LYRICS

MOON OVER THE DOWNS
Trailer's original recordings and more.....
Trailer left detailed notes explaining each lyric they were found alongside the battered reel-to-reels and cassette tapes in the caravan...
........the executor of the estate

THIS LITTLE TOWN
NOVEMBER MORNING SUN
DROWNING MOON
DEVIL'S ADDRESS
DUSTY TREES
DESERT DUST
THE LYNTON FLOOD
THE GHOST OF WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
CLOWN'S CAR
BLED DRY
THE DEVIL'S HOUSE
THESE WISHING FIELDS
ONE HORSE TOWN
DONATI'S COMET
ENGLISH COUNTRY HEART

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this section will change every now and again when I find sumthin in the trailer that might be interesting to you all.........the executor of the estate

POETRY

The Weaver's Lament

( for Angus MacPhee)

His aging hands clumsy with the straws
that jerk into the shape of head and arms
of his latest creation.

If I were you I'd be using old wire not grass,
a handful of gravel, some chalk
moulding it against some concrete wall.

Instead of dancing away like this between sand
and arum, a twirling of lines
like the nets of a trawler gathering in

all the sweet silver off the plates.
No I am not you and never will be
but instead cling to a windless plain of grass

betwixt down-land and river. To knot, plat
these celandines and daisies into a country
of the mind is now beyond me I realise.

My harvest is fields of brick and mortar,
the dance of plastic in gutters.
Not the wilderness I read and dreamed.

An airliner passes overhead, a ship loose
with its million electrical veins coiled inside
and a hundred passenger hearts beating like yours

as you tried to haul your island in, nail it flat
to capture the salt tide, the dunes forever.
To catch it all in your cradling palms.

*Angus Macphee
outsider artist born on Scottish island of South Uist
Created artworks from knitted grass. Spent adult life in institutions.

White Gloss

White gloss, shiny as a skating rink
dripping with spring invention
down the north London sun-stroked suburbs
and all around the falling blossom

that drifts in piles into kerbside and drain
to wait for the summer rains.
All this quiet lapping from tin to sill
in the hands of refugees looking for a ladder up

from the cockroaches and crumbling frames
of their old towns and new box rooms.
Her hands are red and soft from washing
in the basement of this newly painted mansion.

When the fireworks exploded over Hampstead Heath
she was face down on the bed sobbing.
As her employees argued and shouted at the kids
she tore her last letter home to pieces.

She wiped her eyes and clung to the fresh
white glossed sill, felt her blackening eye
as it reflected in the perfect shine.
Thunder like distant raids rattling the pane.

Chalk Skulls

Three rings round a shiny target and it's yours
amidst the clatter and pop of fairground stalls
burning like a new constellation fallen to earth

I clutched the small plaster skull in my fist.
A booth trinket. A choice between that
and a fading, chipped plaster angel fish.

We moved on. My father and I.
Past a mud splattered generator pumping
grey clouds across the dark wet grass.

First thing I'd ever won. 12 years old.
I found it last winter. Turned it up in an old box.
Then noticed the carved inscription on it.

I'd made all those years before.
11th September 1971.
Wallingford Fair.

I held it as my father, now in his seventies,
bent to the garden, back to me
and cut away at the heavy clay soil.

The flint, chalk and clay, turning over again
as my own thoughts spiralled back over the years
to the dusty stubble fields of late summer

and my step granddad and his collie
arcing in loops across the Oxfordshire fields
tracking imaginary pheasants and hares.

That dog that ground to a panting halt
saliva dripping under the kitchen table.
So we too shall come to our end

all our skulls, man and beast
flaking and turning to powder in the black soil
like this skull, a plaster moon, thrown at the stars.