Integrated Transport Plan

Image via Wikipedia

Have you seen

the bus that’s empty?

Driving by the cycle track.

The cycle track

with no-one on it.

Going nowhere,

no-one going.

Just a waste

of thick, white paint.

See the station,

costing millions.

Many miles

of metal track.

Rocking gently

in the carriage,

free pass riders

nod grey heads.

They have no reason

for their journey,

but why stay home

and spend on fuel.

Look upon

the tramlines winding

through the

city centre roads.

See, here comes

the sleek tram snaking

through the milling

shop bound crowds.

A few smug souls

are disembarking.

Clutching transport

plans in hand.

They’ve jobs for life

and first class pensions.

Planning travel

for us all.

They are green,

and clean of conscience.

Hair shirts

underneath their suits.

These bureaucrats

will integrate us

in a non-

polluting way.

Have you seen them

save the planet?

With empty buses

belching smoke.

See the costly

train now tracking,

full of free ride

passengers.

A multi-million

tramway triumph.

Jams the city

to a halt.

Integration is

complete now.

None can move

and no-one pays.

That car polluter

sold his vehicle.

Taxed until

he couldn’t cope.

He left his job

in deep depression.

All business died,

devoid of hope.

Bob Dylan

Image via Wikipedia

Happy birthday Bob.

When Robert Zimmerman grew beyond channelling Woody Guthrie to become one of the great musical poets he brought us passion and meaning in music that was different from those who had gone before him.

Well done Bob.

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• Seventy On Seventy: The 70 Best Bob Dylan Songs, A To Z (Part Two Of Two) (blogs.villagevoice.com)
• David Wild: “Forever Young”: A 70th Birthday Playlist For Bob Dylan (huffingtonpost.com)

Nanny State

Nanny State is a wonderful lady

Loving and gentle and kind

 

She makes the wayward fit in with the masses

With drugs that alter their mind

 

That her love is killing the baby

Leaves her totally blind.

 

Afghans and Arabs with tyrant oppressors

She saves by having them mined.

 

Nanny robs folk with all of her taxes

To pay for her to be kind.

 

The work shy she cossets with cash and fine training

But jobs they leave declined

 

Nanny robs folk with all of her taxes

To pay for her to be kind

 

That her love is killing the baby

Leaves nanny totally blind.

 

She is so terribly kind.

Original Sin

Through coition came cognition,

so we’re told.

From serpentine perdition,

to the eve of our condition,

is a line of pulchritude.

 

The serpent was lascivious.

Tempting Eve to coitus,

by offering an apple

to consume.

 

His squirming, so voluptuous,

slithering, conceptuous,

lured her to

perfidy and sin.

 

From thus, homo erectus

was hetero in his genius,

until, through nostra damus,

came il papa’s mighty plan.

 

By immaculate deception,

came the godhead

to reception

as a naked babe in straw.

 

Lacking sign of all suspicion,

or hint of malefaction,

the lord had sired offspring,

but no genitals engorged.

 

Through countless generation,

from Adam and creation,

had the genesis of

humankind been drawn.

 

By fervent copulation,

foregoing masturbation,

the race had been

expanded and preserved.

 

In coitus emeritus,

no interruption hindered us

and life was passed

by orgasmagic down.

 

From primeval broth evolving,

through complex myths contriving,

the human creature

comes to speculate.

 

No! It surely is apparent,

that our knowing was descendant,

and did not come

from falling to a snake.

 

All the love and joy

in breeding, should be guiltless,

not conceding any merit

to the fantasists of god.

 

Deus non magnificat,

and coitus cum laude.

Shagging is not sinful,

but bonding beautiful.

Piggy Belle Is Dead

Weather Pig sways lazily,

peering from the roof.

He stares at windy Wales

with teardrops in his eyes.

 

Of course he faces windward

as he does throughout the year,

but now his task is tearful.

Piggy Belle is dead.

 

Guard Pig lies at duty

by the front door, as he must.

His task to pee on Mormons,

bite balls off burglar thugs.

 

He is is lax about his duties,

though always at his post.

Today he glares with sadness,

for Piggy Belle is dead.

 

Piggy Ornamental

has no job to do at all.

She is just bronzed off with life today

and yesterday as well.

 

Her empty life is emptier,

so decorously sad,

Pigginess is lesser now,

‘cos Piggy Belle is dead.

 

All the piggy presences

in Malpoet’s grand estate,

grieve the porcine paucity,

end of the Belle Epoche.

 

For years she hung out prettily.

She called at dinner time.

If needed on the telephone,

she let me know in time.

 

The constant task was arduous

as was time and weather toll.

Poor Piggy Belle has fallen now

None more shall hear her call.

 

How sad I was when I was told,

she’d tolled her final toll.

The porky rites at last are said.

Piggy Belle is dead.

Wine

Red is readier than white.

No getting up and down all night.

No rushing to the fridge and back.

It’s warm beside you. That’s the craic.

Zit

The zit on my cheek

is driving me mad.

It’s itching

and oozing puss.

I rip off

the scab

and it stings

like fuck.

Then drips blood

into my beer.

The reason

it came there

is a hair

growing in.

It happens when

you’re getting old

and cells forget

their job.

That bloody hair

reminds me

of my brown

and blotchy skin.

What was stiff

has now gone floppy.

Supple joints

are gnarled and tight.

The oozing zit

is evidence

of life

approaching night.

Wirral Rocks

Rippling rocks

of sandstone seam,

set in time

the rolling sea and Dee.

Hardy monk of Little Eye

adores the blood red sun

setting a path over the sea

that Irish Vikings crossed

to make their Thing.

In the myrtle corner

Thor’s mighty hammer falls,

and Cammell berths

a Thesis deep and dark.

Blood runs red at Brunaburh

from the axe of Athelstan.

Chopping out a nation

from all Angles

of the land.

Cnut commands the sea

that laps the monarch’s toes.

A child licks ice cream

on a stripy, canvas throne.

Seals bark still from Hoyle Bank

and Wirral rocks.

Non Functional Decorative Button

My new, free watch is so complex

it has illustrated instructions.

They show the location of the

non-functional decorative button,

but they do not explain its use.

Located in the bath I watch my

non-functional decorative button

as the water swirls around it

creating a spiral of bubbles

winding clockwise.

Watch the pearls of wisdom

drop from thousands of

non-functional decorative buttons

covering every spot

of the east end monarch’s

suit.

Suited to the blue serge,

the commodore’s eyes

watch the sails

on the horizon

as he fiddles

with the glittering brass

non-functional decorative button

adorning the cuff

of his sharp creased

blazer sleeve.

Creases emblazon

the passage of time

on every face.

Complex existence

illustrates the instruction

imposed by experience.

Life pushes my button.

Carnivore

A vegetable in Borneo

runs a guest house

by a tree.

The furry bat

reclines in that

fine veggie’s pitcher

green.

Between dreaming

in this fine repose

he does some poo and pee.

His kindly host

has justly earned

this very special fee.