When the pen takes control.

I’d like to tell you about my friend Betty
She lived on a boat that stayed tied to the jetty
Every day when the tide went down
You could see her bottom all big and round
When I looked at it I would get quite sweaty

Speaking with one voice

A message we all should share

Human lives matter

Out on the prairie something stirred

“What is that,” they asked the leader of the herd

“You all stay here, while I go and see.”

“Don’t worry lads, he just wants a photo of me.”

Culture on a funeral pyre,

incensed by the exhortations

of new masters of the nation,

they cheer as the flames reach higher,

gleefully dancing round the fires,

written word decreed subversive,

once revered, now deemed offensive,

wisdom gathered through the ages,

the thoughts of prophets, seers and sages.

To forge new rules by which to live.

Defying logic

their anger misdirected

fire of discontent

This is what it says to me.

I’d heard of a lady called Treena

and why nobody had ever seen her,

at night she was frightened of midges

but in the day it was the low spans of bridges

so she spent all her time in the marina.

Last night I had a waking dream,

Though not asleep but in my bed

A figure with a halo red

A crimson ring, a monstrous scene

Her body veiled, her face unseen

Though I knew tears were in her eyes

Above her, letters in the sky

A message etched in words of fire

Warning of man’s greed and desire

A path to sure destruction lies.

Keep an open hand

with the cards close to your chest.

Life is a gamble.

Far above the concreted scene

stands a stone tower in the sky

a man there stands, with single eye

the other absent, never seen

ever watchful, his sight still keen

vigilant, as alone he stands

telescope clasped in single hand

his message clear for all to see,

they did their duty under me.

True patriots all, to a man.