To those who would see me burn

 I do not want your towers of Babel

I do not need your

Street cars of desire

Your news paper cuttings

On coffee table mornings

Or friends keeping distance

In the supermarket mourning

The loss of a good friend

It's a shot in the dark

But I want life

That no computer screen can spark

I'm sick of the zoom calls

The death on the skype

The fifty yard high walls

Of Microsoft teams is a lark

Who ever enters a room of fifty people

and really gives a shit

What the tart at the front barks?

I want the intimacy of closed spaces

Cafes with small faces

And shop thieves at large

I want the risk that someone might rob my wallet

Then I can stop it

And feel cool as a shark

I want the loss, and I want the gain

Don't give me the dross

Of Microsoft window panes

I don't need their figures their statistics

Their frame

Their constant approval,

Their constant fame

Give me something real

I can write about that stuff

When people do unpredictable things

And fuck off

Or say damn it I've just had enough

Because I have of this virtual existence

Bugger off

I can already tell the kind of feminist tosh that will spout from the mouth of that

Crass oxbridge toff

Or she was brought up up in Surrey

And raised over in Spain

And now has enough nouce to run down my drain

I don't need her opinions

I don't need her high shame

Of slavery passed down through generations

I'm not playing that game

They are all pretenders

To massage their egos

But underneath it are machinations

That would equal Iago's

You can call me the moor, Desdemona's my maid

But at least when I look in my soul

It's home-made

And I shall not forsake the tribe of my nation

Who has given me my pride

In a certain fascination

With things that are green and alive

And last long

And are not just the passing fancies of

Babylon 

Funny Ha ha

 Now I'd like to say that you were cool

Like cucumber 

But more a tool

With an itch to get her number

Don't be a snitch

It's way past slumber

This party's over

Like an over boiled egg

It's turned hard 

And I'm going to bed

I must be up at the crack of dawn

Oh that's a funny one

A Brazilian, like a pussy that's shorn

Well sheep shaggers aside

You really took me for a ride

I spent far more

Than my beer budget can abide

And now I've installed your bloody fridge

Some bastard from America

Is gonna use it for his bridge

Damn it I'm drunk and that doesn't rhyme

But anyway

Life's like that

I fucks it up time, after time

And if you haven't a penny

A hapenny will do

And if you haven't

A hapenny, then boy

You are screwed

Love in the afternoon

 love, love in the morning, love in the afternoon

Love, love like a steam train whistle that's blowing

Love like the face of the moon

Love on the island, love on the bridge

Love in the aisle and the supermarket fridge

Love in the fountain, love in the mist

And love on the mountain where we first kissed

Love going down and coming up soon

Love in the afternoon

Are you going my way, walking across the room

Hiding in the shadows, in the dark gloom

Come out from the curtain, put down the broom

Cinderella on the highway sweeping over my tomb

Well the ball is still rolling but it'll be midnight soon

Love never goes my way, still there's love in the afternoon

Love like a joker, changing his clothes

Love like a smoker holding his nose

Can't stand the waiting for the summer in june

Love in the autumn wearing red shoes

Love like the falling leaves on sand dune

Love could be late to blossom, but soon it will bloom

Love in the flotsam, in the jettsam like a melody's tune

floating like a harmony, love in the afternoon

Love can be weak, love can be strong

love cheek to cheek, love's a love song

Love let's you speak, but doesn't need words

Love's what you seek, when you listen to the birds

Love is so sure and love is so soon

Love stands in your door, like a charm or a boon

Oh love, love in the afternoon

Laughing at bricks

 I'm going on holiday

A holiday in the car park

Well I know that crime doesn't pay

But a supermarket trolley can make a good lark

I sit in it and I joy ride

All through the parking bays

My friends hitch me up to the bumper of a truck

And Whoa! away we go

Sometimes I wonder about sunlight

If it is real or just in my dreams

Is it something I can touch

Is it a malleable thing?

If I put it in my fridge at night

Will it light up my Spring beans

Oh sometimes I wonder about sunlight

And what on earth it all means!

Sometimes I like to lay bricks

I like to sit and set stones

It gives me enormous satisfaction

To know that they all have a home

And that each is interlocking

Or can make a good path

Or it could be that they are all joking

And it takes a good brick to make me laugh

A cobble stone is not well known

One looks just like another

To be a famous cobble, you must be shined to a nobble

Like an elbow after a wrestle with a long-kneed giraffe

Oh but nothing can bend me over double

Nor give me a stitch in my carf

No nothing can make my knees wobble

Quite like brick can make me laugh

Sometimes I just have to see it sitting in the corner of a house

And I think to myself what a predicament, 

to be stuck firm as cheese block in the mouth of a mouse

Or like a crack (craic) in a pavement

No nothing can start the joggle of

The old jelly roll or make my belly toll

Like a church bell rung by an April fool

Or split my sides quite in half

Quite like a good brick can make me laugh

Boogie Bay

 Jezebelle the nun she cooks the books

She looks down the rifle sight

At words in her book

And each letter is like a light

She forgets to remember to write

When they come in the night

To seek out her quarters

And I have missed my train

I have kissed the rain

I have handed over my money

In the short haul plane

And they are tying on my parachute

So I may fall again

Now I hope 

That I land on my feet like a cat

And not head first into pain

The boogie nights

Of silent street

Rolling days of hilly sleep

That are gained in increments

Like slow orchestral movements

Let me take you to Boogie bay

And the starving

Staple of stolen care

Let me take you to boogie bay

We'll run our own kettle shop

And shine shoes there

We'll perform brain surgery

And give you a new heart

They'll take away your kidneys

And replace them with kid art

They'll shave your Jerico

And topple your Jeronimo

And Domino your diamonds

Through doorways in the dark

They'll break the crust of parkland

In a following

And their dialectics will make you fall apart

In dialogues eclectic, or electric like her smart

She'll click her fingers

Yes she will, she'll hurl you

From the apple cart

And stake a claim in corruptibles

Like a razor blade dart

And shore enough the sea will scoff

At all your glimmering jewels

She'll roll them til their edges scuff

And shine them like your shoes

So let me take you to boogie bay

Where the whales have the time

And they keep it in their tails

Where the mermaids do recline

And fat and folding sailors who

Have spent too long on land

Will look out of their sea side windows

And begin to make their plans

Let me take you to boogie bay

It cannot be more than a day away

And we will score our good time there

And we will hold aloft a flame

And flax and flecks

And shocks of seals will still be making play

When we go down hand in hand

To the sands of Boogie Bay

Still frames

 It was as I suspected the just desserts have been served

They let the cat out the bag

And the donkey in the manger

The roller disco, rollercoaster 

Of storytime is over

And its now the darkness of dusk

Creeping in

The shadows are falling all around the garden

And bathwater runs down the drain

Sirens are calling

Down streets never ending

In a heat that is lending

Confusion to a maze

But now the temperatures is dropping 

And the giant is returning back up the stairs

To his castle keep

The eagle's nest

Where they hatch the eggs

Of unrealism, in surrealist

Dadaeist jest

And floating along with Barbie 

In a parachute who falls

And floats in a kaleidoscopic test

I can see the television crews leading out their cables

Diners sitting down to tables,

Turning lights out

The call of the outside,

Some humming engines

Some slippery scudding of shoes

Some where a boar is snuffling a truffle

And somewhere a deer is bounding

I see the frame like a distant memory

Like a slow train coming

Round the mountain again

And I'm on the platform

Thinking I can remember you

Feeling all the hope falling through my fingers

Watching the rain water run down the drain

It is cold on the mountain, and lights are barely burning

But I must be strong to remember my name

And I think I answered all of your questions

But the one that lingers is why I snuffed out our flame

Elephant time/ elephantine

 

Doing my best in a shortfall, to be gone in a can of

Cortisol and hair spray

In tooth decay in nominal equities

And innumerable beauties

And telegraphic controversies of hook liners

That shape the turtle dove into some angelic being

And give her a golden egg imbibed with meaning

And when in actualness the forecast looked grim

Because high above antennae rooftops swam the peregrine

 

And even if these wolves are called the sea, and gems are not cut by diamond dromedary

Then the lump she was concealing in her peacock pouch

Was gemlike glistening

Heraldic and fizzling to be close to social exclusion 

And far from some happy place

To see in isolation solace

And yet to laugh in loneliness’s face

If that were the attainable state

I shouldn't care where the pendulum swings

And if I am a free bear

Then this forest of time

Should not be thickets of problems,

I should see the wood for the trees,

But slowly I see the hunter stalking me

Through the long grass

With his elephant in his spy glass

The elephant in the room

No one is talking about him

Just the way he likes it

He likes to be left alone

An elephant is always solitary when he's far from home

Though this doesn't mean he's made of stone

It just means he's packed his trunk is on his way

To where I could not say,

To what time or place

can you find him pining for the forest again

For the memory of ivory is like the scent of burning wood

And bonfires of his vanities,

And tusks of really doing good

And ears of imperfection for to listen

To malapropisms and feet like starved mosquitoes

Spread-eagled and flattened without blood

Pachyderm

The thermal tongue that licks the peanuts

And the snake bark skin

Like a tree trunk, gnarled and thick, as the crusts of earth

On which his feet are treading.