“By my Name Jehovah I was Not Known”

A name above the shop door
A manufacturer’s sense of pride
Businesses are called by a name
That emanates far and wide.

But broke into a million pieces
Changed to suit every need
God’s Name keeps disappearing
Under a mountain of greed.

In a church you’ll find a name
Sometimes several or more
But look above the altar
But look above the door.

His name, a sign of quality
Just like a Saville Row suit
You know that it’s been tailored
With a skill that’s absolute

The body beneath the clothing
That dances like Fred Astaire;
But the makers Name is forgotten
Though his work is everywhere.

Oct 22, 1995

Nursery Rhyme: There’s a Green Teddy Bear

There’s a Green Teddy Bear

Please see a PDF of melody line

There’s a green teddy bear
Sitting jaded in the chair
He bows his head and cries
From his big goldfish eyes

There’s a green teddy bear
In the rocking chair
He wants to go somewhere
But no one seems to care

Can you see him sitting there?
He’s the green teddy bear
He’s going nowhere
Because no one seems to care

Please take him from the chair
The green teddy bear
Let him know you care
Take him somewhere

But if you don’t like green
And alone he’s left to dream
You know he dreams of you
That’s all he wants to do
(Because he wants to be with you)

He’s a green teddy bear
Who sits jaded in the chair
Alone he’s sitting there
He’s not going anywhere, anywhere

There’s a green teddy bear
Alone in the chair
He dreams of you fair
As he languishes there

There’s a green teddy bear
He needs you to care
He’s not going nowhere
He’s a green teddy bear

You say a green teddy bear’s not for you
You say a green teddy bear’s the wrong colour hue
And any way you dislike the colour green
But do you really know this means?

Dec 95

I knew a Teddy Bear fanatic. But she didn’t like the colour green. So I put the two together.

The Actor Always Wears Black

The actor always wears black,
For moving in and for talking in.
For during the theatre ritual
He may be sacrificed for his sin.

He follows the coffin in….
But who has died, who is within.
The funeral is all in the mind,
The corpse wore invisible skin.

The theatrical ritual of the priest.
The altar of the sacrifice.
The plot calls for a saviour from the east,
For a sacrificial victim.

Actors always wear black!
Black for death, but who has died?
No-one is missing from the cast,
The bookings are good, the play may last.

The stage is covered in black!
Black for death, but who dies,
In every nightly sacrifice,
In every nightly ritual.

The theatre is dark, has someone died?
They never came to their seat.
Time came in to see the play,
He chewed the audience in his teeth.

The theatre will never be free,
Ensnared to the supernatural,
Dipped in the watery sea
Of nightly theatrical baptism.

So the audience came to see
First night and initiation,
But the tragic heroine of purity
Is sacrificed by the patron.

The actor always wears black!
Black for death, but who has died?
The private life of their lives
Is published by the tabloid.

The rebirth takes place each show
Of comedy, drama and conflict.
The actor always wears black
In case death has him on his list.

13th June 1995

I did a part time course in theatre and stagecraft. An unmissable and recommended experience. Theatrical customs were a fascinating world to discover.

The Lament of Admiralty Arch.

photo taken friday morning 12 7 19
admiralty arch from street

You can be a master tailor from Hong Kong looking for a toilet as you walk through Admiralty Arch. But no one speaks and no one knows. But if they ask then light a candle in that darkness.

You can be a civil servant who had his car stolen by a secret agent. You see him drive off through Admiralty Arch, but no-one speaks and no-one knows, the people in the crowd are no different than Lemmings. But if someone should notice then light a candle in the dark under Admiralty Arch.

You can be the director of American Oil, looking for the way to the Harrods superstore. But nobody stops and nobody knows. Everyone is single-minded, and go their own way under Admiralty Arch. But if someone should notice you then light a candle in that darkness under Admiralty Arch.

You are a train spotter from a hobby magazine making your way to Victoria station. You spin off from the crowd round Trafalgar square but nobody recognises you or knows your identity as you make your way through Admiralty Arch. But if someone should say good day, light a candle in the darkness under Admiralty Arch.

You are a tourist from a girls only holiday, looking for a restaurant where the rich and famous go, so you nervously explore the palace area and walk through Admiralty Arch and nobody knows you and nobody talks, everyone swarms like shoals of fish swimming. But if someone should stop and say hello, please light a candle in that darkness of Admiralty Arch.

For this is a game and no one can stop it, the forces at work compel the behavior. Each one of us with a history belonging to part of the tree of humanity; just like a leaf swept up by street cleaners and discarded somewhere in a heap under Admiralty arch.

Nov 10th, 1995

The Lake Waters would Stretch

The lake waters would stretch out in the evening
A dark reflection of the sky
Or a reflection of my real soul
Dark and impenetrable to the human eye.

I’d walk by the glassy water
Spreading out, glassy and cold
Sleeping beneath me, in a fearless dream
Dark and heavy, glassy, tinted with cold.

Something I need to understand
I see a deeper ledge
I cannot see any further down
I become a candle flame, glowing by the edge.

Candle soot whirls skywards
Into the crystal air
The lake sleeps like the anima
Unconscious in the depth of its lair

Then the earth shuts out the sunset
Behind its closing door
The lakeside takes one last sigh
Then the night would hit the floor.

The leaves of trees would fill me
With a dark, secret, rustling sound
Then all seemed to go silent
In the landscape all around.

A crescent moon would be behind me
With one eye and half a smile
And I’d walk along the soft water’s edge
Just for a little while.

Home became a prison then
To return to alone and cold
But with a little of the wilderness
Singing in my soul.

Chasewater, 2000

Alone in the Shoe Repair Shop

Alone in the shoe repair shop
The child becomes a spider
Who carries an anvil
Behind the shop counter
That becomes a crippled clotheshorse
That gallops amongst piles of shoes’
In the unlit workroom
Where the smell of leather
Is as slick as a tin of Brasso
That spills over a box of rubber heels
Where the smudges of wax polish
Like burn marks are branded
In the cobblers heart of shoe leather

Alone in the Shoe Repair Shop
Another shoe jumps
Onto the upturned iron foot
As cobwebs cover the dead child
Who rolls in the eye of the cobbler
Who fills his mouth with tacks
While bleeding from his feet
Whose socks are bedraggled lions
Tearing the carcass of the rent man
Who rolled on the floor in flames
After a bible thumped against a door cupboard
Where old hammers are stored
In cake tins along with bankruptcy
That walks in the army boots
Of a Methodist preacher that echo
In a parade ground in France

Alone in the shoe repair shop
The child is split in two by a cuckoo
That turns into a Football Pools lady
As shoes fly at the clock-face
Carrying bags of nails
That dam up the floods of tears
Of the small child looking for a seat
Amongst the generation gap of black machinery
That dribbles oil and grease
Into the eye of a dead bantam cock
That pulls a Wellington boot
From a plague of birds in the fireplace

Alone in the Shoe Repair shop
The small child is a shattering windowpane
Where the distant sound of a town
Is falling into an orphan’s nursery rhyme
And fills the empty street outside
With powder puffs and nail varnish
As the tram cars whistle by
A tune like a broken pitch pipe
As girlie books fall from the thundercloud
That opens an old budgie cage
Hanging from a weeping willow tree

Alone in the shoe repair shop
Where the darkness drips like magnetism
Into the grimy sink
As earth worms cover the machinery
That becomes the loss of a dead bird
Who sings itself to death
In the lap of the lonely child
Who followed it into oblivion
Where a dragon lived in an old shoe
In a bowl of mashed potato

Alone in the Shoe Repair shop
The thick canvas machine belts
Rotate the earth
Beneath an avalanche of worn shoes
Piling up in the toy cupboard
As darkness falls on the street outside
As Christmas stuffs a chicken with a nightmare
That turns the small child into granite
And runs away from there
Into mists of forgetfulness

Phoebe

20190715_175246-1.jpg

Just before I wake up, dream mother finds me in shreds
She patches me up and I wake up, look into the morning mirror
My reflection disappears down the Yellow Brick Road.

Dream mother opens her trumpet mouth
She blasts all the Blue Meanies with her ships horn
A flag stick out of her mouth and undulates in a dream wind.

Dream mother is a life-size cutout in a travelling circus
She stands in the Technicolour dream with a faded identity.
Let us walk down the yellow brick road into reality
Where you leave me standing at your headstone.

It was everything you ever wanted
All the woodland animals were in your hair.
You came to life in a television comedy;
Your dream mother made it all come true.

But after thanksgiving she was lost
Somewhere in the back streets of Bombay.

Blood Made Gold

When human warmth is normal
The full hue
When you walk into
The room of a close family
Their smells
Cover you in
Blood made gold

A blessed family
A home of human warmth
How their lives
Have relaxed into harmony
When every surface is alive
With layers of breath-touch-love
Reapplied daily
Burnished
Like blood made gold

This human tenderness
Fashioned into manifold affections
That paint the room
That watercolour the air
That sing a gentle lullaby
Of activity
Where relationship
Combines a hive, a nest, a den
Into a womb
Of blood made gold

How the beauty of the home
Is overwhelming
When it works
To fill your needs
When it grows quietly
Like a summer meadow
Between their lips
How different life is
For its family
Who lie for an eternity
A life of blood made gold

June 2019

Venus and Mars

I have to stay up “till midnight”
You will be asleep by then –
Then the watchman leaves into the streets
Overlooked by Venus sparkling over the city.

Midnight is a long time away now
As far as the North Pole in winter
Where the giant clockwork machine turns the universe
That ploughs through the fields, tuning up bones and larks eggs.

After two years of seeing each other you ask
1. Is there more to life than love?
2. Lets play hide and seek with the stars.

Sleep draining sleep; until Venus strikes her bell.
Dream of me as the thin wooden man on the battlefield
Struggling with the red eyes of Mars in the shadows.

Sleep, darling, sleep safe in your soft bed
While Venus sparkles above you – unforgetfull of this hope . . .

The Child likes to go Scouting

The child likes to go scouting for the wagon train that appears on television and he runs through the barley field on a pale horse terrified of the grim reaper who stands at the foot of an oak tree as the child plays in it’s branches.

scout 1

The child likes to trudge through the snow that covers him up to his knees as he sits at his desk in school as the bombardment of Israel begins and fills the classroom with white lights as the headmaster straps his hands. Then the child rolls through the math’s class inside the shoe of a nightmare.

scout 2

The child likes to explore the Lane where man has hardly walked before. He finds a playground where no child has ever played. The roundabouts are slow in the wind. The swings chain imprisons outlaws as bullies are buried in a grassy tomb on the edge of the land as the world ends.

scout 4

The child discovers a girlfriend who smells of butter and sunlight. He looses her in the mouth of a joke that opens a world he can’t see in where St. Mathew walks on an abyss taking pocket money for a Mars Bar.

The child is drawn to a football game played by the big boys for life. He scores a goal in the teacher’s mouth and is chased down the street by a big dog as the Black Hand gang wait by the garages he follows the whistle of a ghost train that draws a stick along the iron fence as he walks over the dead crows in Bird Cage Walk.

The child has discovered a Sunday school where he can only have one eye. He becomes a hurricane of games as the night puts a hood on his head and he dreams of a terrifying dragon that spits cement into his mouth and locks him up in a council house.

 

The child likes to scare his mother by leaping out from a cupboard as she returns home from her work painting. She paints Robins for Christmas Cakes, and she keeps them in a big drawer, it’s too big and too high up to open, while Job talks to Jeremiah in the night sky, his mouth fills up with vinegar.

The child doesn’t know he has grown, he finds himself in a Youth Club, where Motown lights fall on the dance floor, in his clothes that shrink tightly around him and blisters on his feet from the shoes that are always too small for him. The world opens its mouth like a fish and he sees Jonah in its belly.

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