The boy with a note - Weather the storm

Summer Girls
This summer will be different I will move across the town
Promenade above the beach until my face turns brown
With my hands in my pockets and a casual stroll from the town beach to the dock
The girls they walk in two's and three's, their pretty cotton frocks teased by the breeze.
And I will find a long-limbed summer girl for me.
 
I will assume the accent of some Yankee sailor boy
Stranded between merchant ships with some time to enjoy.
A week or two down by the bay with tupp'ney ice-cream cones
And petticoats and sandy kisses, breasts smooth as stones washed by the sea
And I will find a long-limbed summer girl for me.
 
And her name will be Pam or Ruth, so I'll be Chuck or Wayne,
And we will know and love each other, then I will explain
Why I haven't found a ship and that I live in town
Before we share that cigarette, in waves of love, we'll drown down by the sea,
My long-limbed salt-teared summer girl and me.

She won’t cry for my leaving, she will cry because I stay
She will cry for my deceiving that we can meet every day
This love affair it grew so strong because we’d have to part,
And now we will do anyway and she will take my heart and I'll be free
To find another summer girl who'll give it back to me.
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Irish Girl, The
What will he do now he’s a man
And he should be settling down?
If only he’d marry a local girl
And stay right here in town
Now he’s living the artist’s life
And he’s taken the poet’s role,
He’s fallen in love with an Irish girl
 And she’s captured his heart and soul.
 
What will they do when they are wed?
A poet’s pay is poor.
Sleeping at night in a borrowed bed
 and traipsing from door to door.
 I don’t know and it worries me so,
 But they’ve gone and taken their vows
 And he has married his Irish girl
 So they’ll have to manage somehow.
 What will he do when the children come
 As the children surely will?
 How will she cope when he drinks ‘till he’s numb
 To forget all his debts and bills
 She’s not much more than a girl herself,
 Now a lover, mother and nurse
 But he has married his Irish girl
 For better or for worse.
 
 For a handsome man she would be a gift
 But for him she is a prize
 With her high complexion and her corn-blonde hair
 And her blue and knowing eyes.
 Now they wake in each other’s arms
 And she is the poet’s wife
And though he may wander from his Irish girl
He will love her all his life,
And though he may wander from his Irish girl
He will love her all his life.
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Slip-Shod Tap-Room Dance
In a slip-shod tap-room dance
He’s shambling, moves unsteadily to the door
Oxford Street is a river tonight
And he must cross it once more.
Soho, Soho, so what.

In a slip-shod tap-room dance
He’s mumbling words to a poem that he will write
The only thing in his steps that’s certain
Is that it won’t get done tonight.
Soho, Soho, so what.

In a slip-shod tap-room dance
World’s crumbling, now as tipsy as a pork pie hat
“Hello dearie would you like a nice time?”
Oh no there’s no time for that.
Not in old Soho, Soho, so what.

In a slip-shod tap-room dance
Words tumbling safe in the bar with a literary friend
Just one more, can you lend me a pound note?
I can give it back to you come the weekend.
Soho, Soho, so what.

In a slip-shod tap-room dance
He’s grumbling not enough money for a taxi home
Screws up his eyes at the buses lumbering
Hands in his pockets as he walks alone
Soho, Soho, so what.

In a slip-shod tap-room dance
Tubes rumbling not so very far to go
Took six matches just to light one cigarette
Just another night in old Soho.
Soho, Soho, so what.
In a slip-shod tap-room dance
In a slip-shod tap-room dance
In a slip-shod tap-room dance
In a slip-shod tap-room dance.
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Conundrum of Time
This union is soldered by wishes and dreams.
I feel from the strength of the floor for the seam
That copes with a passion, the whispers and tears
And fists full of doubts clenched round bottles of beer.

Shouldn't you be dancing, shouldn't I make rhymes
There's music all around us in this conundrum of time
But there's so many notes love, please find a tune
Please find the harmony, please find it soon.

Well the bucket hits rocks at a foot of the well
But they're opening up down at the Hotel
And there at the bar there is some sort of truce
Well I think that I get lucid but you say that I get loose.

You mimic my poem so I oafishly dance
Between chairs and tables there's the breaking of glass
As I call you a flirt, and then you call me a fake
We're both prisoners of love in this war that we make

As we grumble back home as we tumble upstairs
The ship in distress, off the coast sends up flares.

Shouldn't you be dancing, shouldn't I make rhymes
There's music all around us in this conundrum of time
But there's so many notes love, please find a tune
Please find the harmony, please find it soon.
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Milk for One (Storm in a Tea Cup)
That was Saturday night, this is Sunday morning
And anywhere else but here
I’d be fast asleep with chapel bells
Ringing in my ears.
Any other day you couldn’t wake me up
But there’s mist on the estuary
Now I’m going downstairs to put the kettle on.
I’m going to make you a cup of tea.

There’s a mist filling up the kitchen now
Has it come in from the lake?
The sun’s burnt a hole in the clouds already
And I’m almost completely awake.
The kettle is singing, I’m looking for milk
As I light up my first cigarette
It was a storm in a teacup, ripples on a pool.
It can’t be over yet.
This is a night that we can both forget.
This is a night that we can both forget.

There’s milk for one so I take mine black,
Rest my head upon my arms
As the hills emerge and the curtains are pulled
In the houses and the farms.
Then I’m woken with tea and the milk’s in mine
And Sunday is burning bright.
She runs her hands through my hair as she looks at the water
And says “why did you stay up all night?”
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Wonderful Country (A proposition of prepositions)
This is a wonderful country
So much of everything
I can’t imagine anyone hungry
For these crumbs from home that I bring.
The only thing I seem to write these days
Are letters back home to you.
I guess I’m a writer, a dreamer I know
Here is one I want to come true.
This dream I have that keeps me hanging on
When our letters get crossed in the mails
Is to wake up at home in the house on the shore
With you by my side in Wales
With you by my side in Wales.

This country is full of wonders
And one of them has to be me
It’s here where the poet plunders
For ten times the usual fee
I don’t know where all the money goes
I seem to have so many friends
But I came over here with nothing
And that’s how I’m leaving again.
This dream I have that keeps me hanging on
And beside it everything pales
Is to wake up at home in the house on the shore
With you by my side in Wales
With you by my side in Wales.

This dream I have that keeps me hanging on
And beside it everything pales
Is to wake up at home in the house on the shore
With you by my side in Wales
With you by my side in Wales.

This is an amazing country
They make you feel so grand
Whenever you’re in their company
Pouring you drinks and shaking your hand
The real truth comes hard in a hotel room
With no phone and an empty bed
And my hands keep on shaking, and I feel so small
And nightmares fill my head.
And the dream I have that keeps me hanging on
When this train nearly leaves the rails
Is to wake up at home in the house on the shore
With you by my side in Wales.
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Caitlin’s Song (Summer Birds Are Leaving)
What doleful thoughts an absence brings when one’s so tired from longing
Thoughts banished in the daylight hours at night time come a thronging.
The daily round of village life no patience has for grieving.
The days grow short, the nights are long, the summer birds are leaving.

Last night in dreams you were enrobed like Valentino’s sheikh
Haremed girls lay languidly on carpets at your feet,
And with each word a tiny pearl tripped from your lips and fell
On desert ground.It rained today, the children are all very well.

By boat and plane and camel train I journeyed to your side.
One of your guards asked me my name I swore I was your bride,
But unconvinced I had to beg for them to let me through.
The Williams’s send their regards. Your friends at Browns ask after you.

I took your hand imploringly as you lay in that tent
Seemingly ignoring me, despairing, patience spent.
I roared and screamed and shook my fists beneath a desert moon.
The bills pile up as usual, please send a little money soon.

I cried let’s leave this place my love, a horse outside is waiting.
I’ll carry you across the stream from fame and fortune fleeting.
Then a skein of geese flew o’er the house, the thunder of their wings
Awoke me from my dawn dark dreams, what doleful thoughts an absence brings.
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Get Me a Doctor
Get me a doctor
Not one who’ll give me dope
Just find me a good one
One who’ll give me hope
One who’ll stop me shaking
One to get me off
One to get me sleeping
And one to stop this cough.

Get me a doctor
There must be help at hand.
Find me a good one
One who’ll understand
One to stop me sinking
Deeper into this well
One to stop me drinking
Spinning my way to hell.

Get me a doctor
One to wipe my brow
Get me a good one
One to show me how
Get me a doctor
I’m worried about my health
Get me a doctor
I can’t heal myself.

Get me a doctor
One to heal this pain
Find me a good one
So I can start again
One to give me peace
One to make me calm
As if I was just laying
In my sweet baby’s arms.
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I Miss You Most of All
Darling, I don’t know what city this is
Don’t even know what time it is
Don’t want to think about all I’ve seen
Don’t remember where I’ve been.

And I miss the bus
And I miss the plane
And I miss the boat
And I miss the point
And I miss the reason
And I miss the call
But, darling, I miss you most of all.

I get drunk sometimes and think of you at home
Look at these faces and wish they were our own.
Sometimes at night when I’m tired and scared
I follow somebody up the stairs.

I wake in the morning with my head on fire
Call me a coward, call me a liar
But I’m thinking of you wherever I am
Things’ll be different when I get home.
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Cradled in the Rocking Boat
 Cradled in the rocking boat
Curly-headed in his cot
Swayed to his mother’s dreams
Of what might be and what shall not
But the baby becomes a child
See how the child has grown
Away from the schemes of others
To the wild dreams of his own.

Come down to the park
It’s a very dangerous place
There are cowboys and Indians everywhere
And creatures from outer space
Where every tree is an alien
And every tree is a friend
Oh come down to the park
And watch a childhood end.

Oh come down to the park
Swings and roundabouts
The sun’s a pink saucer over the trees
Girlish shrieks and boyish shouts
In these streets after dark
Cheeks burning not from the chase
They will steal your boyhood away
It’s a very dangerous place.

So the boy becomes the man
Cigarettes and drinking beer
Now he longs to be homesick
Instead of tired of staying here.
But beware of the look of the lake
It’s really an estuary
Fear the pull of the tide.
For beyond is the open sea.