(20 minute poetry)

Hunched up and hemmed in
hacked off,
on the flamin' tube and
ageing rapidly.

This is not for me
I need open space and
a place to spread my wings.

Feeling faint
this ain't no picnic
unless
It's one that makes you
sick

smelling ***** clothes
wet stinking hair
I want to be anywhere
other than here

when a twenty minute trip
gives me the pip

I need to slip away.

Today is not good,
thinking the tube would be empty at nine as it should
be
fooled me.

I'm
looking to find escape velocity
hah
I can't even find a seat.

In the looking out at a semisphere
through the high tower window it feels like I'm pulling free of gravity, feeling it leaving me.

Some time it can be a fancy of mine to be fancy free and think gravity is not meant for me

and some time when the weight of the world decides to drop in
gravity stops and everything's lopsided.

This is me in turmoil
son of the soil

and whether to pull myself together which I fancy is another fancy
is some time a work in progress.

Spirit beckons me
indifferent to gravity
virtually
reality
and quite so.

Before I go though
there
and where
who would know me
I shall eventually
conquer
gravity.

I read words,
speed through them
cutting sentences,
gutting books like fish.

On the odd and why not occasion I wish
I was as slow as old Joe who used to bring the vegetables in a van on Saturdays back in the day when the town was so far away, he took forever it seemed to me as he phut putt phutted and waved quite merrily from his younger looking though still ancient Model T ... which wasn't made in Formosa by the way although just about everything else was back in the day.

Back to reading,
a bit like being sliced open on a table and bleeding pictures from my head and you know the book's been good when you wake up living and think you've been dead (excited)
delighted as I am I still speed, can't help it, need to slow a bit, be like old Joe a bit.

I suppose when I age a bit and the sight starts to dim a bit and at the same time I need to trim a bit of fat from my waist
I might get the taste of it,
I mean being slow a bit
but
I'm open to offers.

They'll hold a referendum on the poor and where to send them,
will you vote?

Some say rend them unto Caesar, put them on a train to Piza, but they say that just to please ya, it's a problem don't ya know.

And there are others with dark hearts,
they're not my brothers
who say work them unto death.

Share and share alike and if ya don't then take a hike,
you've got more than plenty there
why won't you share?

It reaches a crescendo when the lights go off in Harlow and the gas goes down in Hartlepool and the baby needs a feed,
so we feed them on false hope and the drugs we stole from several wars and tell them it's the dope and
will you vote?

Call it violation,
call it at the voting station
this is not the once great nation
if it ever was at all.

The man with the *** Aitch Dee
university educant,
not like me who was
dragged through the secondaries
and modern too,
not much education, but
what can one do?
when the riverbank calls you and the
corn starts to wave and the wind is the music
to which you can rave.

The man with the *** Aitch Dee
earns more than me,
but I have more memories,
like sailing off to the sea
like catching fish for my tea
like swimming naked and free,

is educant a word?
and that's the education of me.

I live this peace like I once lived in pieces,like I once held the lease on the heartbreak hotel.
I wear it quite well but I once wore the gumboots,the glumboots that rooted me in hell.
That was another time,another line and where no signs could guide me,I had Beirut for brains,a war zone as I slept in the carriages on even emptier trains.
Peace is the bonus where the onus is on keeping it,
I do well to remember it when I think that my life is ****.

Keep your religions,your sanctimonious politicians with their maladministration,I take care of my own needs which are few,
I who have nothing,want nothing,it is you that wants affirmation that you're a force to be reckoned with as you praise Gods creation with one eye on the stock exchange floor,
what for?
We shall all end up as bleached bone with the coast as our beach home with no mortgage to pay and every grain of sand will have its day,only the dogs left to **** on us as they play with the bones.
I live this peace but it's fragile and while it lasts
I'll enjoy it.

She slipped up behind him and
planted a kiss on his cheek.
Didn't seek my approval
removal,
almost as if I did not exist.
I wish it was me that she
kissed
wish that she'd creep up on me
wish I could see
what I was
doing
wrong.

If I could buy just one more day..I'd pay the Earth.
To open up my eyes again and feel the loving pain of life and stretch my arms up to the sky..

..But here I lie..Alone in death..
No Angels came to give me breath to breathe in paradise...and let me tell you..
..it aint nice.

So..

If I could buy just one more day I wouldn't waste my words to say."what time is it"..****..I wouldn't care.
I'd nurse each second like a baby in my arms and handle gently every minute..as if a cry would spoil the spell and send me screaming back to Hell and if I heard the clock at all that echoes loudly, I would fall again into despair..
..Something I care not to do.

But what I have is what I've got..a six foot plot..and lost somewhere along the way was any hope of buying one more day.

So I will lay.Wishing I could gaze once more upon the sky.
Wishing I could buy..
..Another day.

Instructively abstract,
backed into illusion
where reality fuses the
lights.
Naked in fire where the flicker of
flame brands upon me,
your name
on my lips.

It's the sore you keep picking,
the doors you keep kicking
and
the clock that keeps ticking,
just
picking up points in the
game we call life

Monday came so soon
and it only seems like yesterday we walked upon the moon
and held hands on top of Worlds
when you sprinkled stardust in my eyes
and I gazed into your deep brown eyes
only yesterday
where did it go
why could not time go slow and let me linger
just a little longer
in your sweet embrace?

I guess Monday's always come and we all must face
another day
away from what we
love the most.
That coasting through the mid of nights
amid the sights of wonderful
within the arms of marvellous
to taste delights
of magical
but Monday's always come
if only to block a little sun from the sun that shone.
Perhaps one day the Moon may stay
and brighten up the darkest day
and lighten up the nights, where for now I stay
in dreaming dreams of yesterday.

The iron bedstead creaked and the buckets underneath the leaks up in the ceiling gave us a feeling, of being on a movie set,
the flicker of light from the candle,waxed magnificent across the film of grime,a window to another time,a line up in the make up shed,the freshly made up bed,everybody said,
'down in the Hacienda where the cockroaches defend ya, against the desert rats,where nocturnal bats then eat the desert rats,you'll feel at home,

No coffee bar,no public phone,no concierge,you're all alone and feeling tender and that is life down in the Hacienda.

We took a walk through tumbleweeds and in this town that leads us to despair,we found we did not care,we two, were already there,at the end,where cockroaches could not defend against the things that lived within,the sin that kept us pinned against the ropes,the hope we had against all hopes that somehow we'd escape,be free,could settle in obscurity.

This Hacienda is the place where you must meet your demons face to face,unearth the things you'd rather not,
down in the Hacienda is where we learnt a lot,stopped the rot,oiled the bed,noted what was said,
but it's hardly worth it going to, the Hacienda just to view,you have to go and do,to see and be the changes that are made,
and as the Hacienda fades into another scene and plays into another screen,I lean across to her to share a kiss.

The cat has a limp and a white patch on her eye
one ear's pointing down and one up,she gets by on a tin
of sardines every day,she catches the mice and expects little pay,but
a stroke and a kiss is something I wouldn't miss and she likes me to say,'kitty looks lovely'
then she'll lay on the rug and tug at my toes as if she already knows that it's time for my walk
if only,if only my kitty could talk,she could tell me such tales of mangy moggies,the males of the species,
but she can't,never will and until I speak Marmalese she'll just sit there and purr and warm up my knees.

Did you want to balance on the edge of a freshly sharpened knife,
did you really want to spend your life afraid of being cut
did you put the cutting blocks away?
Good,
then it's chocks away and engines gun,let's fly and meet the morning where we'll win the sun and lose the night,
flying blind with eyes tight shut feels a bit like being cut,but no blood yet,
no need to get upset
we'll get there
somewhere where the daring and disarming go and where existence seems to ebb in constant flowing ever knowing waves,
and someone waves so far below where ants appear and everything is, although nothing seems clear.
As we stand there on the edge and look,
fear is written hurriedly in the pages of another book
and we have flown,taken years and grown beyond the boundaries of man,scanned by few and those who new it never recognised,
the eyes can see,the hands can touch, which doesn't mean so much when you don't know what you're leaning on or looking at.

The world was flat,but blown up like a balloon it became that which we know it, a ball, though you can't throw it.

Better to believe if you can that dancing on termite hills is all that is man,and all we will be are the ants that look up to see,
a man in his plane
doing the same thing over and over and over
again.

I met a seer at the bingo hall who seemed to know the number of every ball before it rose up that perspex tube.
It is dubious sort of man who can predict four corners or a line and then have time to prophesize about what prize he's going to get.
I bet he was such fun to know before he felt he had to go and spoil my day.
And I don't like bingo anyway.

If I was me which I'm sure I'm not
because somebody else got the body I've not got.
in any case
or in another case which is not the same
I am game for the game that is played
and I should really have stayed in the home
where the medics took care and never left me alone.

But I didn't
I wouldn't or else I couldn't have followed.

Manny Fandango
he's a poet you know
a philosopher too because that's what some poets do
so spoil yourself
read some of his stuff
Lord knows he's got enough of it
he'll tell you it's sh*t
but then
poets will say just anything.

It's astounding,amazing
like cows we are grazing while the
world falls apart,
I hear them cry
from Kenya to Mumbai
and all points on the dial...meanwhile
we stuff ourselves with food off the shelf and we
don't give a ****.
Twenty first century man can do no wrong just
as long as he lives in the West and the rest?
we try not to think about them
because we are the twenty first century men.

We are selfish,
going back to when we were just shellfish,before
we marched onto the land,before we colonised and
then realised
how big and how grand that we were,but
we'll get there in the end
until then we'll pretend that it's
all tickety boo
but who
are we
trying to kid?

I am the ship that sails upon the silent sea
and you,
the port that waits
for me.

This is my country
the one my fathers fought for
the one they went to war for
the one they ploughed the land and lived and died for and
what the **** for?

So those rotten wheeler stealers and ***** dollar dealers and some half bent bobby peelers could rip us off and laugh about it,
leave us shovelling **** and forget about it?
My old man did not fight for that lot of ***** in the city men,those with no mercy or pity men,
but then again my old man's dead and gone,shuffled off his mortal coil and now ploughs six foot underneath the soil.

But
this is still my land and sod that band of thieves,one day there'll be no crime,no criminals and little time for them to rob us blind,
sweet shangri la and ***** me sideways near and far 'cause that ain't going to be while those city men steal from you and me.
And your dad my dad went to war,just ask yourself,
what the **** for?

Part one done

adverts on now

waiting for part two

Cobbling the letters like nails into shoes we could use,
we hobble confused
hammered
abused by the thought
caught in the flow and words as we know
are cruel and kind, like
silk lined sows ears sobbing like tears in the dust but we must
continue to hammer away
cutting into each day as we cut into our heart to impart what we think and the ink turns to blood
because we knew that it would.
It is our life.

I sleep now in monochrome
On a mono bed in a mono home
And in those blacks and whites
Of my monochrome nights
I dream.
Technically in faint hues
Of reds and greens and blues.
But she who left
Was the colour on my page
The spoken word upon my stage
And now in monochrome
Like the howling winds outside the door I moan
And comb through the echoes
To hear her voice.

She was a ten
but that was way back when
before decimal coins
and long before the seams and several joins started to unpick
and now she looks sick.

Sick of the days
ticked off with those nights when she sits alone
frightened
so frightened if the phone starts to ring
or the doorbell chimes.

Not like those other times when she stood out in a crowd
her beauty (albeit plastic) would shout it out loud
'look at me
can you see you how good I feel',and still I would kneel at her feet
to me she's the sweet little lady
who one night in a Javanese bar said 'maybe' to me.

I see her now like never before
like today was the door that we came through
and if I knew then
even when she was a ten
that I'd still love her
a score of years on
when she is ill
I would still have gone it all the way
would still be here in love with her today
and that's the reason I believe
she'll get better when we leave
to count to ten
again.

Now moored in the dark bays
My ship in the dark days
Sailed light in the wild seas.

The fresh winds that blew in
off the keys
paid no fees nor no duties
those beauties were wild.

We.
In the child that is time
got drunk on cheap whiskey
and drank even more wine.
And sailed on.

We.
were the gone in 'begone with you'
a Devils brew of a troupe
on a sloop with no flag.

Dragging my heels a bit
in a suit of the age
that cannot fit.
It's not cut for this jib
Which is even more of a fib
that is scratched in the journal with ink and with nib.

Here I tie up and stay in the bay of my birth
My final berth and it's fitting
that in this bay where I sit on the sloop
that the loop of my life keeps on playing,
relaying those wild crazy times in 'the Carolines'
or on the 'Main'
Standing, 'man on the wheel'
life is just one big reel
Always one more destination
Just one more salutation
then I go.

The beach curves and the sea, a scimitar in the sun cleaves through the shingle a sandy path along the shore.

I am awestruck by the goddess of good luck who favoured my happening into this day full of wonder and wandering.

Double jointed
disappointed
that you are
not too.
I bend over backwards (no really)
I do.
Today,
anyway or any day you pass along my way
drop in, take a gander and
see my body slander.
geometry

A woman tall and slim
Walks within
This man who is a man.
He looks at her
Longs for her hair,
Her lips
Her hips.
Oh what it is to want and yearn
To be each other each in turn.
And to face inside
To slide
Into her dress
Put on her shoes
And in confusion lose
Oneself.

John Smallshaw  2011

We were sat in the back row
she was watching the film show,
I was looking at her look at the screen,engrossed,
I had seen it before,
with Sharon next door,
who wasn't as pretty as this girl sitting near me.

I reached out my hand, she took hold of it,
and
my heart started racing,
seeking her cheek I kissed her,how sweet, and then she turned and kissed me,
fully on the lips.
I could feel it from my head to the tips of my toes
and now she knows how I feel
about her.
If she feels the same about me
this could be
the start of something new,
not just another picture show but someone I want to know and what I intend to go after.

There be no morning, night, no light upon the breeze, no leaves left fluttering in the branches on the trees, all these gone now far away and just a tenant here, a remnant of some yesterday when it was clear to me that something had to give.

If i should live or I should not then tell me is it worth the things I thought I'd never got?

Why does Jesus put me on the spot?stuck up there
high on the cross

can he not see
the shining of this agony?

But it is dark and how
the workers end their day
trudging home and
cannot say,
that this looks sad.

I guess he cannot see
the emptiness
emotion in the
turmoil of the endless
friendless
sea.

In the exploded plan of man
I see no
substance,
a bit
like
skeleton ****
a bit
of
bare bones.

Clone me now 'Scottie'
do a 'Star Trek or 'Mickey Mouse' or
even a 'Shrek' on me.
Warp me to a Factor of three,
infirmity and infinitely beyond anything where anyone can see except for 'Buzz' and me.

In this mapped out, strapped in and crapped out state
I see the skeletons waiting at the pearly gate,
at one time it was 'gates',
but they sold one off for scrap which
is another load of crap,
a bit like skeleton ****,
no substance to it.

Peter Piper was a ******
working for the crown
he never picked a pickled pepper
just shot poor people down.

Mill to mill a bitter pill this treadmill that we're led to

and from mill to mill we will always be

candy for the mills of society




they gab in the background about Christmas,

alas

no Christmas for me

the foreman has told me to work that day

and no turkey shall I see




cold ham and pickle with cheese and a tickle of trout

lightly poached (nightly poached) from the river that runs through his Lordship's land




and yes




I bite the hand that feeds me for it's the same hand that needs me in mill to mill when will it all end.

I am the chip off the block
Bloodstock
A shock to the staid
The life of the laid back.
'I
..am alright Jack'

National health
International wealth
I have the key to it all
The cards just need to fall..
..lucky.

In these shambles this rambler makes believe
That this gambler can achieve..
..Immortality.
Immaturity in this..though, this next deal I can't miss..
Four aces.

Three places away..Tens and the way out is sealed.
The cards have been dealed
Hard as it seems
I have to undress my dreams and put them to bed
Then the next thought occurs..the ball's landing in red..
..and I'm fed up..to my back teeth
Which is known locally as bad gamblers grief.

Take a chip off this old block and place it on odds
Fate and those other sods conspire
To make me perspire...it comes up an eight..
..blasted fate.

I'm going to go to a rehab
Have a stab at normality
Another form of immortality?
Let's see.

In the gardens of a Gethsemane
under the branches of a
sick sycamore tree
slept the man they called
a prodigy.

A few of the many who followed him
knocked at the outskirts of freedom
to enter in.

The morning woke crossly for everyone
and the prodigal son was
on his way home with parables to plant
in the arable land which grow better than
Talents they tell me
in the garden of my own Gethsemane

The cardboard that became my mattress
my last but one address.
The names with which I have been tagged,the once fine clothes all turned to rags,the sagging cheeks,the days that wandered lonely into weeks and years became my duvet,there but for the grace of god knows who, is who I was and am.

Any woman,man should understand that landing on one's feet is not magic ,just a neat trick and how quick it is to fall,how quickly life can stall and leave you stranded.

Even handedness is not a trait that you will find, struggling on these unlined pages,raging against the might have been,if only you had seen it coming and running through scenarios where only poverty and sadness goes,there is always the hiding in the dark,on the benches in the park you're not alone,so many fallen through the cracks of broken homes and getting shot into slugs of alcohol or drugs like demerol.

The crowding out of being in and being in is what you need,the only hope that feeds the hope eternal is for the cycle to spin and turn,for the wishing star to burn across the moonlit sky and crying to your god above what little love there's left is,
well you know,
the last of any place you go when you're put on show for all to see, and all to see and comment on your misery.
This life blows hot and cold,you're burning rubber then you're old and nothing ever turns to gold unless you really want it too.
I leave you on this satellite to orbit through another night and hope that one day I just might
begin to understand.

To start again we take a pen
create a bill of rights
because,
sermons will not feed you
in the long term this is what we need to do,
storm the walls of warehouses and and pull them down
burn the cities,burn the towns
astound the populace,face the thieves who turn a trick
and kick them out.

In the confusions which pass through the glass of my eyes and where the smoke puts a choke hold on me
I wrestle with my identity and if it fits me or not.
An Illusion which goes by the name I am known but never shown to the people at large, there's a hope I'll inherit a spot of humility and become the man that I  knew I once was, but when the doors are all shut on me and that humility deserted me for the fresh fields which lay over the way, I pay no heed to the need that lays in me and confusion just leads me astray.

When I look at the stars far away and wonder what is it that makes me this way and the lights start to blink but I think that they're winking at me
I see the souls in the sky which fade out and then die, I see the fall of it all and in the seeing believe I know why.

The ghosts are attacking,they caught me out, slacking and sleeping through the day,if the ghosts had their way,they would shake me up,break me up,sweep me and keep me locked in my head.


I'm thinking that those ghosts have got to be dead, but I find that they're feeding on me, and running amok,pell mell ,chock a block,
In this binding I find a way to escape,don't sleep,stay awake,let the ghosts take the slow train and get out of my brain,flush them all down the drain,
just got to stay awake and alert and no matter how much it hurts me,it's the only way I see and the way to release.

The truce.

A piece of the peace or the rest of the rest I don't get,they won't let me alone,I can't eat,I'm becoming all skin and bone,which would be good, were I modelling the latest creations because skinny is cool in some men's imaginations,but what would they know about the dead and the dead slow,with looks that could **** those who don't fit their bill of what's acceptable to them,
but that's men,what did you expect,and the truth is no truce,no closing the sluice gates,the fates have me trapped between here and the next place,
full of grace,fair of face and a heavy heart, my eyes start to close as the ghosts rise around me,surrounded I'm bound once again.

Pain so they say is just that drumbeat when night meets your day and a slight thing to which you'll grow accustomed,I disagree,pain's just another mad moment running free and it always crashes head first into me,but I get used to it,it's just a constant yammering,stammering that hammers my soul,when the night's a black hole and day is a lifetime away.

When the ghosts have their fill and decide not to **** me but leave me,the funny thing is I miss them,what man am I to miss ghosts that would fly and disrupt me?
Tell me,
a contradiction, a contra addiction, predicting the best but expecting the worst,
I finally sleep.

Who bought the sky and the reason to live and why,
did the temple fall into a river of sin, did the way we began mean we couldn't possibly win, who begged us to die when it wasn't our time, who holds the rod and who's on the line?

I went through the eye of a needle saw a pin ***** of light and felt quite alright, but I don't recommend it,
the next day when you're feeling like **** is the worst, but to you who are well versed in the misuse of the scriptures, go ahead.

I read and have read the book of the dead and know it's no big deal, the unreal of it is the way that you feel when you're reading it and I don't recommend it either.

It remains to be seen who bought off the dream and who's paying the rent, but it's my guess they're bent and they won't feel no heat because not one cop on the beat ain't on the take.

We,
if we were good
got an Easter Egg
from teacher,
she said,
it was donated by,
William Smith,
which surprised me because he was
old and didn't know us at all.

But
it was at the Giant Axe on Easter day
where we jumped for joy at
the three-legged and
the egg and spoon race,
five a side, the football teams
girls and boys from the North and South
streams of chocolate on their chins and
in their mouth and Mother with the
kids in  t'pram looking at t'stalls
full of home made jam and books and things.

Me and bro' just out from the Saturday morning
matinee show at the ABC
pretended to be
Zorro,
we used to borrow the entrance to the
back door of the cinema
to get us in, to sit in sin and watch the screen
then with sixpence saved would buy ice cream and
still have change for a bag of chips.

How time slips away but Easter day,
stays forever young
forever fun and
tastes like chocolate
fairy tales.

It's 1969 in Lancaster where time is lame
where the stagecoach calls as
the bandage falls from
the legs of the clock,
where the face looks on in utter shock as
the tick tock bleeds its last.

Once when time was fast and the mornings flew
and we as kids knew what to do
with the leftovers dropped from the feast of the day,
heading on down to skinnydip in the bay and
catching the final splashings of rays from the sun,
racing through that tidal surge and the urge to run
forever
never entered our heads.

Sleep left me to bed down with the awkward nights,
puberty and the rites of man
where passages can twist and turn on
the long road to learn the
lessons in life.

And I enter again through the door of
wanting much more,not knowing
what wanting is waiting inside and ride
down the years, through jam doughnuts and
tears beside and alongside
the shadows which echo the laughs
of my youth.

There are galaxies in verses
a universe in words
a conversation in each abbreviation,
with comets of comma's and a
quagmire of quasars
laser lights to brighten faces that
lighten up my day.
So many permutations
within
the alphabet of
constellations
it's hard to know where to begin upon
this spinning wheel.

Fun fun times in the now and here and in no man's land between the lines where everything that's anything and no one who can be anyone or any one who can be everyone goes.

The weasel may be popped, but the shop's open the whole year through, fun fun things for us to do and who'd have thought that they only bought to keep up with the next door Jones.

Rags and bones and pony carts, Napoleons and Bonaparte's all come to them asylum men who in their white coats, stethoscopes at hand lead the madness of the marching and who'd have thought that they were mad, one and all of them asylum men.

Work they said will cure the blues, but I choose not to take advice, they look twice and shake their heads, Supermen in lockdown wards on lockdown beds with locked in minds find Lois with the golden hair, she's watching any someone over there and it happens to be me, what glee, one more Nero on the deck to fiddle things, in my neck of the woods, goods in, goods out and that's what madness is about, absolutely pointless drivel dribbled by the 14th Earl of anywhere she's just a girl, not allowed the umpire shouts, not PC get out of here and in no man's land the band lays down, Napoleon marches on one more town, Havisham sits in her wedding gown and dust gathers in the corridors.

We've got our backs against the wall as someone knocks it down, and we are being bulldozered right out of London Town.
Keep your freedom,information act
and act as if you give a ****
but too a man
you aren't any men if you would kick a man when all that man is trying to do,is muddle through and pull his weight
what a god ****** awful state and if it is then where the hell is he?
Supping tea with Cameron no doubt and wondering what the fuss is all about.

He'll get no prayers from me,
not while drinking Indian tea from China cups with saucers full of biscuit crumbs,while bums are begging on the street and Mother's can't make two ends meet.
what a god ****** awful state it beats me why we soldier on
we're as good as dead when all hope's gone
we ought to take a tip from those who've seen it all before and smash down the doors of greed and hyperbole,set the dogs to war and then we'll all be free.

Anarchy
the only way
break the day apart
reassemble what we've got and let's get shot of the lazy lot who stifle our ambitions,
Take positions
let them have it,
**** will rise, and look into their fatman eyes they know,it's long past time for them to go.
Just blow them all away
sweep them into yesterday and start afresh,anew
the only thing that we can do is fight,
set light to parliament and the mandarins,make effigies and stick them full of poison pins
and tear them limb from lying limb,

Time to begin?
You tell me.
Is it time yet to be free?

(20 minute poetry)

There was Judas who knew it and went forward to do it,
betrayal is a quick zip in the fastenings of night.

Sight unseen, but we took it in good faith and the legend lives on.

John took to his toes and ended up in Panama, as far as I know he is doing quite well.

Pete looks like hell,
Thomas has his doubts and thinks he's malingering.

Mary,
******* the rosary in the garden at Gethsemane and wondering if her man will come home.

Paul's at the wall with Michael and wailing, screams tailing off with the arrival of dawn.
It all makes me wonder if life is so tragic
why are we even born?

On the St Lawrence
going upriver today
there may be gold in them hills
that I see lay before me

I will do me some panning and see
what pans out,
panning is what my life's
all been about

a nugget or two will do
no need to be needy or
any need to be greedy
just taking some time and
what I pan will be mine.

Waters are cold the higher
I get
shingles
slippery
wet.

I'm reflecting
on a man with a pan in his hand
a grizzled old face
a gold wedding band.

When I head back downstream
it'll be
to champagne, caviar, real coffee with cream
or is that just an old prospectors pipe dream?
I see diamonds that flash off the noonday Sun
as if
running atop of the water
I'm rich,
but I wish it was gold.

It's silent mostly
except for the water and birds
and the words I cuss out,
did I mention
that's what panning is all about.

I scramble through the brambles that
grow over my mind and try to find
a way out,

I guess panning is about that too,

I ride this broomstick high on *** or Lsd either
one,
it don't bother me, nothing does above the roar
of my heart shredding
and, what is more,
I have no license for this stick, which I
picked at random,
I am the kick, the jam, the butter and the ram,
the ruthless raider on the lam but on the stick
I am superman and I am so slick
it's sick.

But bedding down
I am the crying clown,
the fish without its bowl,
the end's in sight but not my goal,
unfinished artwork
I am sold, unvarnished,
tarnished by some trick,
painted
tainted by the stick,
no room for two upon the broom,
in the doom there are no friends,
only ends and untied things.

You
take me, break me,
stake me down
you
make me smile
you
make me frown
you
tie me up in my knots
and then you reunite my soul
you're
all I want, all I want
repeat two times and hold.

Mandolin please play for me
a Neapolitan melody.

Sit and talk or walk with me
unto the ends of jeopardy
until I see,

be there in the morning when the
light comes flooding in
be there when the Sun goes down
to let my body in
be there in the quiet times when
silence locks me in

mandolin please play for me
a
Neapolitan melody.

take and make or break me
pluck me to your heart's content

heaven sent you maybe
play me
Neapolitan

one more time.