TASCAM DR-05

mr just like you

precious to you

ship of fools

someday soon

Fire in the ash of mind
as you walk by the hospital.
Leaves on the wet pavement.
Trees are dripping.

The green
of that traffic light
invisibly hurts.
Cars whip by,
lorries terrorize.
All the rush and roar
you are not part of.

You cross,
and make it.

In the café,
take your crack-lined 
mug
to the window seat,
rub a hole in the glass,
see a face
you used
to work with.

dark day afternoon

In the fading garden
a blackbird sings
on the shed roof.

The roof lets in rain,
but now it is not raining.

The bird could be my father
who also liked to sing.

Orange beak
opens
closes.

My bitterness diminishes
in that movement,
in that song.

come back

Rosa Canina

The Turks call you bird nose.
The Swedes call you stone rose.
Across the Steppe of Russia
you are the thorn bearer.

We call you dog rose.
We call you briar rose. 
In the age of gallows and fire
you were the witches’ briar.

Your petals gave respite
from a mad dog’s bite.
A tincture of your scent
performed emollient.

The syrup from your hips
passed over children’s lips.
In times of war and need
you fed a country’s seed.

Dog-berry in our dog days,
may your pink modesty amaze
through the heat of afternoons,
down numberless Junes.

I would walk up the lane
to visit you again.
Yet that lane is deep and shading
where dog roses are fading.

rosa canina

I don’t want no reset 

I want a great awakening

messing with our preset

they got me shakening

oh, yeah

I don’t want no reset

I want the great awakening

want the great awakening

a great awakening

if only I could get up in time

out of time

in time

out of time

in time

out of time

in time

for the great awakening

the great awakening

the great away ay ay kening

can’t you feel that it’s happening

don’t you know that it’s happening

the great awakening

piece by piece

person by person

word by word

even the birds 

or maybe especially the birds know 

that it’s time to be wakening

yeah – but first I’m gonna have a long nap

and wake up refreshed

goodnight

night

the great awakening

The bidsong is fairly quiet in the recording, so would benefit from having sound up a little bit higher :-)

Birdsong in Somerset, 7th May 2023, evening.

Wordless


I didn’t find it in the whiskey glass,
that glowing countryside of peace that stays
beyond the studied kiss, the loveless pass.
I found it in her awkwardness, her ways
of being neat, of sitting on my lap
when I would least expect, and of her back,
soft freckled, as her hands turned on the tap
in me. And now it is her girlfulness I lack.
I didn’t find it in the Spanish wine
I poured into her mouth, then from my own,
stream red into her throat, the liquid line 
that sought the heart of her she had not shown.
These books surround my drying skin and I
cannot find words to write upon her sky.

Wordless

White boats 

Some last things kept
in two boxes, wrapped in cloth
and tied with string;
we let all fall to dark water
on the last day of a year;
and the river took them,
rushing like a daughter
to a falling star.

The iron bridge
is trod in kind,
like that bridge
in far country
before a war
that made me.

Your grandmother calls
a child in you 
back for tea and family,

as my grandmother 
called her daughter
to come from a river
and was not heard,
not then,
now not ever.

White boats,
gleefully awkward,
ride the black plundering
stream and turn
and are not snagged
and live in flow
until time releases
our soft light minds.

White Boats

St Wulstan’s

This nature reserve was once 
an infirmary for American soldiers,
then a TB sanatorium in the fifties,
finally a psychiatric unit
from sixty-one until asylum was reckoned
a room in a tower block.

Here is a walk called Matron Walk; 
old trees and paths, and woods fenced off.
They hold dangerous substances 
these woods. We are warned.

No ghosts of battle-scarred GI’s
crouch behind hedges.
No blood-coughing robe-wearers
hunch upon the crumbling benches.
No moon-faced lunatics
knot fingers of despair 
at the verdict of the heights.

We throw coins into a frail stream. 
Wish, privately.

The conservationists let piles of timber rot naturally,
encouraging frogs, toads, snakes, beetles, and beneficial types of fungi.

To our relief, there are no remnants of Nissen huts,
no distant thrum of the shock machine.
No reek of unwashed gowns to linger in our hair.
Chewing gum and nylons are not to be had.

A Weimaraner poodle chases air, bounds at vacancy,
faithful to its own game. 

No ghosts but us.

And one day, when people have spare hearts,
and can live three centuries, if unlucky, 
no one will know we came here,
on a day they used to call Thursday,
so long, long ago.

St Wulstan's

The world of numbers crumbled into night.
I take the lane that leads to the round wood,
and find the tree that hanged a man when I 
was small.  Behind a hedge, I saw him do it,
fascinated, as he swung and paddled 
with his boots in air that gave no purchase.

Too young for papers, I never read the
piece on eight that spoke of marriage failed,
recent depression, three daughters left,
and parents too distraught to comment.

I touch the bark, and know it happened here,
and I did nothing, not lift his legs nor
climb to cut the flex he did it with.
Better to think it was a childhood dream.
From high branches I hear an owl scream.

returning to the scene

Early one morning in May I set out,
And nobody I knew was about.
I'm bound away for ever,
Away somewhere, away for ever.

There was no wind to trouble the weathercocks.
I had burnt my letters and darned my socks.

No one knew I was going away,
I thought myself I should come back some day.

I heard the brook through the town gardens run.
O sweet was the mud turned to dust by the sun.

A gate banged in a fence and banged in my head.
'A fine morning, sir', a shepherd said.

I could not return from my liberty,
To my youth and my love and my misery.

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet,
The only sweet thing that is not also fleet.
I'm bound away for ever,
Away somewhere, away for ever.

Early one Morning  - by Edward Thomas

dearest deer

i haven't seen you in some days

seems so long since you're away

come back

come back

my deer


you lent some magic to my eyes

were you an angel in disguise

come back 

come back

my deer


in the centre of your field

one look at you and i was healed

no predator could catch your grace

or cloud the sunlight on your face


at the dusk and at the dawn

i search for you and find you gone

come back

oh just once 

my deer


i never touched your golden hide

i watched you stepping from inside

come back

appear

my deer

beneath the skies the summer set

you are the one I won't regret 

unto the spinney soft you ran

oh what becomes of deer or man


into the night you drift like dream

I see you drinking from a stream

my deer

my deer

my dearest deer

my deer

oh, my deer

my dearest deer (rpt and fade)


*

dearest deer

Angel Song / Don't be afraid 

d  c g  d

you're in 
enemy territory
whenever you step
out that door

you've been
fighting an enemy
that no one else
ever saw

f g   f  g

don't be afraid     
angels protect you

in the night in the day
angels are with you

g  d c g d

can't you feel their soul light in your hair   
and the blue cloak of protection
manifest the/a gold bright in your stare
and the white rose of invocation  of  (c)    invocation    (g) invocation

under
the Tor of Avalon
lies a king
sleeping still

you wonder
where it's flowing from
this breath
beneath a hill

don't be afraid
the Goddess protects you
from the land beyond the grave
the great mother resurrects you

can't you feel her soul light in your eyes
and touch her green gown of redemption
manifest the clear heart of the wise
as you walk a deer path to ascension   (c)  to ascension    

g d c d     
you are ascended   you are ascended    you are ascended  
and all is mended

*

(went a bit loud and too near the mic of dictaphone in places, I think - ah, well)

angel song / don't be afraid

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
         My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
         One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
         But being too happy in thine happiness,—
                That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
                        In some melodious plot
         Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
                Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
         Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
         Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
         Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
                With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
                        And purple-stained mouth;
         That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
                And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
         What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
         Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
         Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
                Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
                        And leaden-eyed despairs,
         Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
                Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
         Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
         Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
         And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
                Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
                        But here there is no light,
         Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
                Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
         Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
         Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
         White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
                Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
                        And mid-May's eldest child,
         The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
                The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
         I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
         To take into the air my quiet breath;
                Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
         To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
                While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
                        In such an ecstasy!
         Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
                   To thy high requiem become a sod.

(NB could not put the final two stanzas here due to limit on characters in description)  

painting - Keats listening to a Nightingale - by Joseph Severn

Ode to a Nightingale   -   by John Keats

break us or make us  (an extemporised song)

simple love  (capo 3)

been lookin out my window  lookin out my window for so long  am7   g  
sitting in the shadow    sitting in the shadow  of a song     am7  g
dont try to cheer me up  c  d  g em
im happy when im lonely  am7 c   d
bring on by your simple love     c  d  g  em
and we'll talk about tomorrow    am7  c   d (low)

the years have been flying,  days have been dying   they're gone
so many lost to us, and those who live through us, undone
heading for some further shore
no silver will we need there
It's simple love we may adore
such gold light of our sorrow

simple love  (song fragment)

out of rope

C I miss the sun
Am don’t know where he’s gone
F but not as much as I G7 miss you

C I stay indoors
Am pace these floors
F Forgot what it is to G7 kiss you

Em I know time is F running out
Em don’t know what this F song’s about
except G7 growing old
dm7 growing G cold x2

C There’s less time ahead
than Em what’s gone before. 
F What will we do 
with the G7 years left in store?

C Use them or lose them, 
Em that’s what they say. 
F Keep on breathing
till G7 that judgement day 

C And I don’t want F hope
C I won’t F despair
C am out of F rope
but I don’t G7 care

for these C changing F times
the C digital F stew
I C read the F signs 
to get a G7 clue

Em Just another empty F weekend. 
Em Nothing to do but F sleep. 
Em These dark and F wintry days. 
Em How slowly, how mercilessly they F creep. 

Fmaj7 I can’t make the day G anew; Am
Am has it all run out at G last?
Fmaj7 All is silent in this G listless Am room.
Am I live with shadows of the G past.
Of the past  F G

(repeat ‘there’s less time ahead’ section + add)
No, I don’t want hope / I won’t despair
am out of rope / but I don’t care /
I just don’t F (G bass) care. (E shape one fret up, soft)

out of rope

g Waiting for the bathroom to bm heat up
c so I can have a g spruce.

g Sitting at this table in the bm main room
in my c jumper the colour of which is g puce.

It’s d Saturday night in an c English g village
and c no buses am7 run this d late

g It’s Saturday c night, and g I’ve been em7 meditating
on the c state of my am7 life c
and the am7 state d of the g state

saturday night in an english village

am here for you 

(includes a mash-up from Ephesians 6:12 in second verse)


(g) let the peace come 
(c) that passes under (g) standing
(c) beyond the need of (g) striving
(d) (c) oh, let the peace (g) come.

(g) let the rain fall 
(c) upon the desert (g) aching
(c) on hearts forever (g) breaking
(d) (c) oh, let the sweet rain (g) fall

(em) I’ve been waiting to (d) tell you
(em) that we have finally (d) made it (c) through

(em) I’ve been longing to (d) love you
(em) in the way that you (d) need me (c) to. 

(am7) am here for (g) you
(repeat spoken)



we don’t wrestle 
against flesh and blood that’s ours
but principalities and powers
oh, yeah, the darkness of this world

in every high place
the spiritually wicked
the iniquity of rulers
oh, yeah, the darkness of this world


I’ve been waiting to tell you
that we have finally made it through

I’ve been longing to love you
in the way that you need me to. 

am here for you
(repeat spoken)



in this garden
stillness falls upon us
nothing here could wrong us
oh, mm, the mystery of your eyes

flows the fountain
under light from heaven
the moon a silver crescent
oh, mm, a kiss that never dies
I’ve been waiting to tell you
that we have finally made it through

I’ve been longing to hold you
in the way that you taught me to.

am here for you.

am here for you.

am here for you.

am here for you

adieu adieu

(em) back to balance 
a gate in the (c) day

(em) Ten of Swords
at the end of a (c) play

(g) (the) purpose of the (c) cross
(g) (the) pain of our (c) Lord

(g) I don’t know what I’m (c) doing 
or not (bm) doing, of (am7) course

(f) how to get back – (g) back to where? back to where?
(f) how to get back – (g) back to where

thy (c) plaintive (g) anthem (f) fades
(c) adieu (g) adieu (f) adieu
in (c) those next (g) valley (f) glades 
and (c) you and (g) you and (f) you

love to drift
through the clouds

far above
the worlds below

(the) blood of the lamb
(the) promise of the seed 

I don’t know what I’m thinking 
or not thinking, indeed

how to get back – back to where? back to where?
how to get back – back to where

thy plaintive anthem fades
adieu adieu adieu
in those next valley-glades 
and you and you and you

clock the seconds 
afore they go

reconnect 
to the flow

tender is the night 
on a winding mossy way

in love with easeful death 
yet still wanting to stay
how to get back – back to where? back to where?
how to get back – back to where

thy plaintive anthem fades
adieu adieu adieu
in those next valley glades 
and you and you and you

split the heart
of the tree

divided self 
one, two, three

(the) nightingale’s repose 
her last song on the air 

I don’t know why I’m sensing 
but not seeing the rose 

how to get back – back to where? back to where?
how to get back – back to where

thy plaintive anthem fades
adieu adieu adieu
in those next valley glades 
and you and you and you (et vous et vous et vous)

(fade out on adieu adieu adieu x 3)

NB
(uses some lines and variation of lines from Keats's Ode to a Nightingale: 'thy plaintive anthem fades'/ 'adieu adieu'/ 'next valley glades' / 'tender is the night' / 'winding mossy way' / 'in love with easeful death')

adieu adieu

Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike;
Eat I must, and sleep I will, — and would that night were here!
But ah! — to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!
Would that it were day again! — with twilight near!

Love has gone and left me and I don't know what to do;
This or that or what you will is all the same to me;
But all the things that I begin I leave before I'm through, —
There's little use in anything as far as I can see.

Love has gone and left me, — and the neighbors knock and borrow,
And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse, —
And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow
There's this little street and this little house.

Ashes of Life -  by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I had a dream three walls stood up wherein a raven bird
Against the walls did beat himself and was this not absurd?

For sun and rain beat in that cell that had its fourth wall free
And daily blew the summer shower and the rain came presently

And the pretty summer time and all the winter too
That foolish bird did beat himself till he was black and blue.

Rouse up, rouse up, my raven bird, fly by the open wall
You make a prison of a place that is not one at all.

I took my raven by the hand, Oh come, I said, my Raven,
And I will take you by the hand and you shall fly to heaven.

But oh he sobbed and oh he sighed and in a fit he lay
Until two fellow ravens came and stood outside to say:

You wretched bird, conceited lump
You well deserve to pine and thump.

See, now a wonder, mark it well
My bird rears up in angry spell,

Oh do I then? he says and careless flies
O'er flattened wall at once to heaven’s skies,

And in my dream I watched him go
And I was glad, I loved him so,

Yet when I woke my eyes were wet
To think Love had not freed my pet,

Anger it was that won him hence
As only Anger taught him sense.

Often my tears fall in a shower
Because of Anger’s freeing power.

Anger's Freeing Power - by Stevie Smith

You are no longer young,
Nor are you very old.
There are homes where those belong.
You know you do not fit
When you observe the cold
Stares of those who sit

In bath-chairs or the park
(A stick, then, at their side)
Or find yourself in the dark
And see the lovers who,
In love and in their stride,
Don't even notice you.

This is a time to begin
Your life. It could be new.
The sheer not fitting in
With the old who envy you
And the young who want to win,
Not knowing false from true,

Means you have liberty
Denied to their extremes.
At last now you can be
What the old cannot recall
And the young long for in dreams,
Yet still include them all.

Accepted - by Elizabeth Jennings

san diego seranade - tom waits (cover)

soft rain and birds on 22nd September 2024 morning

Lucy Letby is innocent. This song is in the voice of one of her malignant persecutors (Dr Stephen Brearey), doing a Dylanesque kind of song, and thereby revealing the truth of the lie.  Free Lucy Letby now! Lucy is innocent!

LYRICS

They call me Brearey, I’m dreary, not cheery, I’m dour  
I was working as a doctor, hour by hour
it was up  there by Chester, where I plied my trade
let me tell you my tale of the mess I have made

things started going from bad to far worse
I liked to bully the nurses, boy I could curse
didn’t do no more than two rounds a week
Ravi was on the telly and Gibbs was asleep

then I came upon a solution
I’d build me a Drawer of Doom
put the blame on nice miss Lucy
for every death, every crash, from June

dr B,  Holt and Saladi 
they’d all join in the campaign
even Dr ZA and the juniors
man they sure would bring the pain

we took our demands to Kelly, Powell & Rees
said you got to move nurse Letby cos we ain't too pleased
they asked us for proof, but proof had we none
we just wanted her gone for the good things she'd done

we like our nurses obedient, we like a good sport
if your dob us in on Datix, hell don’t you get caught
or go blabbing about our failures to the old CQC
the blower of the whistle was that pesky Lucy

and all that summer and autumn
I was adding to my Drawer of Doom
putting pressure on the management
to send Lucy to the dark side of the moon

Though the post mortems showed natural causes
we knew we had offered poor care
Hawdon and McPartland found nothing of note
do you really think we’d be fair 

we pushed Chambers' hand for the young lady’s exclusion
sent good miss Lucy to the Island of Lost Souls
even though it was all a malicious illusion 
we never guessed we’d be dragged over coals

miss Lucy was brave she took out a grievance
made us seven say sorry for all we had done
Chambers drew a line, and said now don’t you cross it
we couldn’t abide that miss Lucy had won

so I rummaged in my Drawer of Doom
and Ravi said she was in the room
when a tube it was removed
and his nightmares would never be soothed

miss Lucy was coming back from Ibiza
when we made our final strike
brought in the cuntstables, oh man they were fools
they would swallow each one of our lies
every one of our lies

so if you got you a problem
gotta build you a Drawer of Doom
if you need some witch-burning done
Brearey’s the man for you
said Brearey’s the man for you 
you know Brearey’s the man for you

Brearey, Miss Lucy, and the Drawer of Doom

A song in honour of Nurse Lucy Letby - who is clearly innocent, and needs to be freed NOW.

watermelon tourmaline

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