The Navigation Arms
Let loose your senses
Release your defences, of navigation
Nicotine amber and creamy stout
Blackcurrant, cider, scallywags about
Mingling in with the inn crowd
Sing along, now sing along for Tom Dowd
Unsteadily stepping on the pebble shore
Pause, for a wee under the balustrade
Heads already beginning to thicken
Slowly breathing
Breathing completely clean, seaside air
In the distance, listen
The screams of delight
Shivering and shaken
Shaken out of the moonlight
Beach night, moonlight
Starlight, summer site
Listen to the screams
The screams of delight
Branscombe Beer, Plymouth Gin
Sip the gin and tonic
Only human, this is no Sputnik, Brojnic
Back in this room, been here before
Eiderdown, radio, worn out floor
No one rings tonight, no one ever does
Words arise from below
Conversing, wandering, escaping
Philandering along the promenades
Planning permissions
Applied for
To turn it into flats
The locals complain
Out loud, but they have, have they
They have never stayed here
Never crossed the threshold
Into this ancient decaying
Dilapidated space
Some say they’re business folk that run it
In it for what they can get out
But In fact that’s why I stay here
Not to be distracted
But to feel the man, feel the man
It’s closing time at the Navigation
To close this page of history
Close this page so slowly
Navigation; you are
You are, localised folklore
