PROTEST AND PAIN
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No Alcohol in the Churchyard Please!
They Threw Our Lives Away at the Somme
Things Not To Be
Greatest Day
On a crowded beach
Within the mounted cannon's reach
On this greatest day
Guns were quick and eager to slay
In the front of the most front line
As enemies flagged their colours sign
On this greatest day
Horses swept all the warriors away
On the deck of their trusty ship
While subs let loose their sunken slips
On this greatest day
Hope sank to the bottom without delay
In the sanctuary of the mighty keep
As besiegers drummed, beats fast and deep
On this greatest day
Slaughter came quick after months at bay
Alone in that Nagasaki room
Under the pitiless atomic boom
On this greatest day
A city was the one to pay
In every place where stricken stand
Where foe meets foe in any land
On this their greatest day
War and battle have their say
Victory
Victory’s self in no disguise
Claims the field, the loser dies
Victory’s persona takes the glory
Exhorts the toll and tells the story
Victory’s father shaped ahead
Grandfather to the conquered dead
Victory's mother nurtured and nursed
Future's vanquished victims cursed
Victory's son sees every tomorrow
More hearts touched with steel and sorrow
Victory's daughter, the Victor's womb
Breeder of Victory's endless tombs
No Alcohol In The Churchyard Please!
No alcohol in the churchyard please
No drunks drinking neat gin
No litter over the tombstones
This is God’s House - you can’t come in
No ciggie butts outside the church door
No doggies – they’re meant for the bin
No coughing your heart out, go rech somewhere else
This is God’s house - sinning’s a sin
No hyperdermics, no wedding confetti
No losers losing the battle to win
No ifs, no buts, sorry this church is shut
It’s God’s house - no-one comes in
A sign in a Cambridge churchyard
Offshore
Come from a land of Offshore
Deal with forked tongue and want more
Bend the rules and the law
Thus the poor are the poor and remain poor
In Offshore the bottom’s the line
Come on in Darling the water’s divine
Where the rates of return are very sublime
Thus mine is all mine and stays all mine
Offshore they can’t touch what you stash
Haven land can survive any black day or crash
Where companies hide in a snap and a flash
Thus my cash is my cash and stays all my cash
A Subject Not a Citizen
In the past-obsessed world of Britain
Where fear stalks foreign men
I remain one of His Majesty’s subjects
And not a citizen
Stardust of Royalty lingers
From Trafalgar Square to Big Ben
I’m subject to the Royal Prerogative
And not a citizen
Jubilees come and go
In the land of a denizen
But I must still bow my head
Because I’m not a citizen
This stupidity of Kings and Queens
When will it ever end, when?
Oh to be equal not reigned on
And at last a citizen
I Cannot Stand There Anymore
I cannot stand there anymore
Trees swathing hillsides
Plains brushing horizons
Coasts kissing oceans
Greens lighting uplands
Earth overlapping skies
Blue waters of imagination
But I cannot stand there anymore
I cannot sit there anymore
Sensing the wonder world
Feeling the planet grow
Reaping harvest time
Living breathing seasons
Laughing freedom days
Resting calming nights
But I cannot sit there anymore
I cannot go there anymore
An animal like all others
Part of life around me
Organic and original
Flowers of our species
Seeded in the ground and air
Destined to return to dust
But I cannot go there anymore
I cannot walk there anymore
Mystery paths by sunlight
Homeward under the moon
Running rivers rambling
Mountain rocky lines
Barefoot over sand-dunes
Foam feet in the shallows
But I cannot walk there anymore
I cannot stand there anymore
Blues and greens now blackened
Winds burn ash and cinder
Lethal rains hot with acid
Risen seas the drowning Kings
Bereft bereft by human hand
Barren barren barren lands
And I cannot stand there anymore
Torrents
The world’s heating up
More water in the air
It’s chucking it down
Yet the world it doesn’t care
The oceans are warmer
Trouble from the seas
Weather’s going mad
Yet the world it doesn't believe
Poles are getting hotter
Bears adrift on flows
Glaciers melting away
Yet the world it hardly knows
Cold snap of reality
Less time than people say
Earth without any memory
For tomorrows without a today
Invisible
Invisible
‘I the eye
I the recorder passing by’
Expectations too great
In the visibility of the world
Charisma across the room
The lucky dippers
The head turn flippers
Remaining invisible
Invisible
Never seen
As if never been
Keeping hopes alive
Though no footholds hold
The preferred preferred
The voice unheard
The shadow leaving no shadow
The one no-one follows
Invisible
Invisible
Out of the light
Out of sight
Clamouring at the window
While the curtains are closed
On the ledge
Out there on the edge
The one leaving no trace
No sound, no smell, no face
Invisible
Those
Those great houses that spurned you once
Those sumptuous places unattained
Those azure villas no one invited you to
Those demigods who never deigned
Those wondrous palaces shut off from view
Those golden invitations never gained
Those secret delights not for a savage dunce
Not for a hum-drum pleb so stained.
They Threw Our Lives Away at the Somme
They threw our lives away at the Somme
We dropped by rank on rank
We fell to bullet, mortar, bomb
Such days when innocence sank
A million died in the mud of the Somme
A million futures wasted for nil
A million lives over and done
Swallowing war’s most bitter pill
Things Not To Be
Shots never rung, never shot
Tips never slid, they did not
He did not die that famous man
The children lived in Aberfan
Ship kept sailing in the icy night
Plane stayed aloft, yes that was right
Fifteen hundred souls survived to tell
The fliers landed, they never fell
Towers stayed up standing high
Terror pilots passed them by
Ground Zero you would never see
When things that were were not to be