Tag: society

The news on Sunday morning

  1. Big dry river

Big dry river
Big dry river
Big dry river
In Madagascar

Put your baby on the scales
See how much she weighs
Maybe gain an ounce or two
In a couple of days

He gave his 24 children
Another empty bowl
They crowded round the visitor
Trying to fill the hole

They stopped you on the wayside
Asking for some bills
The shepherds looked like stick men
Come down from the hills

See them in the river bed
Digging for their thirst
The great dried river bed
Is lonely now it hurts

  1. If death were a river

I’ve got death
Banging on my door
There’s nothing here
You see I’m so poor

I think of death
Not of suicide
Death comes much slower
There’s nowhere to hide

As I grow older
The worse it seems to get
If death were a river
I’d be up to my neck

If death were a river
I’d jump right in and drown
No more, anymore
It all just gets me down

  1. forgotten fruit

What a contrast to the news I see
In the lonely empty streets
The funerals behind closed doors
The dead ones trying to speak

The lady on the news again
Dressed in glamourous clothes
People in the food bank
Where she never goes

Peak time TV whitewash
Don’t let us know the truth
Keep it in the closet
Like forgotten fruit

The trackers have no faces
As they crawl about the web
To seek you out and bite you
Now their social structure
Like a wasp’s nest in a tree
Like a cancer full of stings

  1. They roast me on a spit

They roast me on a spit
But the flames are crying
The fire light blinds them
So they cannot see injustice

The devil sends them his photograph
They put it on their wall
How do you tell them it’s a lie?
When they dream of him each night

5.

It’s an aching feeling, like a hernia
That I cannot put a name to
It consumes time, like a burning book
It’s a walk across a pebble beach

Love is like a slice of bacon
Its fat is burning, smoking like a chimney

Love is like a faceless chiming clock
A worthless body run over in the street

The false saints of Christendom
Are like bad screw drivers
Like rust that cover a dog

The policies of lies are driven
Into a pile up on the motorway
That’s how fear flies into a memory

The people police

The people police have grown
In amongst the crowded streets, they roam
They catch you out at your religion
They watch you when you’re at home

The people police have grown
In numbers along the seashore of time
More numerous than starfish
Drunk by sights of imagined crime

The people police have grown
They pour through the turnstiles like poisoned salt
Like a glacier moving over a population
We die like poppies under the ice

Born into a fish bowl

born into a fish bowl
-at first you don’t see
in the early morning
the darkness is in you

you open your eyes
and love is in your heart
the sun shines brightly
on your fishbowl

you place your hands
against the glass
and all around you
are signs of mayhem

broken trees that try to laugh
the burning witches of Salem

when I was a child
I played in the fields
Around the estate

Somewhere in a dream
Of child’s play and games
I discovered barbed wire

What have I done?
That you do this to me
I couldn’t understand

I tried to hold the wire
It drew blood
I was disgusted

I cried out
A little cry
This is not love!

Early in my life
Experience was a timeline
Now I cannot stop myself
From examining every nuance

The details collect
Like broken straws around an egg
I’d go mad
Without a drink of water

A cool glass of water
Simple and real
Clearer than the sky
A miracle

You wounded fighter
Can you hear it?
What does it mean?
Every man is strapped up

It’s the slaughter road
For whatever is coming

Freedom
Is an unleavened bread
It’s hard and tasteless
Like it’s not meant to be

One fleck of gold
In a man’s vein
Too hard to be flesh
Too tasteless to be pure

The leavened freedom
Of the world
Who really needs it?

I did not fight
On the battlefield
I fought
In the playground

I was a boy
Made of balsa wood

I was not thrown
Into prison
But I was locked in my home
With the shadows

I could not reach
The light switch
I had no books to read
I crumbled in the darkness

Day merged into night
Strangers came home and went away
As the vine of mental imprisonment
Grew thicker

I was unarmed
Against the nightmares I saw
Prayers like broken pots
Took me into death

Until I grew taller
than the cracks in the pavement
Until there was more pavement
Than crack

Child alone
His mouth began to crack
His jaw parted in two
His tongue fell out
He tried to pick it up
It slid along the floor
He tried to scream
Only flowers emerged

No, it wasn’t war
There are the neglected like me
Even in a real war

Who can salve our sorrow?
Who can release us?

All our lives
We ride in a horse and cart
Tied up like bales of straw

The Party and the party

The room swooned and swayed
And spun around to a tune
By giant rats with horns and bassoons
And outside a strange un-natural moon

For when a government falls
It falls like a broken bell
And when a country falls
It explodes like hell

The twigs from the winter branches
Created slim legs for dances
no etiquette is observed by witches
The men are drawn in by alluring glances

For when a government falls down
It falls like a broken bell
And when a country starts to explode
It creates hell

The tears in the morning leaves
The Siamese cat on the prowl
As the ministers get back to work
They can hear the reporter’s howl

For when a government falls down
It falls like a broken bell
And when a country starts to explode
It creates hell

Like an old-fashioned battering ram
Manned by the middle classes
Charging at the common’s door
And behind it all the asses

And when a government falls down on its face
It rings like a broken bell
And if a country falls with it all
It makes hell

Poverty in the north

There’s nothing to offer but an LCD screen
The way it teaches, the things it teaches
The pulpit of it; the altar
The twisted chemistry tube of its features

It does not change anyone’s life
It only records them as documentaries
The poorest people that fall before parliament
A if a regiment had gone over them

No hospital places; no food in many cases
He climbs the hills of Burnley in winter
A dog collar trying to do his best
He huddles in prayer with those still left

Here comes the flooding; here comes the snow
Without mercy for those alive below
The gas has gone cold; the electricity is blue
She reports the weather but there’s nothing she can do

The dog collar cries in his church
He has dug deep to find the right words
He carries the burdens of those he cannot help
To the grave for those in poor health

It bites down with the teeth of a machine
it rules in fury over everyone’s dreams
They look to the government just to keep them alive
But they can’t even do that and many expire

A community shattered like slates from a roof
In long term neglect; they bury the truth
A community broken, unready for disaster
From the warming climate that warms up faster

The people of the north, the east, the south
The poorest in spirit, the least in wealth
Depending on services that hardly can feed them
They must help one another for no one can defend them

There are those who shovel money like coal
Into the engine that always is cold
Cold in the heart; cold in the mind
They put aside the miseries of others every time

Don’t put your trust in human understanding
Empires they end and nothing is let standing
Yahweh is God go to him this December
His gift is life whatever your gender

And now whatever I do next

The sand clouds of demons come to suffocate me
To join up my synapsis with chains
They’re closing in – around me
Turning my sane into pain

And now whatever I do next
Please know I could never have loved you less

They walk right under my feet
Heavy like a shadow that can sink
Marie Antoinette looks through her binoculars
And points with her lace fan folded at her regulars

Here comes the longest night again
When the London eye stops turning
The rats will come out of their dens
Henry the eight poses out in the street

And now whatever I do next
Please know I couldn’t have loved you less

As the darkness stretches like a sail across the sky
They drive up in their little blue toy
The white rabbit, he plays the judge
He bounces his yoyo up and down

As if I wasn’t really there
As if I wasn’t really there

They say that the sewers are all blocked up with hate
From people all trying to masturbate
They say that the justice system is all screwed up
That no one cares not even the government

And now whatever I do next
Please understand I couldn’t have loved you less

Other people bang and clatter

Other people
Bang and clatter
I just stare at the sky

They shoot their guns
They fight day and night
When I only stare at the sky

Sight and sound
Moving together
Teamed up together
Going out together

Behind is the war
The stamp and the cry
Human justice
Human law

Manmade terror
Manmade claw

Covers the land
Covers the floor
While I just stare at the sky

Shirley’s Temple

Shirley’s
Temple
Of worship
Shirley’s
Temple
Where they
Go to pray

Little girl
Worship
God-child
Shirley’s temple
Staged name
Staged celebrity
The little girl goddess
With the golden
Greek curls
The name
Reveals all
The false name
The lie
Film star
Come down
From heaven
And turn adoration
Into money
Shirley’s
Temple
Prostitute
Idol
Innocence
Deniable
Priest
Definable
Produced
By Hollywood
Everyone
Can have
A little
Shirley’s temple
Follow
The fashion
Follow the star

To tell the truth to power

To tell the truth to power
Is to go under a steamroller
To tell the truth to power
Is to be a tree trunk in sawmill

Power has that dirty laugh
That fools enjoy
Power has an ocean of rusted keys
thrown away

Powers idea of judgement
Is a secret train ride through a wood
Powers idea of judgement
Looks like an inferno for truth

Cancel culture

It’s become the norm
It’s a brain worm
Called cancel culture

Take your judgement seat
In the courtroom of the tweet
It’s a new kind of vulture
Called cancel culture

From neighbour in the street
To critic of the police
If you say what you feel
And your friend disagrees
You will get cancelled out
No one cares what its about
It spreads like a fire
It transmits from it holy spire
It cancel culture

A prejudice
Is easy to spread
When you use
The internet
Judge not me
But judge yourself
Care about
What comes out your mouth
That it isn’t
Cancel culture

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