Never trust a white man,
Never **** a Jew,
Never sign a contract,
Never rent a pew.
Don't enlist in armies;
Nor marry many wives;
Never write for magazines;
Never scratch your hives.
Always put paper on the seat,
Don't believe in wars,
Keep yourself both clean and neat,
Never marry ******.
Never pay a blackmailer,
Never go to law,
Never trust a publisher,
Or you'll sleep on straw.
All your friends will leave you
All your friends will die
So lead a clean and wholesome life
And join them in the sky.

All armies are the same
Publicity is fame
Artillery makes the same old noise
Valor is an attribute of boys
Old soldiers all have tired eyes
All soldiers hear the same old lies
Dead bodies always have drawn flies

Her life had acquired coffee flavour
and she didn't like to be that bitter
She wanted someone with sweetener    
To make her life taste better

I

Tired
the long road ends
by a sea wall
The engine dies
to cries of estuary birds
to halyards’ **** and tinge
A lake of light set in night’s cloudscape
brims over the western marshland
to seaward a dense darkness
On the ferry’s step
ear close to the brown water
a part-song sings the ebb tide’s flow

II

Threading into the marshland
a braid of cloud-reflected water
of oval sedge and common reed
In amongst the brown canes perspective vanishes
only by mind’s foreshortening or body’s levitation
is there sight beyond the creeping rootstock
By the river path a leaf
pearled with glazed dew glistening
dew grabbing the photographic eye
Standing backs to the horizon
a sculpted triad of bronzed ancestors
watch over the summer rites of music

III

This ****** field
moves clamorously under the feet
waiting waiting for the sea’s kiss
Proud-coloured the boats here
resting poised on railway sleepers
beside their tractored guardians
How to know which way to turn
which view to hold for memory’s stamp
this patient sky this slow exhaling sea
This foreground flow of white-grey-brown pebbles
each sensibly-sized for the hand in the pocket
yet substantially-singular on the window’s sill

No wardrobe, no rabbit hole do I need
If it is to escape this world I look....
I just go to the library and read,
Where I can escape in a world of books.

The perfect someone there is not
For imperfect beings are we,
So for the perfect one look not...
But one who is perfect for thee.