Yesterday Girl

 I tried to call you Sarah, tried to call you

Yesterday, yesterday girl

Tomorrow is a land we can forget regret in

we can sip the sweet cup of grace

And heaven stepping in 

To demand space

For healing

They cut the drug, and share across

The mirror of this reality

Cut time into pills

You may swallow each day

Say

Don't bite off more than you can chew

And I call you Tuesday

Mrs Wednesday

Mother Thursday

Brother Friday

Like the monk

That I've become

Mum is the word

Nobody says

In our vows of silence

And forced forgetting

It's a self-inflicted violence

Against memories

Than stirs and stain

Like tanning of the leather brain

Folded in and on itself

And in each shelf

A book of time is stored

In the cerebral library

But in dementia, the librarian

Has gone mad

Is destroying volumes

Like evidence

Before the Nazis come

To accuse him

Of conspiracy, or herasy

Or speaking his mind

He knows the castle cannot keep

The monastery's library

And it cannot save

These treasures from time's ravages

And the revolution

That makes books obsolete

And turns the leaf of history

Into garbage on the street

And in what dignity is left to him

In self -determination

Before the mind-controllers take control

He sets a conflagration in the heart of the library

In the nerve centre of his soul

Until all knowledge of his life and love

Is lost in obliteration

And the total annihilation

Of his word capital

Until feeling is like a serpent

Swimming in a deep primordial bowl

Making monosyllabic lurchings

For meaning in its soul

And almost reaching expression

Of the reptillian mind

When finally all functioning ceases

Back into the husks we find

French Toast

Cows drop in the shucks

Flies blacken out the books

Matches light the fire

Under bushes of thorn

The parson passes hours

Handing out the flowers

Like prayers around the houses

But he still ties his boot

The time is like twine wound

Clocks go round and round

Minutes of the rainfall

Entered in the log of crooks

Meetings undercover

And above their lovers

Fall over in the fallen rain

Trying to get cute

Chosen cheeses tumble

From the turnstile table

Baroque and broken Rococco

Furniture lay in pieces

Breadcrumbs of the madams

Leaving trails for Hansel

And Gretel to come wandering

To the house of ill repute

Every ant will wire

A message to their mother

In code between the covers

They know no one can shoot

Chambermaids go hungry

Next to pigs potbellies

Freedom wears an iron mask

No questions can be asked

By the red army recruit

I hold you in decision

Of a natural derision

Open courts are far from

Penny worth arcades

Z cars make the freeway

Superstars on the highway

While singing bums sing myway

Out beyond the Christmas Parade

And St Patrick is in his tower 

struddling some snakes

For their only mistake

Was to justify their God

Dogs howl in the moonlight

Inside the garden of paradise

She is free from fire

And I am free from ice

If you see them coming,

You better ask for the magazine

They will shoot your picture

And leave your soul outside

The fruits of harbour waiver

Inside the semiquaver

Struck up upon a drum

Of black mirrors to the sun

And every hawk is heard

To cry in human words

The needs so babies come

Across the image

Of the one

Beebobanian

 Clock towers toll

On St Thomas's street

And the road of robbers

And the northern beat

And the rained on feet

And our scuffed souls

And shoes like rubber dummy controls

Who check our haste and fasten

Our foals

To the evening rains of a field

so dole

Out the laughs spoon up the gags

Let me hear them calling

For the last rags

Which report in dishwater type

Of crooning nags

And billowing bags

That blow from West to East

That hairy beast is howling still

In the moonlight of a window sill

And coming through the stamens teeth

Which grind in a dual mouth-breach

So he tells you once, he tells you twice

He is the Bird of paradise

Oh Beebobanian dog

With the banana body

Just the size of a mouse

Who says NaNa and slobbers rainbows

How is it that your garden still grows?

Coming up steady, coming up strong

From the heady reaches of a Red Babylon

The Red planet's dust in your paws

That you shake off, emerging in the breath he draws

Of that sweet Australian Sun

He drops like a grey hound

And away you run

House Call

 Give me all the dust and sewer waste

Give me the lust and screw her haste

And copy and paste her face

From one to another keeping chaste

And keeping mum

Keeping shtoom 

All in the bank vault in 

The corner of her room

And grace is saved

But I ask by whom?

And who can lace

The cocktail broom

With tears on her face

After a call on zoom

And a lover's disgrace

And a girl named doom

The colours trace

The rainbow's tomb

That end in a place

Like a golden loom

Unravelled replaced

The sun unpacks the moon

In shards which chase

A diamond's gloom

What in the world?

 The berries are bobbing on the rowan tree

The corn is cobbing, in the sweet acre breeze

And I am jobbing like a busy bee

But the parishioners all hold their tissues and sneeze

Oh what, what are we coming to?

What in the world is it coming to?

The flames are fanned, and the Earth's down the pan

And another horse passes on a Japanese fan

There's a statue that's a fallin'

A Greek vase is appallin'

Hiding from Apollo's gaze

Who wanders through the fallow glades

Thinking of him and looking for you

Oh what in the world are we coming to?

And the jumbo in the air is stallin'

In the sirens with long hair are callin'

Take me once, they say, take my cue

What in the world are we coming to?

I hold my breath and count to ten

But I'm afraid to open my mouth again

And if I see pigsties or sheep pens

I close my eyes and count my hens

The farm yard is all accounted true

Yet what in the world is it coming to?

And we all look lost in a maze

The shallow sharks, swim in the misty haze

And jellyfish sting, on the holidays

We all forgot were once sacred

It makes you think it's the end of days

With famine and pestilence and malaise

And summer time screams its short serenades

As the musicians all pack up their parades

What in the world are we coming to?

What in the world is it coming to?

When you hold out your hands

Then bring them together in praise

Some people leave you, and it's the pain that stays

Truffle hunting

 The dogs are like my mistresses

So mysterious and dark

And they fall like shadows ministries

As the dogs will lose their bark

And fallow land of signatories

Welcomed in the park

I call you Kate

You take me late

Into the foaming spark

Smothered in apostrophies, and epiphanies that are

Cheering as in race horse stands

Where Greyhounds battle hares

And calligraphic letters

fall

Under bed steads

Some say a name to me

And the roses turn their heads

I listen to her heart beat

I call the telephone

And failing this, I am amiss

And wish just to go home

There once was a life of surfing

And one of quarrel road

Where quarries quaked with hard rock cakes

Trapped between sea and stone

And chattering fish in calesthenics

bite of more than they can chew

And it all rolls under the waves which wash

Over me and you

Can you hear their barking,

These dogs that howl and pone

In pow-wow smoke signal talk

Whispers on the bone

And blankets that could smother

Instead lift and hone

Our eyes from blinking tears of onions

Or guests we've never known

Crying in the disco,

In the retro lounge

Tears fill the piss bowl

And turn the white milk sour

The dogs are barking at the crow

And in a hedge the fox does cower

While men upon electricity pylons

Turn on and off the power

I should welcome this and that

I should suck and hack

But the cough sweet I chew on

Is like a lyre heard true

The fences now are flaking

The towers crumble down

And sounds which are heard

Down the street are only the dogs

now

Don't look now

 Don't look now,

But the street is far behind

We have left mother earth

And are in space you'll find

Its a long way down there

For you and all mankind

Just be glad you have found her

As eternity is a bind

The quarantine is over,

Now its back again

In and out of cages

Faster than round the bend

Its a murderous intention

An itch I have to scratch

To find the key holders pocket

And each hour check the watch

What can we be if not trees

Letting down our vines

The leaves will fall also so free

As Autumn finds her climes

And accommodates us in her bosom

Mother nature's nest

I've been let down

The planet's sold

And I must find my rest

I take stock of the photographs

And handle table legs

The varnished slides and phonographs

Of times of broken eggs

And if I dropped the juggling balls

It was because I saw her beg

And the ghost of her came through the wall

On a thousand China pegs