Dartmoor zoo

 Monkeys escaped from Longleat 

Pull windscreen wipers off cars

Have a fondness for Carwash machines

Think their bristly brooms

Their home

It's  a monkey puzzle tree to me

Pumas roaming the hills of Dartmoor

Dartmoor prison of brothers and nuns

The beast is on the loose, always

Prowling on the lookout for you

Like a lion

They beat the devil out of a man

And now he too is set free

Ready to step into another's body

Get out, get out I tell thee

The gulls in the sky

Black-headed ones flock

In large numbers

You can never call them sea gulls anymore

as Most of them have never even

heard of it, let alone seen it.

There's mould growing on my bathroom wall

Does that count as natural or unnatural?

I clean it off, but it reappears like a stain

Upon my soul

Out, out damn spot!

They bought a zoo

To show what could be done

With dollop of determination

And a side serving of salt and grit

And they did it

The animals were saved

As if by Noah

Still they are a little incongruous

On Dartmoor

Canned worms

 Canned worms

She looks into my deepest soul

And sees canned worms

Canned worms

Canned worms

She puts me on a hook

Dangles me in front of the moon

The silver fish leap up 

Bite little chunks out of me

Moon food, moon food

And canned worms

Hope in the rain

 The days they seem too long

Though not as long as the song

That the songbird sings on dunes

That ebb and flow with the moon

And I am caught between the shadows

And the curtains of the windows

Singing a tune for you

The flag is hoisted in the castle

I see the knights ride in

But have I pawned the dirty rascal

Who calls me back to the king

And the Bishop eying the Queen

Only a peasants rebellion will win the scene

What's done is done, what's been has been

Singing a tune for you

The day that Christmas came and went

Found me in a little tent

Praying for the windows

Into out of, round the bend

Of the road of good intent

Before I rode up to your window

And showered you with flowers

From the chimney sweep's chimney

Just singing a tune for you

Making up the last verse

Was like I had you on my shoulder

Singing to me lovely dreams not ever getting older

Only fleeting like the blizzards, ever getting colder

Until I warm them by your fire

Makes my mind a little kinder

Once again my hope is that I shall find her

Singing a tune for you

Frog-eye

 She sits and she composes her song

And all the birds , they go flitting along

And it skits, it scats and it throngs

With alley cats, the dogs howling too strong

And the train, the train rumbles on

The last refrain, she always gets wrong

And the frogs are leaping into her pond

And the birds are tweeting, while she keeps writing her song

Oh ribbet, ribbet

Rib-eye steak

In the time of Henry the Eighth

The Bishop had his eye on the market square

Looking out for bargains here and there

The Bishop's nose

The bishop's feet

Oh how they grow

In inches sweet

Yet he jumps back in his pond

Repeats, I have my eye on you

Ribbet, ribbet, ribbet

bleat!

Housing Project

 you sing of blue shoals

In deep savannah

You love in new roles

The asleep piranhas

But I am deep scrolls

And I am the Bahamas

Oh who do you think you are?

Singing Praise be Hosannahs?

The frogs on fourth street are hanging their washing

The dogs on low walls are already hogging

The cream cats on the sofa where the couples are snogging

Singing who do you think you are

With all this blogging

The new year is here,

It is what we all hope for

The fire brigade are on parade

Along the silver street serenade

The fountains

Of mercy they are overflowing

crying who do you think you are

(1/1/2021)

light

 Well the birds would sing

And the night disappear

It was the usual thing

The thing I like to hear

And it left me, with a feeling of glory

As the dance continued

And the storm breathed on

And the rain in it's legions

Dropped on us like bombs

But we found the meaning so clear

On our trail with the snails

across the garden path

And the creatures taking comfort 

From a water bath

I saw the Magpie's eye spy

An early worm

I saw an earwig leap at the crack of dawn

As a beetle creeps under a stone to stay warm

And it was a telegraph of buzzing flies

Upon the ceiling when I opened my eyes

All there ready to die or get born

In the cycle of life you don't ask twice

You take what your given including good advice

Its just that sometimes it would be nice

To be warned

If I am reincarnated as a bee or a bug

Then let me know the morning dew

From a night's dreaming there's the rub

Would I dream of being a human?

Does an ant have a fantasy of being a cat

Does a dog wish that actually he could have been a bat

As he chases butterflies through a field

Would a rattle snake that shivers rather be a whale

Would a leaping pony rather learn to sail

How do we know this is not what animals feel?

Whose to say their dreams are not like yours or mine

Perhaps they dream by day while the sun shines

And that is what drives evolution

Because you have to have a dream, to make one come true

You have to cling to hope no matter what you're going through

And it's in these final lines that reminds me to sing

It's through the cracks as Cohen says that the light shines in 

Knit-knacks

 It was cut and run

In the sewing circle

She would sort out their mealy mouths she thought

With a swift joust here

A dagger, dagger stagger fall

There

A needle knit between the brows

Don't knit your eyes at me you cow

She exclaimed

As they blamed one another for the blood bath

Whose red satin scarf is that around your neck?

Not mine?

Not yours?

But your gaudy blood I expect

It is slash and burn

In the fabric aisles

Rollers torn, and carpets shorn

The rending of the cloth

The tearing of skin

The knitting

Of a dead thing

Into life

Taxidermist like

She loved her lover

She gloved her mother

Turned her into a leather cover

For her book on knitting yet