Back Of The Envelope

Anger is allowed to dwell in those half awake moments
When the skin still creeps and where our thoughts
Try to find a settlement despite
The usual queues at the traffic lights
The usual queues at the roundabouts where cars weep along
Their exhaust gasses discarding the heavy metals

Not that I want to jump on the environmental bandwagon
What with my Danish bacon, my Suffolk eggs; my
This is Lincolnshire Breakfast, which has been gathered
From across northern, eastern, western & southern traders seas
The meal though makes the day more approachable
It is time to cross the river, time to pay my dues at the toll bar

We all need to spend more in these troublesome times
Oil the wheels of commerce, kickstart the wayward markets
Be they yellow or red or black or blue; buy the candelabra
Buy the stocks and shares, buy the fitted kitchen, buy the bathroom suite
Keep our boys in business, keep the menders on the mend
Bring along the sunshine, roll back the dew and the mist

Step up a gear, take a more positive drift; skip over sandcastles
Throw sea frets high and skywards, lay back for the photograph
Turn up the minimalist sounds of Jean Sibelius on the misty morning
Radio, this is the lark rise, this is more than the lark ascending
Let your best side show itself off, let the warm sunlight do its damnedest
Cast off your shadows, into those voids and vacuums of yesteryear

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No Place

Be wary my lonesome lad, those days of solitude creep indivisibly into lost pasts. Even here in the country park, where all that sounds is gunshot and birdsong. Even here the bird watcher, the gamekeeper, the poacher, they are all alone

Earlier today I had occasion to revisit a place where I once spent a week in solitary refinement; seven days in the library; sometime in the late 80’s. Not a jot could I recollect, not a book or a passage, unlike the other summer schools; with midnight parties, walks around the lakes, the bonfires of profanity and the actuaries lark

The engine purrs, the four wheeled enclosure pulls me away, will there be a memory of this lunchtime passed, under the cover of the grey skies and the rainbows

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Stillness from Turbulent Waters

There is no doubt within
There is no sign of darkness
Blue skies sing out loud
Thankful for the lark

Eighteen years come May
I walked the moorland water
Sky above my minded shroud
Lost in some evasion

Settlement carries many guises
Trees in bud, rain to sun
Companionship to love
Love, thankful for surprises

There is no doubt within
There are signs of lightness
Clear skies with silver clouds
Thankful for the key

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Modernity

Roll into the right hander, not a soul in the rear view mirror
Only wires and crows in the foreground, field and sky in the distance

It needs to be edgy; no sunflowers or bowls of roses
Switchback on the dirt-track, cheroots chew out of the smoke stack
Attacked by the knife pack who look you straight between the eyes
Don’t you give a damn; the whole damned can of worms is what we want
Leave him in the hedgerow, with the roadkill and the garbage
He never should have been there, stoned right out his mind
Hang on; we’re not after trouble; no one should have spoke of death

Lay back into the left hander, not a soul in the rear view
Only music and strong cigarettes, & the screams of passers by

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Strung Along

I am not, how would you say it, a Lute man
I care not a jot for things Elizabethan
A day at court is a chase more so of boredom
Minstrels and Jesters are to me antiquity

Yet I read that the man Shakespeare
Thought lute music capable of taking
One to a kind of ecstasy; a somewhat
Refreshing Happy Monday’s cover

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