Humanimal

It's a bad habit
So don't do it
You're not a rabbit
Get through it!
Yeah you're not an animal
So don't do it
It's a bad habit

You could be a Panda
Eating shoots and leaves
Then you see a tasty animal
Makes you give up what you believe
He's a vegetarian not a carnivore
And you're a human not an animal
So don't do it
It's a bad habit

You could be a Giraffe
On the prairie
Head in the clouds
Like a fairy
Well come back down to earth
See your human worth
You're not an animal
It's a bad habit

You could be a monkey
Throwing banana skins
Trying to trip up others
In their times of sin
Well you're not an animal
Since Adam and the fall
He bit the apple
It's a bad habit

You could be an elephant
With his long trunk
Happy when he's relevant
But not when he's a drunk
You see he forgot
To remember he's an animal
But you are not
Don't do it,
It's a bad habit

You could be a flammingo
Standing in the pink
He can stand on one leg
After he's had a drink
But he's an animal
Don't be a fool
Don't do it
It's a bad habit

So lock up the zoo
The human's out his cage
There'll be hell to pay
And put heaven in a rage
You're not an animal
So don't do it at all
It's a bad habit
For all creatures great and small

Omen Bird

Buzzard sitting on the high branch
Vulture of the corn
Hunched shoulders like a miser
Shrugging at the oncoming storm

Weather front like a spyglass
Into tomorrow's dawn
Buzzard sitting on a high branch
Calling his tidings to warn

Augur bird of all he's heard and seen
Calling to someone or something in the green
Buzzard sitting on the high branch
Waiting there with eyes keen

Buzzard sitting on a high branch
Waiting to get born
Well he hasn't got a nest of his own yet
But he's building one well shorn

Buzzard sitting on the high branch
Waiting there as the sky is torn
Thunder will come and the rain on the run
He'll still be sitting there by Sunday morn

Buzzard sitting on the high branch
Looking out into the sky
Waiting and wondering,
Wondering and a waitin'
But he never does know why

Bernie's Birthday

Like a busy bee she buzzes from flower to flower
Like a hairdresser she trims the fringes
On her gardening binges
She's parched from the hospital green
She needs some real corridors
Of nature's power
So she dives in
Like a swimmer
Like a garden warrior of weeds
Battling on her knees
Tooth and nail, clawing at the earth
For all she's worth
She is a crusader for the cause unseen
But to tame the wild,
To play the game with mother nature
We have all seen
But like a general she commands the daisies
To stand upright and strong
She waves her hands at daffodils
They turn away from their own reflection
In the pond
And look her way, the cabbages wilt under her
Intense gaze,
As the lettuces give up the ghost
Go to seed
Let us give thanks and praise
To the army of one
That is Bernie, battler of the weed
On her birthday

Static Swans

White swan black peat
What contrast of purity
The lamb bleats
The polar bear's ferocious teeth
Black swan white peat

Turn on, turn off
The television static
In a graveyard cough
So gravelly and grave and sooty
And sweep
So much blurring, fuzzy channels
I can get no sleep
White swan, black peat

Like a plesiosaurus
Of the ancient stage
Long necked nessy,
From Walter Scott's page
White knights, black page
Black night, white sheet
White swan, black peat

Never say never again

You can be what you want to be
And I will always be your friend
Just put the past down to History
And Never say never again

You  might be this big soldier
Playing with your big toys
You might  be getting older
Like the men grown far from boys

But you can be what you want to be
I will always be your friend
Just Never, no never,
Never say never again

Never, no never
Never say never, until you close that door
Another door will open, it doesn't
Have to be the end
So Never say never again

Never, no never
Never say never, my emerald friend
You a like jewel in the crown
You might see those rain clouds coming
That's no reason to frown
Never, never,
Never , no never
Don't you ever, say
Never again

Snag-Life

Snag-Life, I just snag my life away
Everytime I think of stopping
That snagging feeling stays
And if I think about tomorrow
I know I'll be snagging just like today
Its a snagging sorrow, in March, April or May

Snagging through the Winter, on Spring and Summer days
Snaggin in the Autumn, in those dying auburn rays
And if I think of stopping,
That snagging feeling stays
Well that's Snag-Life

Snag-Life that's about the size of it
I've got wood chip down my collar
And White paint in my spit
If I had a dollar for every snag I made
Well I would be a millionaire
And I would sit upon a throne of gold
And not on this rickety old chair
But I am just a snagger, just a beggar laid bare
You try and stop me snagging
When I got soot dust in my hair
That's my Snag-life

Well I've got blue paint on my ear lobe
White paint up my nose
I'm sending out my snagging message
All around the globe
Snagging in the doorways, snagging round the rose
Snagging in the garden, on the roof top on tip toes
And everytime I think of stopping
That snagging feeling grows
That's my Snag-life

Well my finger nails are like black plumbs
From all the hammer blows
My snagging feeling lingers on
Like a love loss only knows
And I must be wicked because no rest ever slows
Me down in the thick of it
Until my brows are furrows
And I try to plough through the worry
But like flurries of snow
The snags they just snow ball me
Black and blue like the crows
And you can read all about it
In my Snag-Rag
I publish it on Tuesdays
When I talk of my Snag-drag
And it comes out on Sundays
When I blow my nose
Black and White between the lines
Where nobody ever goes
Now yes sir
That's Snag-Life

Shovelling Sand

Shovelling the sands of time
Shovel off this mortal coil
Soon the sand will blow over the line
Sand in my eyes, wind of toil

Soon the wild wind will whip
The sands from their heap
And I will build another sandcastle
On another shore of sleep

Sleep, sleep, the long eternal
Sleep in the sandy bay
Sleep like a sandman
Coming from the grains
Under the bed of hay

Sleep is a doorway
Into the land of the dead
Sleep upon your sandy pillow
Sandy Sue go rest your head

Filling the sand bags
Filling the hand bags
Throwing the women over my shoulder
Carrying them like a fireman
Out of the tower of older
Burning like a conflagration
Like a funeral pyre
Sand is thrown onto the flames
Sand blasts blown much higher

All the grains of time will stand
Will stand shoulder to shoulder
And the seconds
And minutes and hours
Will fuse into one
Glass Tower
Shine like a chimmney plume
Rising up to heaven
My glass elevator
My Siege of time's power

But no name, no fame, no nothing
Can make a war on time
Eventually the cracks will show
And the tower will shatter

Then all the pieces will be returned once
More to the shore
Washed up in the tumbling waves
To become sand grains once more
Blown across the face of graves