The roar of the **** automatic guns

That threw their exploding flak shells

Mixed with the shout of our engines

And bone dry rattle of our machine guns

Gave the French battle scene life

As we strafed and bombed our enemy

To give our troops more time

Our biplanes were made to fight the last war

Not a Blitzkreig but a target was a target

We went after the ******* all the way

Our six Hawker Hector biplanes still had teeth

Four yellow painted 125 pound bombs

And two small machine guns aimed by both crew

City of Manchester Squadron grabbing their chance

Aircrew of the Royal Air Force serving King and Country

In the darkest hour as the **** war machine came

Seemingly unstoppable and utterly invinsible

Except when the RAF biplanes attacked...

A drive-by piercing with a lemon going haywire
Some day-old sushi seen floating in a milk shake
Biplanes soaring on a river made of goldfish
Hamsters running like a maggot being stepped on
T-Birds flying on a highway made of spike strips
A sleeper hold keeping pleasure from the culprit
High-speed boats with Bond at the Olympics
A Cheshire cat that is famous for his slow wit
A hands-free call using carrots as a pitchfork
Motel 6 giving buckets full of sunshine
A loser shakes when he’s calling for a train wreck
Two horned-toad dogs seek pleasure from a princess
Pineapples dance on a table made of tall grass
Swimming pools run like the nostrils of a cokehead
Lawnmowers chase televisions made of chocolate
A headrest pops like a package full of mayonnaise
Full moon falling like a stock that’s made of pennies
Some ring-toss games using members as a target
Horse-drawn buggies have turtles for a driver
Captain Crunch cracks three teeth with his product
Unicorn strippers charge nothing for a snow cone
A fig tree shoots his rifle like a marksman
Time-lapse photos lend credence to a journey
A night jog leading to the starting of a win streak
Cotton ***** fighting like the heart of a palm tree
Rabbit holes filled with a rocket made of red glare
Alien red giants just as sure as I am breathing
A high-speed rail system travels without leaving
Lamborghinis resting on a bed of melting ice cream
Then there’s a cuckoo clock riding on a white mink
I saw a cowboy yesterday atop a pile of hay
Leaches lurking everywhere really like to play
Red newspaper taxis burn at the pole in June
Hearts of gold at harvest time, hear my drum in tune
Playing in the band was my only decent goal
Rake, a shovel, and a pick dig working with a ***        
Prince without a pauper will rise from down below
Hot tamales drop like hail the radar never showed
Squids sign a new record deal using their own ink
Octomom wants it all; such ***** I’ve never seen

My office gave me a computer so I could work from home (during the Covid crisis)
They also gave me a work phone as my job entails taking calls from the public,
It's strange but I've been doin' this job for years
And I've always had this stammer... this funny stammer
Yet luckily I've always been able to get by
I've never let it bother me that much
But now though, since working from home I'd noticed my stammer was getting progressively worse
Maybe it was all the isolation, the lack of interaction with others
But I found myself struggling with words/sounds that had never bothered me before
It was beginning to become a real worry
What was I gonna do !!!
So I started to take a drink or two, a couple of glasses of wine along with a can (or two) of beer
And listen to some music on my own phone
Hoping it would relax me more
Sometimes it'd work, sometimes... sometimes not
But then one day... one day Lana del Rey came into my life
Yea! I discovered the songs and music of Lana del Rey
What a voice and the things she could do with it, it seemed so effortless
What an Enchantress
She'd transport me off to some other world faraway
So between work calls, in the gaps in-between
I'd have her songs on and be watching her videos on YouTube
I used lose myself in her world
Now I didn't care anymore about work or phone calls or whether I stammered or not
Suddenly I was Mr. Cool driving down a motorway in LA with my sunglasses on in my Chevy Malibu
Or maybe hanging out, chilling with Lana's crew
(maybe on a thirteenth beach somewhere)
And when she'd be singing something melancholy, something blue
I'd be there comforting her saying  "I know Lana, I understand, sure Me! I'm a King of Melancholy too".

Well one Friday I was feeling kinda happy and good about life
I'd survived another week in the job and had a long weekend to look forward to as I had Monday off
And yes! I'd had a few drinks as well and was away again lost in Lana land
I had her songs on and a video was playing
Suddenly I felt I needed to go for a ***
So I put Lana on hold saying "Excuse me Lana"
But then... just then my work phone rings, there's someone on the line,
I say to myself I better take this call
I'll get rid of him quick (famous last words)
I don't know if this guy was lonely or just liked the sound of my voice
But I just could not get him off the phone
Sometimes the phone calls they'd remind me  of the old Air Aces back in World War I
In their biplanes, shooting at one another, those dogfights in the sky
(They should have had us wearing bomber jackets)
But if this guy was an Air Ace, then he was the Red Baron
I couldn't shake him, just couldn't get him off my tail, could not get him off the phone
He's like... he's like feckin Columbo (the detective off the TV)
It's like he's finished, he's just going out the door
But then he turns around and comes back with another question
"Can I ask you...this...
Can I ask you...that...
Would you mind answering this question...
Just one more thing...
Just one more question....
One last question....
One final question...
You're very good, can I ask you....
Sorry for taking up all your time but can I ask you....
You're very knowledgeable, it's great to get someone you can talk to, so you're saying....
Is that the way it works, can I ask you..."
At this stage I'm bustin' to go to the loo
It's getting to emergency stations, my poor bladder
What am I going to do!!!
Should I excuse myself and tell him I've got to go to the loo
But that's not very professional, I'd never ever done that before
Anyway I'm thinking I have no other alternative
But then suddenly... suddenly I spy this empty bottle on my shelf
It's an unusual bottle with thick glass and it has this lovely wooden capped cork which can be easily pulled out and put back in again
(I kept it 'cos I thought it might come in handy if I had a corked bottle of wine
And the cork got messed up with the corkscrew
I could put any surplus wine in there)
So I'm looking at this bottle and... I have an idea
"Desperate situations call for desperate measures", I think
"You gotta do what you gotta do,
And of course, their always saying you should be creative and innovative in your work"
So I take down the bottle, tell Lana to avert her eyes
I take out the cork, unzip the fly of my pants
Get my Old Boy out and start peeing into the bottle
I'm mightily relieved and I'm thinking Ha! Ha!
Go on you ****** ask me another question, I don't care now....I'm free!!!
I'm proud of myself "What a Pro !" I'm thinking,
The next thing a whole lot of *** comes flying out of the bottle, like a bottle of champagne gushing out
Shooting out all over the place, all over my pants and my shirt
I'd miscalculated the amount of *** and the size of the bottle
I never knew I peed that much (well you learn something new everyday)
And the guy is still talking to me on the phone
And all I'm thinking is "Jaysus I'm after peeing all over myself"
And finally... finally, at long...looong... looooong last the guy, he gets off the phone, halleluia!!!
I'm left there completely deflated, soaked in my own ***
Broken and disconsolate, all my illusions shattered
No longer am I Mr.Cool driving down a motorway in LA
No longer am I either Mr. All-understanding Melancholy Guru Man
No! Now I'm just... just some guy whose after peeing all over himself
I look at my phone and there's Lana looking back at me, still on hold
I switch her on again, she's singing that lovely song "Love"
She does that lovely little shimmy with her shoulders for a second
Then she gives me that cute little wink and the lovely smile
I think to myself "Well, at least Lana still likes me"
But I feel guilty, I feel I got to explain, got to apologise
"Sorry Lana", I say, "I guess...I guess they don't make heroes like they used to".

Then I start to think 'This working from home is really fraught with danger, lucky there's no cameras on these computers or they'd be saying "I don't believe what I've just seen, what's that feckin' eejit doing now"

But then I think "Still, the customer went away happy, I didn't let it faze me too much, I saw it through... me and my funny stammer...what a Pro!
Maybe I was... maybe I am...a hero after all.

LANDSCAPE TOGETHER

Memories become reality, events are lucid
and ongoing as brown haired girl stares thru
her frizzy hair, it’s not fair!
It’s too deep – do I like the girl?
Is your sister weird too?
Are you so weird too?
Maybe you doubt my love for you,
a foreign landscape dwarfs you,
diminishes you, makes you nothing but a girl.
You ask me my view, I reply
you’ll have to make up your own mind.
A million pretty girls have walked this land,
most are dead now. Their beauty heart stopping,
their country wordless, timeless.
We go to triple north deep fjords, midnight sun,
hazy skies of Freya. You invoked such a girl
in our spell on our enemy,
one day I, we’ll go to such shores.
To Viking lands, Leaves Eyes music,
Tristania and Mortiis. No mere girl can encompass
my love for you or a beauty you have yet to see.
Take you to frozen lake where biplanes flew
and fought against **** enemies.
A beauty rather indescribable but from your soul,
see it with me and you’ll understand.

She and me
Kick our legs over the cliff
Watching the water pound in steep
Crests of mist,
Awash the quaking stone.

Drinking through the daze
Withering and coastal
Happy with every day
that drips
And growing older
Sedimentary
Seeking the simple deaths of life.

And when we sang our songs to the flocks of gulls
And they called saline
Eating fishbones
Circling like biplanes
Above the coast
We wondered what wandrous
Raptors out ran the oilpan
And instead became this.

We eat our picnic meats
And settle down for a long daydream
Staring at the overcast blanket
Seeing streaks of Grey dispersed between
Feeling
Warm and a little bit loved by the sea.

Me and she
There was no stopping
Her questions, flying hot lead at my
Brain
Dripping gall juice inside the spleen
Infected and hungry
Waiting to engorge our final meal
A bunch of microscopes in the petri
Dished out and left to drift
Amongst the lapping waves.

Assuredly,
When those gulls flapped their lazy way
Heading down the coast
Searching for simple meals
And calling family in the sky
They wondered to god
about solitary
You and I
And just what was our deal?

The highlights of my summers
Were the streetlights coming on
and having to come sit on
the porch or go inside while
my big brothers and sister got to run around.
getting in the big van and watching the trees, the farms,
the rivers, clouds, and the stars,
pass by as we traveled. Playing games and playing games
with my siblings till we got too tired to keep going.
Staring into the sun to see who'd blink first.
Falling asleep and waking up somewhere else.
sword fights with sticks, wrestling matches...
foot racing, bike racing, calling out eachtime
biplanes or blimps passed overhead in the blue skies.
Running in the warm rains of sudden showers,
watching lightning flicker overhead and counting the seconds
it took for the thunder to reach our ears to see just how far away the storm was.
Eating dinners that left me stuffed.
Feeding sugar to ants by pouring the disaccharide
on ant hills and watching the ants take each granule
back down into their homes.
Chasing down ladybugs and putting them on weeds
filled with aphids to watch the red beetles feed.
Capturing lightning bugs, jumping high to reach them
as before they could float out of reach.
Laying in bed in the middle of night to finish a book
so I could talk about it to my older brothers and pass it on to my younger brother.
Feeding the dogs and having to clean up after they'd made a mess.
Getting ****** at my "mean" older siblings.
Trying to talk to my crush, and showing off when
it came to playing sports.
My summer was playing football game after football game,
getting hit hard, and tackling as hard as my scrawny body could.
Sleeping on the top bunk because I loved the summer heat.
Eating popsicles  and Italian ice and sharing with the neighborhood kids cause we had more than enough.
Sneaking to the corner store to buy bubbaloos,
chips, pop, and honeybuns with saved up chump change.
Visiting cousins, and celebrating birthday after birthday.
Yea, those were the good days.
The worlds falling apart now right before our eyes
and I just remember those good golden times.
I haven't seen a monarch butterfly
in more than a few years and they used to come every summer
in the thousands.

One Hundred Years
The war to end all wars ended exactly one hundred years ago
That war failed in its objective of making war and bloodletting obsolete
Just like the bow and arrow is now outdated war was meant to be
The renderings of battle and conflict consigned to the history books
When children ask their parents: WHAT WAS WAR?

The answer should have started thus: Well child...
But that scenario never happened because war is still with us
The old soldiers never grew old and their memory lives on
As their great grandchildren prime their guns and prepare for battle
Places like the Somme, Ypres, Verdun. Paschendale and Flanders are here

Inside the souls of the Tommie, the Poilu, the *** and more
Poppies commemorating the sacrifice and everlasting memory
Worn with pride by people like myself and my kin and my friends and family
Yet in places like Afghan and Syria and Iraq and Ukraine men fight and die
Death and destruction still rule the battlefield by blast and bullet

Weapons have advanced like smart bombs, jet fighters and missiles
Being a millennia on from biplanes, barbed wire and horses
Each soldier and each fight is mirrored thru history by another
Wars and battles complement one another in their ferocity and aim
Enemies must be defeated and military objectives achieved

Only the year and location changes while the soldier’s names fade away
To become unknown soldiers in our collective hearts and minds
Passing over before their time and entering the history books
Some are a footnote, others in heroic battles and a few forsaken
Every generation since the Great War owes it to the past to make peace

And keep hold of that peace forever more and spike the guns and grenades
So our world knows peace and harmony in an eternal Peace Dividend
The Military Industrial Complex being used for something better
Future warriors being out of work and doing new jobs
Think of the past and that awful Great War and what we can do now

Turn our world around and remember the sacrifice and cost of Total industrial war
Let no more warriors die in no more wars except in books, games and films
Remember our great fallen warriors and be humbly grateful and act their deed
Universally advancing world peace and making war obsolete forever