Pinocchio

Pinocchio grew up
You knew would
He would have to
After he became a real boy
He became a real brat
In boarding school
Though how could that be?
With Jiminy cricket
And Geppetto's wooden stool
He learnt some honesty
And truth
Actually he saved up
Cobbling together some money
And went off to study
Psycho-analysis
In Vienna under Freud
Jung was his Mentor
He treated others for the good
He made them better
Those who believed they were
Made of wood
And had wooden hearts that would
Never feel
He turned them on his lathe
Chiseled away, until their slithers
Of wood peel
Began to bleed
And he knew he had touched a nerve
And finally they could feel

Others were so light headed
They were strung to the ceiling
They were puppets of another power
But one without moral feeling
And he made them walk up the wall
He made them stand
And he made them fall
Until Dr Pinocchio made the snip
With his knife
And circumcised they'd go
Back home to their wife

So he had a good racket going
This shrink of a boy man
The only thing that got his goat
Was to think of his toy woman
She was no fun anymore
And he felt deflated
Every time they went to bed
She was far from elated

Of all the men of this world
I had to marry one once made of wood
You jump when we sit by the fireside
You think you might catch light
And when we're in the pool
You never swim just float driftwood -like

But most of all in bed when I check your trunk
I find the tree has been fossilized
And like a petrified stone its sunk
So come on my woodsman
Show me what your made of

So things went on like this for some time
It happened to be lucky for Pinocchio
That he had married Cinderella
And that he had made her
Instead of a glass slipper
Wooden clogs
She became the dutch woman from the paintings
The happy wife
And it was all windmills and canals
When they moved to Holland

And that pesky Prince stopped chasing her
He remained in Denmark
Biting his finger nails
Still afraid of the dark
But that is why the pumpkin prince
Had to vanish at midnight
He had to feed his dog
That would howl for his bone
And he let his hound bark
Until he got home

So by and large Cinderella was
Happier with her new shoe
She stopped sweeping up the ashes
For now fires were a no no
Unfortunately ten years later
She was to fall in love again
With a dancer of the go go
And she went went
Because she can can

Clocking off

Catch the two o'clock train

The station stands but we are walking

It will be back again

No stalking

Like a tiger in the long grass

Marauding passersby

Passengers

The tiger of time watching

Each second like a tigers tooth biting

Each minute like a claw, clawing

Each hour like a jaw on bone gnawing

Rolling us over and over, skin flail, caterwauling

Hear time stops

In a relative way at the station

Mr light beam gets off

Several decade before Mrs Sound barrier

Breaks shore in her steamer

Though her waves continue to ripple on the water

Mr light beam has left his particles to scatter

And in a quantum cafe the waitress

Is trying to untangle her reality

She's stirring the protons and neutrons together

In an atomic latte

Mixing in electrons

And a scattering of gluons

She tops it off

With a smattering of quarks

And just when she is serving it to

Mr Schrödinger in a hat

Who keeps appearing and disappearing

At the table over her shoulder
Asking for more milk
For his cat

Time's gravitational wormhole

Opens up to an alternative reality

Where many parallel waitresses

Are having similar experiences

But in a way that would make you

Question their validity

And I sit there sipping my coffee
Thinking of all the pieces
That fit together
Because they have to
Fall apart because
They want that
And I look at my watch
And realize my train
Will soon depart
I return the time piece
To my breast pocket
And it ticks a little
out of time
Above the beating
Of my heart

I digress, and I should

As life is a digression

Or is it a regression

Into an infinity of mirrored doors

Never mind, behind one

A prize surely awaits

And we are all winners

In the cosmic game show

Known as reality

And here is your host

Mr Reality TV

On times past

I must be guilty of something
To be up at this hour
Like stealing the silver ware
Or stealing from the Gods
Their fire power
I must be
So bind me in irons
Leave me in dungeons of despair
I have no hope of a better tomorrow
Each passion is like a cage
Of care

Each love is like a tide in the dawning of the moon
Swallowed by a whale
I'll sail back to you soon
But not before Jonah
Has done God!s bidding
Not before the guests have been
Welcomed to our wedding

There was a time like a memory of a lane
Like an autumnal sequence
Where brown leaves fall like rain
And they feel so real
Wet with laughter
Drenched in pain
In the innocence of belonging
To that time again

I cast down my manhood
Lost in memory
I am running through the fields
Of a childhood fantasy
And it all seems so close
It is so hard to bear
That such love as these were
Our rights as children
Have everywhere

Mine were no different, though luckier than many
To be growing up in the countryside
Needing little more than a penny
Nothing to live or die for
Just the being in its essence
That was the quintessential part
Of its innocence

If I come back from that long stupor
That reverie of a time long past
Now my eyes are wet

My heart weaker
But to forget
Is only temporary
Like a kind of sleep
When perhaps where a person
Really lives
Is in his memory

Faces in the glass

I broke her heart
it'd never been broken before -
like a glass vase
I shattered the visage
I broke her eyes
And they shed tears
I broke my own face
For a thousand years
Since Helen of Troy
I never thought I would love again
And again this heart is a toy
To play with in the rain

Manana, manana

The mud is in the water,
But its getting clearer
The more you know
The less the river seems to flow


The more you know the stiller
Seems the water
The deeper seems
The thoughts of her
to whom I used to go

The more the river flows
The faster all the dreams
The bigger in the the microscope
Of un-imagined things

Then I step back from the bank
And see the fishermen throw
Their lines in a flank
They're all trying to catch
The impossible

All the muddy waters of tomorrow
Don't you know
What they say in old Spanyol?
Manana, manana
Let tomorrow look after
Itself

I know I've seen your face before

I've seen your face some place before
In some theatre maybe or city store
No now I remember you stood at my door
I knew I'd see your face before

I've seen your face some place before
You've got the kind I'd remember
Like a mocking bird
Calling out your name to me
But its something I ignored
I knew I'd seen your face before

I've seen your face some place before
Was it on a poster for ghosts
Was it nailed to a wanted post
Did it set ships a sail to Greece's shore?
I knew I'd see your face before

Was it in Paris?
Was it in Spring?
Now you seem embarrassed
Oh dear was it a fling?
Did we love in the moonlight
Under the Cyprus trees did we sing?
Oh tell, me tell me who you are?

When something reminds me
But I know not of who
Like the lip of a sandal
That a dog might chew
Like some piece of rag
That one discards
I'm trying to remember but it seems so hard
You're on the tip of my tongue
You're a vision out of place
Like on the edge of the horizon
The dawn of your bright face
But I have not the hands
To hold your burning sun
The stars are so myriad
Like out of a million you're the one

Just lay your lines down
Like experience in the sand
Draw up the ground water
From the depths of memories found
Some twinkle in your eye
Reminds me of someone I knew
But am I the one you found
Or did I find you?

Memories fade, they fall in the parade
But I want to remember you
I won't let you fall into shade
Now the sun has shone upon all that you've done
I can see it in your eyes
You've still got things to come
I can trace in your smile
The hard work of the Nile
That runs beneath the surface of your skin
Just tell me is your style
In your heart or your guile
Now tell me are you sure?
I knew I'd seen your face before

Scatter my ashes in the Danube

Scatter my ashes in the Danube
And I'll be there to follow you
Beneath the sky of blue

Scatter my ashes in the Danube
All the funeral guests
In their best black dress
Beneath a sky of blue

Scatter my ashes in the Danube
Let them mix
With the twigs and the sticks
From the nests of the crows that flew

Scatter my ashes in the Danube
And I won't come and bother you no more
I'll be too tied up with lapping at the shore
And if you want to forget me
Then be sure
Not to leave on the bank my shoes

Scatter my ashes in the Danube
Where the firework flashes
And greasy hands pass cashes
All covered by the waters that flow

Scatter my ashes in the Danube
Where the waters mask a multitude
Of sins
And if you have to ask then you
Won't be let in
To the Danube river party today

Scatter my ashes in the Danube
Let them join with the bodies
That flow to the Black sea
Just tip up the urn and forget about me
Like they do, like they do
With everybody
Beneath the sky of blue