no more

 There's a sickness taken hold

And it's going down so deep

It's a sickness of the soul

It'll make the widows weep

It's a chill in the bones

It's a shadow on the peak

The sun's behind a veil

The birds don't dare speak

It's a sickness of the women 

It's all so ego driven

They hold their wands of power

And conduct their coven

They're stewing up some trouble

For that's all they want to do

They can never stop the feeling

Of their fingers turning screws

And changing and altering

And building in their image

A Roman empire

With a single figure

A Queen of the Nile

A pool of crocodiles

You can never out rancour

Those pesky art bankers

"I'm literally going to kill you"

 I'm literally going to kill you

But they meant it metaphorically

I'm metaphorically going to kill you

They said it while looking at me

I'm figuratively going to kill you

They had a small white eye

It fell out into their glass

And I think it was a sty

I hold you accountable for the millions

The millions who have died

I'm literally going to kill you

Like the Lockerbie disaster fell out the sky

Did I remind you of the half men and women

The flesh and the bones

I wish that I could wipe them

From your memory like a clean stone

But saying I'm literally going to kill you

Doesn't help you or I

Just take the log out of your own eye

But you accuse me of the stick in mine

Closing time

 I've got nothing more to say to you

I've dried up

Can't write a line

Everything that I thought was true

Turns out it was all a waste of time

They say the seas are green

And the sky is blue

I can't see

And I don't mind

Even if the whole world came to end

Tomorrow, honey

Sorrow, is just a word in time

So take back all the things I said to you

About love and heart in peace and wine

I loved you right from the start

But now that's just a shadow on my mind

At closing time

All the words that I gave to you

They fall like paper from the sky

In a world of paper airplanes

Paper tigers, paper men, and paper hearts

So easy to write your name on them

So easy to tear apart

And it's closing time

Take the flags from off the lamp posts

Take down the rolls royce angels from their stands

They are wanted no more

They've been thrown out and confronted

By the screaming crowds of the poor

At closing time