I'm on my way to luncheon.
It's only down the hall.
But at journeys end the shortest way
Seems the longest road of all.

It's most peculiar.  These old walls
Were decorated plain.
But the fog dissolves to a distant shore,
As an Emerald Calls my name.

I've journeyed through the decades
Where I've heard the Church bells peel,
From the beachhead of June '44
To The factory gates in Theale.

I grew a garden proud and fair,
With a weeping willow tree.
Where my family played in its summer shade,
It still remembers me.

My trips to Ross have long since stopped,
But the earth salutes them still;
With the ghost of a car, on the shortcut
Down the side of Birdlip Hill.

My travelling days are now long gone,
But my family still recall,
That a ship came back from Guernsey
With contraband alcohol

I don't know how they'll judge me,
When my final furlong's run
But an echoing stranger’s voice talks
Of a gentle Gentleman.

I was a handsome charmer, now
I've supped time's cruel pill.
But that glint in my eye, as you pass me by
Is shining from me still.

I learned it from my father,
Snooker was my game
Now friends have all gone home
I’m tired; I've played my final frame.

I'm on my way to luncheon.
A familiar smell wafts by,
The scent of overcooked
Roast beef, the tang of apple pie.

I'm on my way to luncheon,
I drop my frame and fall.
I hear the siren whisper
Of a distant dancer's call.

I'll leave you all in peace now,
But I don't want any tears,
And I don't want any fuss now,
When you toast my passing years.

Tik

Perfect ripple in Atlantic mist will
End up breaking on the beach at Fistral.
If you catch it you can soar on its crest,
And just for a second you can be the best,

And in that moment you are finally free.
You dance like a butterfly, buzz like a bee,
Give a little wave as you jump off the board;
Fly into the cloud for the Tik Tok hoard.

Tok

For each perfect ripple there are masses more
That break in the wrong way or on the wrong shore,
Or smash in at midnight under moonless sky,
Or burst over your head as you ask yourself why

You were two minutes late setting out that day,
or the traffic light was red or the queue was way
Too long in the town for the coffee store.
The price was the same but it Costa much more

Tik

Looking from above as the clock starts to crawl,
And the tide is rising and it’s beautiful an’all
It feels like it washes all the dead wood away,
Floating all my boats at the top of the day.

Rumination creeps like a drug over me.
I’m Stone cold sober but my mind runs free.
Lowrie matchstick tubthumpers in matchstick rain
The sea knocks them down but they’re soon back up again.

Tok

Crawling back and forth they go in os-elation
They’re going nowhere fast from the no track station
Iz’ee up or isn’t he it’s hard to know for sure
When you’re failing round and round to win a few seconds more.

Hazy golden seagull king on golden throne,
Lazing on the sand telling the sea to go home.
Can u te ll me why he’s Trumpeting so loud?
Telling us we cannot send our memories to a cloud.

Tik

Am I dreaming now or am i awake.
Ordering that kangaroo was that a mis-steak?
Real *** noodle from a glass jam jar.
Who the **** spilled Coca Cola all over my car?

High tide.  Broken water makes the rocks disappear
And it’s now.  I’m awake, and I’m really really here.
When you catch the perfect wave you ride it till it’s done
Coz you never never know if there will be another one.

One Summers’ evening I gazed out
In wonder at the sky.
I saw one star was moving
as the ISS flew by.

A Shining Beacon always there
it’s man’s forget-me-not.
A thousand years of progress made
this small white flashing dot.

But “Houston there’s a problem”
Calls out Major Tom one day
“Unauthorized transmissions
Beamed at us from the UK.”

“Hello” the astronauts they called
“What is it that you need?”
The terse reply – “You crossed our village
carrying excess speed.”

“Oh yes! We clocked you as you passed
Across our Kingsmead Tower.
We clocked your speed at ten thousand
four Hundred miles per hour.

Please keep your speed to 20
As you traverse through our stars,
And watch out crossing Monarch Drive
For dangerously parked cars.

So as you cross the stars in search
Of Scientific Treasures
Be aware we’re contemplating
Traffic calming measures.”

No.  I do not care who you are.
I do not care if you are old or young.
I do not care about the colour of your skin, or hair,
The shade of your makeup.
The brand of clothes you wear.

I do not care if you run a country, or a pub,
Or a marathon, or sit at home and eat one,
And before you start, I don’t care if you’ve changed your name either.
You cannot escape.

I am fond of ***** digits, but I do not care
about the size of the digits in your electronic wealth representor,
nor their laundered state.

I do not care how many bullets you have,
I do not care how many friends you have.
If you know your neighbours well, or guard your castle gates,
It’s all the same to me.
Walls, fences, border guards are no barrier.

I do not care if you shelter from the storm
Under detached bricks or cardboard,
Though I dig the shade either way.
I do not care what class you think you are,
Or what class you really are.

I speak not.
I do not care what language you speak, or to which God you pray,
But your words, all your words, are beautiful to me.
They carry my babies across empty space to my imagined paradise.

If your heart beats, if you breathe.
I would like to live in you, with you.

I am no murderer.
If you die, I die.  
If you die, it’s a miscalculation.  
A slight administrative bureaucratic **** up.
It wasn’t me wot done it gov’.  
It was my so-called friends.
Leuk, Azma, Timex.  With friends like them…eh?
We are alike, you and I. because I hate them too
I am collateral.

But know this.  Last gasp of final breath,
From my house whistled roar like crashing economy.
Then silence like dying planet.
Then nothing.

I am better than you.  When I believe
That every human being on this planet,
Regardless of their external appearance
Or myriad individual imperfections,
Is beautiful to me on the inside.
I speak pure, unadulterated, unchallengeable, truth.
How many of you can say that?

I am not racist.
How many of you can truly put hand on heart
And say that.

I do not love you.
I cannot love.
But I need your love for each other.
I need your need to love, to touch, to kiss.
I need your need to stand together, to stand close.

I do not care who you are.

My only nightmare.
Each single one of you, infecting from compassion’s depths,
Coaxing two strangers to love one another
by moving apart.