West Country & Western

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West Country & Western

I was born where the Avon bends,
The Tamar darts and the Dart up-ends,
In a parrick you might miss at night,
Where the Otter and the Parrett fight.

I was born where the stones stand-up,
When my Pa taught me to long-man up,
To roll my arrs and burr my talk,
And fly my mane like a horse of chalk.

You might-be even hear the fiddle-folk
Beneath the sunset glowing cliffs of red –
You may just hear the bleat and croak
From herds of raw-wools singing low,
And spinning-out their thread.
From this side of the Barrow,
So it’s said,
Tomorrow’s days ahead.

So come and take a trip with me
Upon the Highway 303,
The outer-limits of outdoors
Await between the downs and moors.

It’s said we don’t like strangers round these parts –
By grockles, I’ll be bound…
Don’t fret, we hamlet folk won’t fuss,
Cause who could be more strange than us?

You might-be even hear a banjo twang
Beneath the moonraked moonlight, down our way.
You may just hear a lively gang
Of applejacks upon Midsummer night,
If you should stray.
From this side of the Severn,
So they say,
All Heaven comes to play.

Jungle Familiar

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Jungle Familiar

“Here in the Amazon, expect to see creatures
So unlike anything you’ve seen back at home.”
So the tour-guide promised, in our cabins in the jungle,
That were concrete-free with no trace of styrofoam.

Twenty structures or so, I reckoned,
And only reached by the river – no roads.
With the sounds of the rainforest right on our doorstep,
With monkeys and parrots and cicadas and toads.

But…around the huts, some things were looking
Just a little too familiar – too much like Blighty,
Like dandelions, growing wherever they can –
I’m unure – should they abhor or delight me ?

I heard some chickens in a coop, and honey-bees –
And I’m willing to bet they’re the same damn species
As thrive in Britain, like the white-bloomed clover,
And the stands of reeds on the river’s beaches.

So, on our way here we passed through Manaus,
With its pigeons and its mallards and its sparrows and its rats.
Now, I didn’t see those out here in the jungle,
But I do see a peregrine falcon – fancy that !

And there goes the buzzing of a common house fly,
And there’s a daddy longlegs – and a cockroach on the roam.
And a cat to catch mice, and a dog to keep guard,
And the humans, of course.  We’ve some of those at home…

Beyond the Creek

Beyond the Creek

How can the World’s End by in Chelsea ?
Is Zone 2 beyond the pale ?
Some claim that further Westwards is Fulham,
But just cos we’ve got legs, there’s no need to pull ’em….
Clearly the whole world stops in Chelsea,
Where only the fools and the buses sail –
For who takes a trip past the Cemet’ry’s ridge ?
Or dares to cross over the Stamford Bridge ?
But wait…are there council tenants in Chelsea ?
Have Thameside views been built at scale ?
Is the King’s Road home to the oik and churl ?
Now that truly is the end of the world…

Albion Away

I asked AI to have them looking up at the cathedral, but here i think they’ve just spotted a pigeon…

Albion Away

(A Tale from the 80s)

From teenage holidays in Spain,
Back when they were the latest thing,
To Saturdays on terraces,
To sing-out for our lads.
Three-nil, five-one, always winning,
Charging down the wing –
First the League, and then to conquer Europe,
Further than our dads.

Rome in April, that was special,
Even though we lost,
And Bucharest, beyond the Iron Curtain –
Why resist the pull ?
For how else could we working-class boys
Learn of santé, skål, and proost,
And countless castles and bazaars
In Bern, Zagreb, and Istanbul,

Our girlfriends likely had scant int’rest
In our fate this season,
Yet they’d sometimes come along to see
The other-worldly show.
And finding out the other fans were just like us
Was always pleasing,
Drinking with the Finns and Greeks
From Sparta Rapid Dynamo.

I wasn’t sure about the title of this one – I didn’t want to suggest any specific team.  I did consider Avalon Away, but that sounded awkward.  And in the end, I can only think of two Albion teams, plus a couple of Scottish ones, and none of them one is exactly renowned for their European prowess…

Industrious Insects

Industrious Insects

The busy bees of Manchester
Are busy hoverflies –
They flit about the branches there,
In black-and-gold disguise.
Perhaps they’re all more working-class,
Republicans in tile and glass,
Who swing their clubs to earn their brass
Across the smoky skies.

They may not make the honey,
And they may not make the wax –
But they pollinate the money,
And they pay their aphid tax.
They have no queens, they have no hives,
They live their solitary lives –
But close together, each one thrives
On cotton, silk, and flax.

Timid Tectons

The Basel earthquake of 1356 by the ever-busy Anon

Timid Tectons

Britain sits at the heart of its plate,
So far from the faultlines, far from volcanoes.
Though Arthur’s Seat and the Giant’s Causeway celebrate
How we once had those
Britain sits where the crusts are thick,
Though they used to bend, as the Great Glen shows.
And Lincoln lost its cathedral spire, when a final kick
Gave some glancing blows.

Head up West and See the Lights

You won’t believe how many times I had to ask AI to genenrate this image before it managed to spell it right…

Head up West and See the Lights

The neon lights of old Piccadilly-dilly
Used to be so bright and silly-silly,
But the screens have sprung-up willy-nilly –
Boringly displayed.

Now there’s nothing but advert-a-go-go,
Shouting products from ho-hum to so-so.
Art and style ?  I’m afraid that’s a no-no –
Over and over replayed.

Sell more junk food, flog more bling-bling,
Scream more news, from Bronx to Beijing-zhing,
Punching eyeballs, all for kerching-ching –
The goods must be obeyed.

The hungry billboards are always on-on
The Eiffel Tower needs a new Citroën-tron.
Buy buy buy till the stuff’s all gone-gone –
As long as the profits get made.

Christmas in the Desert

Photo by Walid Ahmad on Pexels.com

Christmas in the Desert

Working abroad in the Eighties,
Those were strange December days –
When the office was open as usual,
And the Sun beat down in a haze.
But a few of us Johnny Foreigners
Exchanged a card and a smile –
With a token string of tinsel about our desks,
For the extra mile.
We offered round choc’lates to hesitant colleagues
And kept stopping work for a chat.
Someone must have produced a cracker,
For they wore a paper hat.
We would have shared a tot or two,
As we briefly engaged in hugs –
Though booze was out of the question, of course,
So we chinked our coffee mugs.
The world was becoming more American,
More awareness year-by-year –
And so each time, another trapping of the season
Would appear.
We’d phone our fam’lies later, not yet,
As the locals were called to pray –
But we hummed a carol in the long afternoon,
As the town got on with its day.

Paleo-Arctic

Pterosaur Snow Day by Nix Draws Stuff

Paleo-Arctic

Land first drifted this far North
In the Late Devoniun
And life had caught a ride as well,
Beneath the midnight sun.
In hothouse times, the land was free
Of frigid glacial scars,
And life was thriving in the dark
Beneath the midday stars.
And the jungles circled round the top
Right through the Pliocene –
When the brownest bear was polar,
And the Northern land was green.
In a million years from now, they’ll marvel how
Our current life clings on –
But there we are, continuous,
Since the Late Devonion.

Hotspots & Coldsores

Hotspots & Coldsores

“It isn’t the resident tenants that make a city ugly, but rather the absentee planners.”

The Blueprint Bugle

Vienna is bursting with tourists,
While Croydon is thoroughly dead –
We all know why the one has the more is,
And one is a ghetto instead.
One has buildings of beauty
That people will pay to admire –
The other is screaming out “Nuke me !,
And raze all my ugly in fire.”

Oh sure, that intangible culture takes many a-century
To embed and to reign –
But if your town looks more like a penitentiary,
Then you’re waiting in vain.

Venice is sinking in people,
While Stevenage wallows in grime –
We all know why the latter is feeble,
And looks like the scene of a crime.
One has buildings of grandeur,
That travellers travel to see,
The other is yelling-out slander
With a nihilistic glee.

And it doesn’t take castles and squares and cathedrals
To still have plenty of charms –
But it does take some sense, and lack of upheavals
From brutalists swinging their arms.

Paris is famous for beauty,
And Slough is famous for bombs –
We all know why the one is a cutie,
And one won’t get asked to the prom.
One has buildings for humans,
That are sculpted, and tiled, and embossed.
The other is built for consumers
With the ornaments cut-out for cost.

We know it deep down in our footings, this concrete-clad craze
Is simply so unrefined.
If it ain’t Manhattan, then high-rise ain’t for the holidays,
But for the daily grind.

Please note that for the rhythm to work in the second verse, ‘century’ needs to be given it’s full there syllables, and ‘penitentiary’ it’s full six.