Dream of Bean

Devil's Disciples

The hair, the clothes the jumble sales
the box, the used cars, the telephone
the used houses, the yellow pages
the young solicitors and agents. The devils disciples turn up
In her dreams every night. Something dreadful something fails
“I’m on my own, I’m on my own.

The theatre the cinema the fairy tales
supermarkets, new cronies and old crones
a guru in his Russian tunic fools
the communist mums from finishing schools.
The heavy rites burning her up in her sleep every night.
Something dreadful something fails.
I’m on my own, I’m on my own.

The dozen years, the last hopes,
the children the future the loving parents the gifts
the blind men who offer lifts.
The doling out of rescue plaits
whole armies climbing up the ropes
with sores to show and wounds to touch.

Something dreadful something fails.
I’m not alone, I’m not alone.

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I’ve got a dream of bean
I’ve got a dream of bean
I’ve got a dream of bean
I’ve got a dream of bean
I’ve got a dream of bean
It’s the best you ever seen.
Well, don’t you get me on that toast
I know it ain’t the most
I don’t want to get in that saucy old can
Get me out of that can
If you’re a good man
Get me out of that can…
Ah quick as you can
Get me out of the can
Because you know I’m a man
And I’m a man with a dream of bean.

I’ve got a dream of bean
I’ve got a dream of bean
I’ve got a dream of bean
It’s the best thing you ever seen
I’ve got a dream of bean.
It’s the best you ever seen
I’ve got a dream of bean.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Get me out of the can
if you are a man
Get me out of the can
and don’t put me on the toast
You know it ain’t the most
if I get on the toast…
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
Get me out of this
I wanna get out
I got a dream, man I gotta dream
the best you ever seen.
Oh please help me please
I don’t wanna get in the can with all those other beans
Oh, oh, I gotta dream, I gotta dream
I gotta dream, I gotta dream,
Oh please I gotta dream.
Please please help me please
cos you know I gotta dream

I gotta dream of bean
I gotta dream of bean
I gotta dream of bean
I gotta dream of bean
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Oh please help me now…
I gotta dream of bean yeah yeah
I gotta dream of bean
I gotta dream of bean
Please help me
I’ve gotta dream of bean
Oh no get me out of the can
Get me out the sauce
I don’t want to be just like all those other beans in a can
Please help me now young man
Cos I gotta dream
Have you got one too?
I’ve gotta dream of bean
I gotta dream of bean
I gotta dream of bean
I gotta dream of bean
I gotta dream
I gotta dream of bean man, Yeah….

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William's Clocks

William’s clocks go tic tic toc
and sometimes toc toc tic.
They bing and bong upon the hour…
though often bong and bing.
He keeps them with a jealous care
And knows their every part.
He still loves their movements
when they will not start.
And time is unimportant
to Williams whirrs and chimes.
They move of their own willing
so handlessly sublime.

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Chanson Pour Norman

In that odd moment
stopping for black coffee
halfway through Hemingway
the first really educated man in the family
is always attacked by unforgettable silences
though he feels bound to call them noises.
This is understandable but when he starts
giving them voices and even worse faces
that is where nostalgic reconstruction
gives the lie to a loss of what is mere figment
and though the bitterness is fierce it is false.

New things are happening which he does not understand.
This is not real he says as he returns to
his own salty pages his own meaty cows
his own sacred earthiness
those qualities he admires in others.
I want to tell him that all he can hope for
that way is plain pre-history a lake of sodium chloride.
Because I know how it feels when you’re stuck
for a nice big bone to pick.
His coffee is understandably black.

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Punch

Who hates authority and hits the policeman?
Who hates women and hates Judy?
Who has a long aggressive jaw?
Who fights the green croc who isn’t there?
Who gets away with it every time
though classically he should be caught?
It’s Mr. Punch, it’s Punch who does it all
and the green croc isn’t there, isn’t there… (repeat).

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Endangered Species

I love your shyness, your highness
reluctant lioness (but fierce at first hint
of untruth or injustice)
Two green stars your eyes are, piercing the black
jungle of my head, finding my roots with deadly aim
and cauterizing rot.
I fantasize about my own magnificence.
You cuff away the real dust from my scruffy mane
not too much the lady to make sense.
Sometimes I wonder, why you help save
our endangered species. Do you simply cheat
the big game hunters for the hell of it?
Or must I admit that without you
I could not survive?
Without you I would not be alive…

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Three Bears in Blue

Three bears in blue all in a row
in fairyland like objects d’art
quite personal but on display
to tell a cautionary tale in brief
of honey that we need, of porridge that we eat.
Three warm and cosy looking cops
so protectively snug that we could hug them
and tug their sleeves if we were children or if
they were not men as they are.

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Hat Hog

You ride upon my hat
to the ringside seat
because you’re feeling flat
yet you still crave meat.
You are simply a dream
like a ticket unsold
but like scum or cream
your manner is bold.
So when I cast you off
or knock you out cold
you stare back like a toff
and you’ll not be told.
You catalogue claims like a hieroglyph.
You clog up my drains like the side of a cliff.
You hide in my mirrors and you steal
the joke of what it is I feel.
One day I hope you will crash in the fog
You miserable overweaning hat hog.

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Silent Film

Coming to bed late she having retired
gracelessly long since he checks the electric blanket
and snuggles down next her but
in the opposite direction to go to sleep.
He checks the blanket once again
the warmth is sick enough to make him cold
in his own sweat but he sticks it out.
She turns it down, he didn’t know she was awake
and dramatically removes herself to go you know where.
She puts her night gown on turning the collar up
elizabethan style, all but hiding the glowering behind
and therefore showing all.
She must think I’m blind he thinks
as she suffers slowly to the door.
However a silent film
can prove embarrassing to leave
and this is where he came in.

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Spoiling the image

Spoiling the Image

We lay on the grass in Horse Guards Avenue
Sunning ourselves in deliberate splendour
(I felt the Underground under the ground
like a pulse under skin)
She did not feel it
(Spoiling the image).
We sat on a bench overlooking the Thames
where ( launches and pleasure-boats
were making mustachios
(slow ones were failing and spoiling the image).
Planes made definite paths in the sky
after the first I saw
(small as the mark on the ceiling really
a creature) jets came too fast for me.
(Spoiling the image)
“Look at the waterways, skyways and traffic ways
People were flowing like rivers” (I argued)
She said they’re acting” or “I’m afraid they don’t know it”
(Spoiling the image).

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