The wild sound of creation and destruction
Drove that Mercedes all the way from Texas
Wrapping it round the lamppost of America
Creating light and darkness in a single image
Wrecking tranquillity was her daytime occupation
Creating havoc her favourite night time passion
A constellation of starlit bourbon harmony
In the comfort zone of her southern hospitality
The Divine Creatrix of her own stellar universe
And the born destroyer of everything before her
Time and space an empty canvas for her image
Each single moment a vast horizon of homage
Nothing moves the stillness beyond her presence
Worlds collapse to nothingness by her caprice
And heaven itself a single jewel on her costume
Hell a mere facet of her beautiful endless terror
Saviours saints devils and sweet singing angels
Baubles on a necklace she wears for pleasure
Mere vanity in her divine imagination of mirrors
The sound of her voice rocks the vastness of time
Rendering infinity past before it happens
No one ever messes or dares drive a Porsche
In the presence of a blue jeaned Kali from Texas.

Moneyz da origami uv da wurld
Da foldin stuffz da lingo franka
Lubrikatz everyfink datz around uz
An smooves our movez to konshinz
Lukzuriating wiv our kintenmemt
Az da fillfy looker runz dis world
Yiz kin kall it anyfink uze likely
Datz wot reely matterz in da endly
Aint nun uv uz gon do wivout it
We’d be ’pensive at twice da cheapniz
Our kinsernz don’ stretch to poverty
In anyfink lik a personal kapazity
Datz uz da fortune of hypokrizy
Sez it again, nevva mind da ******
Show me da moneyz da rock anthem.

A world can be so wonderfully inarticulate
Expressing as it does each prejudice
In a blizzard of minimalist vernacular
Pursuing the obvious common denominator
Thus elevating the average meanness
To the heights of banality and expedience
Quantified by the measure of indifference
Required to fill the volume of ignorance
Necessary to potentialise each prejudice
As a true barometer of society’s preference
Calculated to protect the existing social order.

Walk nine miles
and then one more
food is always far
to feed a hungry family

Borrowed shoes
is what we wear
food brings us closer
distance is always shared

One single bowl
in many hands
food travels in circles
in the geometry of hunger

Three silver coins
for a loaf of bread
food is richness
in the common currency

Nourishment never lies
in empty eyes
food is truth
economy is the falsity

Food is what we are
food is what we become
eat and we are eaten
in the consuming society

Without food everything
becomes nothing
food is always
something for someone

Hunger is never
a lack of food
it is the greedy denial
of soul generosity

False is the equation
that doesn’t add up
food by the number
of hands left empty

Food was the first
of created things
in the origins of Eden
hunger was the second.

The gravity of angels doth presage a fall
Dissent is the ascendant written on the scrawl
Scripture's now grafitti's permanent fixture
Anyone care for a psalm missile or two
God has a couple, his friends have got a few
Nothings old every things really quite new
Every bargain's even got a testament or two
Destructions guaranteed, creation's over rated
Another Eden's a blue print for a parking lot
Rise and fall's kids’ stuff, god does them all
Damnation just that button on a play station
Satnav's got two, that's one for each direction
Heaven's great ' but hell can be a serious option
It really is an avenue, you gotta keep it open
When faith abandons you, the other joints reliable
In the meantime just enjoy the uncertain chaos
Sin must have some virtue, there's enough about
Even the clergy occasionally let it all hang out
If its good enough for frock coats, who knows
It might be better for all of us dressed as we are
Ready for anything that sin can throw at us
And everything we can toss back in a glass
Darkly with the shades on in a cheap hotel
We might as well if heaven's hell on earth
And the wagers of each sin is just a gamble
With eternity dead heading with our salvation
It could take a while before the result comes in.

Who'd be writer in Pere-Lachaise
The world is dying to live there
Eternity must be just such a place
Grains of sand all over your face
Vandals on the handles of your tomb
Grafitti scrawled all over the place
Isn't that just like poetry heaven
And one helluva place for the living.

Writing poetry is dead easy if you have two precious documents before your very eyes. The two documents in question are The Divine Comedy; by some 13th century Italian bloke called Dante Aligheri, and any copy of the Iliad that’s lying about the joint. You will also need a full-length mirror, a tin of Brasso and an English/Italian dictionary. When you have assembled this lot you can commence discovering whether or not you are a Dante, or just chancing your luck as a wannabe Homer

Having assembled all the necessary paraphernalia, you can begin your quest to become a poet, or discover that you are just another lost soul who wants to copyright spelling mistakes and grammatical errors in order to make a fortune from the literary outpourings of desperate to be Dantes everywhere. (Think about it, that’s not as dumb as it sounds nor is it as dumb as you will be if you attempt it.) That’s your first lesson in Danteness and Homericness. Writing literature is a paradoxical experience, and never a contradiction. So, you may have to shove Hegel out the window and line the floor of your pet hamster’s cage with the complete works of Marx.

Now you are approaching the very personal and very revealing bit of this exercise to discover whether you are a potential Dante or not. But, as always, there’s a but: before that, you may wish to check out a few historical precedents. Check out Chaucer Shakespreare. Milton, Pope. Shelley and Keats, and after the death of the Good Lord Byron, you might want to move abroad to Ireland and The USA, to get the best out of literature by having a glance at Yeats, Hopkins, Whitman and Emerson. Then there are a couple of Russian poets: Akhmatova and Ratushinskaya . Africa has the Nobel Laureate Soyinka, who shouldn’t be missed. Rabindrinath Tagore is beyond words and there is a Chinese poet named Wei Bo who is also a sublime read. World literature is like world music, a surprise around every corner-

Now this is the wonderful part of your poetic odyssey. At this point you get to look in the mirror, a lot. But first a word of caution: mirrors can be very strange, if not downright frightening things to see yourself reflected in. Put on your bravest countenance and look straight into the glacial glossy glare, and tell yourself you’re not scared of a piece of silver painted glassery that looks back at you every time you glance at it.

A door is never open
It's always ajar

A song is never sung
(except by fools
who insist on interrupting
the sacred business of drinking)
It is only heard
In the distance.

A glass is never empty
It's just lonely.

Friends are never a friend;
They're only the next act
Of treachery and tragedy
(Doesn't that sound poetic)

Poverty is the person
Who stole your prosperity.
Prosperity was a similar
But infinitely less honest
Kind of thief
Charity is the one true thief
I'll drink to that
(Truth be told, I'll drink to anything)

Oh dear God stop me
From ever becoming religious
You owe me at least that much
IOU a Jack, a Jim an' a Johnnie
(That’s Daniel’s, Bean an' Walker
to the unbelievers among your flock
of sad unsinners)
Being unholy is kind of cool
Holiness is in the concept
Religion’s got nothing
To be holy about
It’s an empty glass.
Drinking's got spirit
Dear God of mine
Make mine a double
I'll believe in you twice.

(Thank you, Janis. Why don’t we jack that Mercedes Benz you keep singing about? You can drive an' I'll be your loveable but inadequate companion, just like Gabby Hayes. I can’t do Tonto. The Noble Savage is beyond my range an’ anyway, you won’t wear a mask. The world is full of lonely rangers, but how many wear a mask? Maybe we could go to Mexico an’ I'll apply for the Cisco Kid's job. He wears great hats. I'd look cool in a hat like that. Is he any relation of Billy...?)
  
Loneliness in a glass
It's an urban myth
An’ a rural hype.
Drinking's only a curse
Morality is a disease
Curses are like glasses
You can lift them
Ever tried to lift a disease?
Aphorisms; don’t we just love 'em
Especially when we hide behind 'em.
(Is The Lonely Ranger
An aphorism in the making?)
They're a sign of conversational fear.
An’ fear is just a sign of itself
When it's got nothing else
To be fearful about
I think I'll have another drink
Before I start talking about Fitzgerald
And Malcolm the Vulcanologist.
Good word, vulcanologist
Impressive in the right company
Must remember to use it again
On the next innocent abroad.

Nobody loves you when you're just a poor drunk. A few people love you if you’re a clever drunk. But everybody loves you if you're a rich drunk. You've got a friend in every pocket, and that's what friends are for. Your relatives live in your wallet ‘an we're not talking photographs here. You can only trust your enemies. They at least will be true to themselves and as treacherous as only an enemy can be. Truth be told, there's truth in wine, but a sadder truth is: we all tell lies. The wine just makes them more delicious. We can all drink to that. The rich are never drunk, just unsober. Only the poor can be driven mad by drink. (It's the only experience of being chauffeur driven they'll ever have.) The rich are merely inebriate and eccentric. Class and euphemism are always so reliable. It’s a very rich language we have here; in every sense.

Especially when we talk in clichés
Even with perfect strangers
(Why are strangers perfect?
Are they some kind of deity?)
Clichés are a wonderful thing
When you have four fingers
Of blessed rye in your hand.
‘Only the good die young.’
That’s a great ole cliché.
‘Been down this road so long
It looks like upper street again’
That’s an even better one, I think
Bob Zimmerman’s brother in law
Didn’t get ‘round to being related
According to the romantic plan
“That’s not a cliché, that’s an
urban myth”, said the stranger
When Dante met Janis it was
Downhill all the way for them
Thank you, John Milton
Where would hell be without you?
In ever decreasing circles
You might say, an’ then again
You might not bother to say anything.
Intellectuals are sometimes lonely.
Perhaps you don’t speak to strangers
Even perfect ones in dark glasses
Who are unafraid to look in mirrors.
Let me buy you a drink in a darker glass
Did I tell you, me an’ Janis are
Heading down Mexico’s dusty way?
Elvis and Marilyn are living there
They were secretly married even
To each other's each other self.
They were all set to become
The King and Queen of America
But the constitution wouldn’t allow it.
Norman the Mailman’s going to write
(That’ll be the day dream all believers
Try to avoid believing in too much)
A bestselling an’ hard hitting novelty item
About it all, with the built-in revelation
That their kids were kidnapped
By all those dead Kennedys and ……
Is the floor getting closer or am I collapsing?
An’ what did you say
Your name was, Mephistopheles?
That’s a cute name. But why are you
Smiling at me in such a strange fashion?
Make mine a double; what’s your poison?”

Our sweetest gifts are seldom on time
Interrupted by the tambourine of song
Thus it is that they arrive with rhyme

Out of dreams which are so unseen
Wander images of sweet loveliness
Delighting thought’s uttermost Eden

A vision held for one solitary moment
Transporting soul to rapturous heaven
Delivering us to our sweetest torment

A miraculous image of purest delight
Untouched of tears or shadow’s sorrow
Falls in veils of truth revealing insight

A smile writ upon the eternity above  
Descended in flows of written words
Inscribed itself upon soul’s earthly love

As unfolds the lotus on flowing water
Upon fire flamed in passion’s stillness
Unmoving it reveals itself everywhere

Hearts are filled with laughter’s comedy
As loving truth greets itself so tenderly
Sorrow’s banished to tears empty eternity

Eyes may sing like lips can tender smile
And sense abandon thought in reverie
Loving song thus sings sweet so versatile

To repose in slumbers outstretched cathedral
Labyrinth trespassing waking tiredness invites
Wandering in dreams unconscious ceremony

Vision is the key to the architectural mystery
Our sweetest dreams occur in sleep serene
Mystery invades somnambulant imagination

Waking we seldom see what we have seen
Thus thought denies revealing interpretation
Waking doth shake our dreaming sonnet

The sweetened wine of human ceremony
Invokes each moment so unforgotten
Forever held sacred in fondest memory

Tomorrow unfolds as the future drama
Today enfolds the past in present beauty
Love reveals to us our Commedia Divina

Each hearts journey to the soul of love
Travelling through the labyrinth of loss
Is drawn there by some unnamed above.

Living dangerously
Perishing beautifully
Isn't that just so
Very very unjust
Art and writing
Is something living
In eternity dying
For a grain of sand
Drowning in an ocean
Of fame and adulation.

Duck walk quacking at the county fair
Nobody even knew that it was there
‘Til Chuck was Chuckin’it at our soul
That’s where we all got our rock’n’roll
Six strings screaming on a fender strat
Dancin’ to the rhythm of a strangled cat
That’s what they said, but that was that
Nativity can be some very strange things
Especially if the infant plays six strings
Rattlin’ your rolls an’ banging your tins
From such things great greatness begins
The original best of all our begotten sins
Drinking is drunk and drunkness is great
But never a way to help you play straight
That’s the precious secret in the alchemy
Transforming chaos into musical harmony
God maybe great but moonshine is beautiful
Nobody ever heard of a sober rock’n’roller
It’s the very thing that liberates the souler
It helps with walk and the duck walk quack
Once you’ve got that, you don’t look back
You’re condemned to a life as a rock’n’roller
Don’t you feel lucky, when a day is made
The bad moon up, and a good band down
That’s the time to really paint that town
An’ start the rocking riot all over the city
Then thank the good lord for that nativity.

The lady and her sorrowed blues
She’ll be dead in time Christmas
It’s written in her sacred shoes

Morrisons’s never gonna make it
Not even sure if he wants to
Young and beautiful, he’s had it

Jimi was crucified dead mortality
Waiting on a day for it to beckon
His life the stuff of immortal Deity

John Lennon knew it would happen
The appointed time the only mystery
A name writ on solid sidewalk stone

Brian had it stolen from him and us
Epstein’s almost unremarked upon
The consequence of quiet dignitas

Bolan won’t be rolling enviously
The electric elf was nailed on the shelf
By jealously wrapped posthumously

Kurt Cobain we hardly knew him
Nirvana’s loss is earth’s pain
Only the beautiful are self slain

Syd and Nancy in macabre dance
Punk’s Montagua and Capulet
Never had their loving chance

Nothing rises so strangely at all
As perishing young so beautifully
There’s the descent’s ascending fall

Even kings can be holy sacrificed
Upon the altar of a brokers pawn
By majestic majesty’s indifference  

Sacrifice is what makes us sacred
That’s what Death will never tell us
The Collector only does posthumous

So it says an’ maybe even so it goes
Who can tell of that heavenly hell
This side of knocking on those doors.

Quietly as that opening flower
Still and aesthetically unfolding
How are we to know of existence
Enveloped in nature's bower
Hidden from visions understanding
Or minds grasping searchings
Lest nature herself reveal
Secrets beyond our comprehension
Concealed in realms of vast dimension
In that most finite of spaces
The sacred chamber of colour
Shaped by mystic knowledge
Of some vast unknowable
The mystery of creation eludes us
Perhaps as nature intended
Until we find true ourselves
Less selfishly complicated.

Walk nine miles
and then one more
food is always far
to feed a hungry family

Borrowed shoes
is what we wear
food brings us closer
distance is always shared

One single bowl
in many hands
food travels in circles
in the geometry of hunger

Three silver coins
for a loaf of bread
food is richness
in the common currency

Nourishment never lies
in empty eyes
food is truth
economy is the falsity

Food is what we are
food is what we become
eat and we are eaten
in the consuming society

Without food everything
becomes nothing
food is always
something for someone

Hunger is never
a lack of food
it is the greedy denial
of soul generosity

False is the equation
that doesn’t add up
food by the number
of hands left empty

Food was the first
of created things
in the origins of Eden
hunger was the second.

The destructive power of beauty takes it toll
An’ hell’s what happens if you lose control
Of all the tender things creating open doors
Nothing remains nothing if no one knows
Souls perish in a sweet decorative flourish
And memory clings in mirrors that cherish
An image retained in the beatified presence
Sacrificed and deified upon an altared icon
Sacred in the memory but lost in the detail
Of bargains struck and other dealings done
Enriching so many and impoverishing one
Street singing angel with the choir of love
Descending miracles from that god above
Transforming water into a sweeter flowing
Of wine and beauty from a song and rhyme
Heard beyond dreams and streams of tears
Falling inside the sound of a sacred image
Anywhere other golden beyond pure choice
Caressing truth writ blues apocalyptic voice.

A mysterious ***** and a man in black
Travelling to the crossroads with Jack
Wouldn’t look up and never looked back
Sideways wasn’t an option in the pack
For the trinity with destiny on the attack

At the road that crossed itself in doubt
Hung a sign saying strangers keep out
Nothing was there even less was about
Just the sign that then began to shout
Your within is also your own without

Strangers have no friends around here
Spoke the sign with a trace of fear
Everything’s not really nothing here
Something stranger's shadowing near
Get out! haven’t I made that clear?

The written music of a mystical innocence
Unveiled the songs of revered experience
Engraved upon a world of indifference
Untouched by rejection’s critical audience
And ignoring the clamour of no consequence
A Poet revelled in his visions of significance.

Avant garde upon wondrous language
Drifting clouds of searing imagery
Wandered in reams of magical vision
Writ abstract on the naked imagination
Voyaging  through landscapes of rhyme
Beating rhythms of sounding beauty
In those hours before dawning chorus
Eclipsed the past of the dolorous song
Shackling poetry by its ancient thrall
The golden flower unchained the dream
Of brilliance writ in luminous cadence
Reaping in weaves of solitary thought
Traversed horizons of an imagination
Gazing through times elliptical prism
Upon curves of solid liquid geometry
Flowing in streams of rippling poetry
Unfolding nature’s riotous harmonies
In the lonely beauty of a single flower
Surrendering unto landscape’s mirage  
Pouring dreams worth heaven’s words.

Declaring a balloon
At the airport
Jetting the setting’s
A fast slow business

Tito on the phone
He’s not Robert
Albert cross hot Burns
The dealings done

Alan Price, keyboard player
Opened beer bottle
On the piano
What an Animal

Bobby tuned harmonica
Guy wearing suit
Looking quite baffled
Wearing clever spectacles

Journalist at table
Gotta lotta nerve
Asked dumb question
Couldn’t recognise Hamlet


Donovan in a room
Crowd of other people
High on Newcastle
Wind catcher blown

Banana in the car
Nico on the right
Blonde on bland
Saint Joan unzipped left

Harmonica wailing
Guitar screaming
Words cascading
The music never failing

Penny on the breaker
A dollar from the maker
Renaissance artist
A hand held palette

Cinema on the Verité
Silhouette howling
Luminous in the dark
Shattering a shadow

A backward clocking
In a frozen mirroring
Chimed a reflection
As Time changed hands.

Written in flames upon flowing wine
There layeth a name writ in travesty
In a drama of such telling significance
Consumed by life’s sweet consequence
And Times eternally chiming paradox
Of perishing so young and so beautifully
Leaving nothing beyond each memory
Shrouded in the dust of fading history
Before emerging into present memory
Caparisoned in the flowing vestments
That truth preserves for future posterity
As each season passes with the leaves
Rock and stone mythology turn to dust
Conscience reveals that the one remains
Playing in the band which never fades
While others fade away into obscurity
It re-emerges to confront the future
Satisfaction doesn’t flourish on trees
And dying is the short fall to get free
From the repertoire of life’s destruction
Deals are struck stone down dead
Bread is money and time is history
Each flows and ebbs so differently
Six strings recording every mystery
Reincarnation’s a repetitive business
Transcribing every soul’s ascension
Through the darkness to eternal Deity
Where death becomes an act of beauty
Like scripture writing its own tragedy
Performed in the theatre of obscurity
Though some are born to die forever
Fame’s the endgame for all eternity
For all those sacrificed so beautifully
Bringing the gift of fire to humanity
As did the poets from another century
And other souls of a shared nativity
Born to struggle for the breath of liberty
Dragged from the cradle of obscurity
And propelled screaming into notoriety
By chance or effortless contrivance
Worlds gasped as they made an entrance
Caparisoned like hells electric princes
Promising everything except salvation
True nobility always honours promises
And this royal court was no exception
Street dancing was the new revolution
The architecture of all future premises
Constructed by the stones of rejection
Adorning the skyline of creation
Now dominates the line of convention
As worlds changed beyond imagination
In the caravanserai of destructiveness
Ringing around the three ring circus
Some souls surrender to the quietus
Falling down in the rising golden dust
As the troupe moves on so inevitably
Grateful to have known the presence
Of the prince of beautiful musicality
That raised an age into a renaissance
Changing time so sweetly magically
Some just wanted to play the blues.

Doomed to live and born to die
Perishing young and so beautiful
Gone before our eyes could realise
Such visions seldom materialise
In solid soul within our universe

Doors that open and doors that close
Behind our life and before our death
Gathering pilgrims from the storm
Trapping travellers between worlds
Neither here nor anywhere beyond

Song is sound that haunts a voice
The singer seldom has the choice
Compelled by force of nature born
Driven by fortune and worldly chance
Soul releases beauty to endless scorn

Angelic upstarts threaten ignorance
By the sheer ferocity of their presence
The consequence of pure existence
Suffers beautifully for deliverance
From the fate of too much substance

Life is shadow upon the ground
In a moving image of light above
Nothing moves beyond its sphere
Heard in truth and written in love
Heaven descends in words of fire

A single sound can change the world
For each in one and each in many
We listen in hope to find life’s measure
Unseen it can echo here forever
Unheard it waits to release its treasure

Sometimes we’re blessed by presence
Raising our world and our essence
To our highest dreams of aspiration
For our soul and every heart beating
On the other side of our imagination

The future drew him to another self
His past remains our present thought
Now art was never to be the same
In quietude or any clamouring storm
Invisible he was Rock’s chameleon

Dwelling now as he does in Père Lachaise
A renaissance prince in a sacred place
Consumed by earth and death’s own grace
And surrounded by a celestial choir
He’s still trying to set the joint on fire.

The mighty lord of all creation
Danced through time and infinite space
Across the barren unlit heavens
Until he reached the chosen place
Where nothing moved and inertia reigned
A universe shackled to silent pain
Without a past and bereft of future
A world of sound unheard and sight unseen
His long locks shimmering with pure light
A threat to endless fathomless night
With a guitar slung by his left side
The silence stared and emptiness glared
And threatened death if he even dared
Disturb the nothingness with that sound
Or illuminate heaven with that hair
The player looked at the glare and said
“Suit yourself and see if I care
I’ll play this thing like you’re not there
That’s why I’m here an’ that’s why I’ll dare
And that’s why I’ve got this long locked hair”
Then struck that chord and made that sound
And shook his long locked luminous crown
Scattering stars across the empty universe
While guitar music filled the empty void
And luminous harmonies blasted ignorance
Like it wasn’t even there or anywhere
A veil was lifted and a leaden cloak fell
Light was everywhere and sound as well
And that’s a story that all can tell
Eden’s Eden but Rock ‘n’ Roll’s creation
An’ the electric guitar damns damnation
The Mighty Lord is a long locked player.

That abstract form in patterned space
Such a glossy shape of fatal ambience
Seamless as a renaissance masterpiece
A perfect camouflage of purring violence

Such is the guise of its killing insouciance
Everything within its finite seeing grace
Is infinitely absorbed by its arrogance
Fashioned fatal in vestments of innocence

This nine-lifed four-limbed feline deity
With the double brace of hearing vision
Multiplying itself in languorous proximity
Fading into landscape of distant singularity
The symmetry of the poet’s infatuation
A creature writ in another hands heaven.

His angelic soul to heaven was drawn
From waters deep as his golden song
Returning hence to where it was born
Remained in fire as his burning flesh
Perished in flames at the water’s edge
When his sacred heart refused to burn
The mourners wept with pouring wine
Upon the fire-sweetened soul of verse
A poet perished in fire wine and water
A transubstantiation from death to life
Much reminiscent of that ancient light
From darkened fears to heavenly flight
Redeemed our souls from endless night
With dreams of love and beauty bright
Outside the domain of sorrowful strife
In death he sang of liberty love and life.

The weeping folds of that woven truth
Hang beautifully plain upon a saviour
Scorned and scourged in purple cloth
Devouring breath in luminous colour

Crossed in pain on that wooden frame
Crowning thorns adorn his golden halo
Compassion hangs in tear filled shame
While women suffer in fearful sorrow

Pierced with steel and proffered vinegar
The driven nails a scourging iron trinity
Denying life with sourest wine writ bitter
Mockery upon a final wooden sanctuary
Cruelty impales our sweetest redemption
Forgiveness is our beautiful resurrection.

When Elvis met Jimi
At the Lonely Waiter
Bringing him drinks
The purple was buzzing
The post was all broken
Returning to sender
Not really an option
The watch was watching
An’ time was almost saying
Excuse me while I kiss
You heartbreaking hotel
What an experience
Amongst the cutlery
An’ the crystal glintings tray
Ahead of Dr John
Reflecting on its surface
In his darker glasses
While Saint Joan
Was making passes
At the other jester
Behind the painted mirror
In the opposite corner
On the other inside
Of stained glass shades
Wrapped around
Equally coloured eyes
Like a matching pair
Of angels on fire
Hoping to light her fire
Before the wine poured in
And the flame was decanted
And she couldn’t get higher
This side of her fire
Where Neil Young never
Gets any longer older
His name is a blessing
Going with his territory
Where pearl sang the blues
She borrowed from Picasso
Before the gold rush happened
And all the haircuts
Vanished 'neath waves vanity
Where the longer is stronger
And ever so fashionable
In a Samson kind of way
Before the hairdressers
Kicked the windows in
The opposite direction
To Frank Sinatra’s hat
And that red red robin
Just kept bobbing along
In such an old fashioned
Very new kind of song
Stuck in the groove
Of fortified reverends
Heading for the exit strategy
And life on the fast track
So easily overtaken
By their Elvis impersonation
That leave the building
Very incognito ergo
It’s how they managed
Just like Rene Descartes
Used to sometimes play
In his laconic kind of way
Before he found that lost
Frank Sinatra hat
The Panama number
With a cute red band
And its jaunty angle
The geometry of stardom
He thought for a moment
Of being ahead an’ a hat of his time
An’ the stained-glass shades
Were so very existential
Tiffany’s lamps were jealous
As John and Paul used to sing
And that very lonely waiter
Only had that lonely tray
Eleanor Rigby refused used to say
Get father Mackenzie out of here
It’s his last chance to be Elvis
He’s innocent of everything
While this is still a building
The Apocalypse left a message
On his answering machine
Screaming get out of here
Architecture’s a threat to survival
There’s a whole lot of shaking
Going on everywhere upstairs
An the basement’s not much safer
Now’s a good time
To write your last letter
An’ send it to your lover
Saying that long goodbye
In the fastest time ever
(Someone cancelled the long player)
And nobody can be trusted
Not even your favourite ******
When the wind stops whispering
An’ you can’t make the distance
Say goodbye to your record collection.

Beauty in the breath and beauty is born
Transcending death and transient scorn
On a cold cold street they left him to die
Profaning his name they just passed by
Poetic flesh and bone upon harder stone
His back to earth with eyes upon eternity
Beckoning his soul to that blessed trinity
His sacred words treasured by humanity
All for love sublime of a dead dead poet
Inspiring the worlds true cherished song
With the passionate colour of that flower
The symbol of a precious love for poetry
In streams that flew on wings of liberty
Blessed upon earth and graced elsewhere
Not that he would ever care to remember
Before or after his death and resurrection
So humbly born a poet prince for a’ that.

His soul enraptured in streams of beauty
Perished in flowing ribbons of aspiration
Struggling for the breath of pure eternity
Written on the water of divine inspiration
Gathered from life’s sweet finite journey
Into realms of undiscovered imagination
His heaven bound soul to earth was born
A nativity in the stable of purest humility
The beautiful guest amidst critical scorn
Struggling for life and liberty’s company
Penning those dreams that dwell forever
On the soul and flesh of living creatures
Delivered from burdening useless sorrow
Unleashed by realms of golden ****** joy
In deaths song he beheld a beautiful dawn.