We don’t really understand

How atoms behave;

Or infinity;

Or how winds carry the seasons -

Like ‘Olde April ‘ with it’s 'showers sweet' !

Yes, I’ve felt them...



The clean stinging scent of rain

Scratching at the earth,

Pelting aromatic plants,

Condensing the smells of seas, winds, continents;

Infusing the sum of all these aromas in its perfumery,

Marketing it: April, again.



And Eliot said,

There be April,

'The cruellest month'.

Oh my (!)

Appealing April, with its sunny flavours,

Cascades of cats & dogs,

And dead-eye jack,

Firing frosts that just might spend the tender herb.



It was snowing in April,

And Easter was early, that year

When I took Schrödinger’s cat walking

On a leash, And April was still new,

And capable of shocking...



Now any month - could bring pitiless ruin.

The year annually

Out of step with migratory designs,

Throwing epithets out of its greenstick pram,

Its months in disarray ,

No-one knows what’s going on...





The drunkard earth sups up it’s own tears,

Reeling in its spin,

Until,

Saturated,

It can drink no more,

And every dip fills,

Every meadow spills,

Banks overflowing,

Its resolve drowning,

Questions washing

Up like a tide of interrogative curiosity.



OK – so I am really hiding in my acres...

At least I can tell - it’s April !



Enquiring lily-of-the-valley,

Puts up green periscopes.

Peering through the sodden grass,

The remnants of last year’s soggy leaves,

Cosset primrose & ramsons.

Daffodils are past their best, but soldier on

Like hungover squaddies,

Snowdrops have fat capsules where white drops shone,

Hellebores have been up since the crack of time -

Good movers - they could dance all spring!

Dingles are glinting green with native bluebell leaves,

And their mophead mates have muscled in the garden,

Quiet violets lounge on the field’s chaise long,

Coy, understated,

How British!

Oxlips and cowslips join the brave primroses

Who have been on the razzle for weeks.

White & purple lilac in green cassocks,

Will soon burst out

Like kiss-o-grams.

Boughs hung with clematis,

Still tiny shoots like birds on wires.



I am giving a prize for the first celandine on my patch;

Each little celandine - Rannunculus ficaria - is

A miniature sun uttering: Oi! You up there, old currant bun!

Here’s the template for a perfect summer sky !

The party starts at ten to three.

On the second floor,room twenty two
two vicars who had come down from Crewe were wondering just what to wear, to the shindig going on down there.
They collided,both decided to put on crimson frilly frocks,this was not a 'do' for cassocks or for smocks.

Room forty four up on the forth,was Lucy Ann,a double barrelled name of course,a horsey type who came by invite to liven lively up the night.

In number ten slept teacup Ken,who had never once imbibed,the porter was slipped a twenty,but was bribed to keep his big mouth shut, as ties were cut and Ken found Zen in a brandy glass,
and discovered parties were a gas.

The police arrived to room fifty five and found Miss Sterling doing the jive around the severed head of Fred the cook,
poor Fred never had any kind luck.

There is no escape from the party at Lancaster Gate and those who come are those who'll die
but the party is so flamin' good I'll try to sneak in,got to take a peek in room number twenty seven,where it's said,that the lady there can show you several kinds of heaven before you meet your doom.
Got to get in, get a room,check in time expires at noon.
I shall no doubt expire,naked by the fire in
room, one o one.

There was always an odour of sin around
The nave of that ancient church,
I knew of it as a choirboy,
I didn’t have far to search,
The smell welled up in the vestry,
A sulphur and brimstone tang,
It leached on into our cassocks
When the bell for the matins rang.

The priest, he was old and doddering
And didn’t look ripe for sin,
Old Father Coates may have sowed his oats
With nobody looking in,
But sin was there for a century,
It wasn’t of recent time,
The stories told of a Father Golde
I heard from a friend of mine.

Back in the days when the church was strong
And it ruled the lives of all,
A Father Golde was the priest of old
And preached of the devil’s fall,
When women came to confess their sins
And spoke of their evil deeds,
The priest took them at the altar there
In sin, and down on their knees.

The Nuns attached to the convent were
Obedient to his whim,
And many a cold and frosty night
He would call a sister in,
Her place, he said, was to warm his bed
To deter his chills, and ague,
And many a child was born in dread
To the parish, since the plague.

But one day after confessional
He had ***** a Colonel’s wife,
Who came to him with her petty sin
And described what it was like,
The priest, inflamed by her words and deeds
Had her pressed by the vestry door,
And who could know what she had to show
But the flagstones on the floor.

A troop of soldiers had marched on in
To assuage the Colonel’s rage,
The moment the wife had gone back home
And told of the priest’s outrage,
They seized the priest and they ran him through
With a sword right to the hilt,
Then tied him onto the cross outside
Where a sign outlined his guilt.

And every year on the first of June
You can hear the feet outside,
Marching up to the old church door,
The day that the father died.
A sense of sin that is coming in
As the church doors swing apart,
And blood appears on the altar in
The shape of an evil heart.

David Lewis Paget

They cry about heaven
Even as they transform skin
Into sin, punishable by death
Or ****, or disfigurement
Sent by the devil for sure
Wearing tonsures and cassocks
Causing their own brand of havoc
Ruled by insensitivity
Because we are the enemy
No longer human, doomed
To suffer the ravages
Of their bad ***** training
And lack of discipline
Over and over again
On playgrounds as kids.

They did it all over again
When in uniform, warmed
By the glow of popular bigotry
Idiocy blessed by some dope,
Some Protestant proto-pope
Who thinks God has time
To engage in crime in his name
So they can blame him instead.
Little else in their head
They steal land, and brand people
Burn people, assault people
And do their best to make them feel
Their god, their way is not real
And is not worth keeping.

Sleeping at night, nobody knows how
Now that they have shown their colors
To their brothers and sisters;
That they will **** mothers and fathers
And babies and the land
And think it just grand
Because they got paid
As they laid waste,
Turned the gardens to paste
Between the toes of evil.
We the boll, they the weevil;
They mashed us under their feet
No thought of being discreet,
We were fodder for their hatriotism.

Not patriotism.
That is impossible
And totally improbable
Once you’ve sold your soul
To Old Nick and his minions,
Hell’s hand-picked denizens
Who look just like your neighbor;
They labor at jobs, like you do
And look a lot like you, too,
Especially if you make excuses
To commit abuses
And blame it on god.
Savor the rod
And abuse the child.
Isn’t hatred wild?
Always on hand.

poppies and chamomile bloomed roads,
covered in warm dust... such a pity
that these are the only ones left
to be pointing towards the eternal city,

where marble and stone still stand
on places gods used to walk bare-footed,
where belief was more than just demand,
until cassocks have had ancient ways sooted.

A place where manner was turned into art
And polymaths emerged from genius creation,
where Latin blood spills from heart to mart
In a continuous state of vibrant elation.

where green is the colour of oils and lust
and the sun can burn to a lemon flavour,
and the sand on the front of the boot is black
and the wine is more than a bitter-sweet savour...

There, where a walk through square paved markets
is bursting with hand-made stories,
where scratching through history's pride
would always end in timeless glory...

i didn't find G-d in study houses
when i went for him to search
nor on the lecterns of pulpit rabbis
nor neath arches of the church

i found him not amongst the folds
of priests' robes and their cassocks,
nor in design of braid and gold
of curtains and the hassocks

i didn't hear him in the cries
of prayers, no, nor their sighs
nor in the swirling of the dervish
or the mass or jumah service

but when i lifted the old man's bags,
helped a beggar in dirt and rags,
gave bread 'n shelter to the drifter,
then i heard His voice, a whisper.

I bustle along the old wooden pews,
With their splinters of wood and rusting screws,
Scurrying, hurrying, sniffing around,
Searching for food in this haven I've found,
Food is so scarce, in God's humble house,
That's why I'm so poor, a lowly church mouse.

I run free down the aisle in darkness of night,
When no one's around, not a soul in sight,
O'er well-worn inscriptions written on tombs,
Into the transept and quiet little rooms,
Rooms where old cassocks are neatly racked,
And velvety hassocks haphazardly stacked.

No one comes into this church anymore,
The bells never ring - no one opens the door,
The choir doesn't meet for practice each night,
The old vicar calling is a rare sight,
It seems they've abandoned God's lovely house,
And I'm doomed to die, a lonely church mouse.