Form Explorers

English Nostalgia disease.

I’ve got maladies and ailments,

Some are chronic, some sporadic,

Some hang around, some come and go,

But when I see the past through a golden glow,

It’s worse than diabetes, or arthritis in the knees.

I have contracted English

Nostalgia disease.

I want to go back to the glorious nineteen fifties,

When all foreigners were either,

Traditionally quaint,

Or inherently shifty;

When all Englishmen were

Calm and rational, always just and fair,

And if anyone said otherwise,

They pretended not to hear.

Curing this nonsense illness is difficult to crack,

Whenever I think it’s gone,

It comes creeping back

And I want a no deal Brexit

And to get the empire back.

English Nostalgia has infected

My whole culture;

And it’s not the only one

To contract this xenophobia

To want the past to be the future,

Which makes no sense because,

It believes in a past

That never ever was.

light

When our eyes can see,

But we are blind,

Once night has left the day behind

Our other senses are then made sharp

To navigate a world of dark.,

Since we are neither owls nor bats

Imagination fills the gaps

If a leaf rustles, or if a twig snaps,

It must be a predator on our tracks

So, we light fire and huddle near

Then make more light to frighten fear,

We light buildings, buses, streets and trains, 

We want it to be bright day again,

Or even if it was grey with rain, 

At least we could see. 

So sometimes now we miss stars and moon

But we might never see either soon

Since we're burning fuel to make more light, 

Burning fuel without foresight,

Wounding our world and we can't put it right,

And unless we find an answer to this,

Our final road will be brightly lit.

URBAN SEAGULL and THE SUBURBAN FOX

URBAN SEAGULL

I am an urban seagull,

Who’s never seen the sea,

Born on the roof a megastore,

Next to a motorway;

I’ve laughed and cried at the city,

Since I broke out of the egg,

I can laugh when I’m flying,

I can cry when I land to stand

Perched on one leg

On a lamppost or window ledge

But never in a tree

Because,

I am an urban seagull,

Who’s never seen the sea,

Some say I am a herring gull,

But I’m a gourmet

Of dropped take-away

And my feathers shine bright white

From all the cooking oil I’ve eaten.

When hot air spirals upwards

From sun-baked tarmac below,

I ride the thermal with all my mates

And higher than higher we go.

At the apex of the spiral

As I circle in the sky

A far-off glint of water

May catch my searching eye

But I just soar above the city

And I don’t let it bother me

Since I’m an urban seagull

And I don’t know what it could be.

THE SUBURBAN FOX

If you get up early in summer,

You may see me, lazing

Sunbathing in the first rays

Of the day.

Lying, yawning, content, alone

On the lawn that you thought

That you rented or even owned,

You maybe imagined that

It was part of your home;

And I’ve been living here all the time

Making my bed

Under your garden shed.

This whole street of

Discreet little Englishperson’s castles

Clenched tight by suburban arseholes

Is not your land,

It’s mine

I hunt across it in my own time,

And you seldom see me

Unless I want you to

And I show myself so you can clearly see

The true owner of the territory,

The urbane suburban fox,

My compliments, that’s me.