Poetry

Just a drum
A shaking rattle
The missing snake
Moves and dancing girls all over the place
My mother does business in Japan
The speaking trees
Environmental leases
Razor Guarding the wilderness of the American everglades
Stationary like a magic bean before a giant that pays the minimum age
A wage for the imagination is at Amazon’s doorstep
Terrified before 100s of offices worldwide about things the K says
Real before the invented
Crude before the demented
Timeless before the dead
On Social Media before the best read.

These are the times of the These Times
These are the times of the New York Times.

What they will say, only some people will know
As England goes down below
Hellish Realms for the Chinese people
Saddened by war again by steeple chasers
Hungry for The Commonwealth Games
And more things that fame in English has to say –
Not about the Americans in English land
When children go to the walking park with politician for some Saturday sand.

Is this a question John Lennon will understand
How about Ringo Starr so death defying with the McCartney man not to stand oaths before pass the final stone
Leaving is such an alone thing to do
I guess we’ll be here being beaten black and blue being forced to like some musician
They don’t care about us at Glastonbury
Maybe they are content with the Bible and Mary Berry.

So, I’m going to go and get my Bible and some self defence
And see if these wise kindnesses from other books make some comment, meaning, earning and noblest sense
Like the fat man said when he sold me some bread
And told me to travel the world as a well read man.

Then I will find the women better to please
Talking fine things on a Sunday afternoon’s time in a café’s ease
Something forgotten in the motions of the last few times
When war dominated our minds
Diamonds were so out of the ordinary
Women forgot to like their watches
Men dressed in drabby suits
And the photographer was never interviews.

Sell me four Gospels, please, annotate them like Milton
Leave the Old Testament in Arden’s back yard
Don’t borrow me from my millions.
One day strip them down and explain to me the things that John Said
When the Mayans are so skippy in the best laid plans on man.

How do we pray to them?
What are their names?
It seems they travel like the Hindoos
Keeping up twice as quicker with the fame.
Then I need a car and my own house too
Something borrowed from an unclean man
Then you can tap my machinery and quote me illogical
So I will win some races and be there on time at the restaurant
When I can afford a date with my fantasy girl
Lost one night on a deserted island
Far away from the TV
That said all these things triply.

That is for me
The misspent awkward word
Maybe then I help Jesus
Not say so many things Church absurd

Gramophone

Culture is its own reward
It knows just what to do
It dies when you are sad enough
And remains just for a few.
It listens when you are needy
It listened when you were bad
It made history some space from geography
It left French alone with German to die.

The saddest part though is school
Where parents’ remains come to die
And time elides with past, present and future
For the Beatles to come and hide.
There’s John (rebirthed), Ringo and George
Blotting out the other one for a class we don’t give.
Lest culture survives the scrap with fighting youths at lunch
For what more money more problems has to give.

I feel self conscious in it’s presence
And worried about my manifestation on the phone
Snowy Dons at Oxford remember my Umbridge
For Gombridge trudging along down the lane.

It’s exciting when it needs to be
Colourful right up until the last
But when the TV repeats itself on the social slant
It’s royal and something that will last.
This is the way of the keeping people
And the Press that punished the independent man.
Who are you to be free from culture
When at home you invert the legal vulture (awkwardly).