Some like a hearty breakfast, others just a roll

You need fuel in your furnace to face life's rigours

Yet some agonise over their self-image

Wayward minds obsessing about their figures

I'm not surprised you keep fainting

I've told you till I'm blue in the face

Cottage cheese and a slice of Ryvita

Leaves you reeling all over the place

You staggered and all but fain...

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Carved through endless millenia

Hanging valleys and finger lakes,

Kettle holes, eskers and drumlins

Are what the moving glacier makes

Plucking, shearing rocks from their beds

Grinding stone channels with debris

Its hard to believe such power is dying

But what can I do, what can we?

Vibrant and dynamic these dinosaurs

Lower limbs plastic and flowing

But melti...

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Courtly knights wood fair maidens

Proud steeds reared up in forests green

In stone towers Merlin weaved magic

Steel swords making sparks were seen

What happened to the age of chivalry?

Why is honour in the world so rare?

It seems rules are there to be broken

About values none seems to care

Who is meant to be in charge today?

In my view people are much too bold

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You seemed mature beyond your years

An easy manner belied your youth

On balance I took you for thirty

But twenty was nearer the truth

Twenty however ripe is still young

You need solid years under your belt

You convinced yourself you loved me

But really didn't know what you felt

I was flattered by your attentions

Watched my peers look at us agog

It was nice t...

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I left Mabel to look after the plumber

A token of my trust in one so new

My ex-girlfriend rang on the land line

And Mabel saw red, her fuses blew

When I got home the bathroom was smashed

My new peach bidet lay in bits on the floor

No sign of Mabel, just her handiwork

And a bathroom with blood on the door

We think we know someone but don't

Jealousy with their re...

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You were always exuberant and daring

Rhetoric came easily from your lips

Your overstatement was a joy to behold

Those endless aphorisms smart as whips

Strictly baroque, strictly baroque

Your theatricals would provoke a saint

That dress sense was a riot of colour

Not even Versailles had more paint

Over-ornamentation was your undoing

You talked like a modern Bern...

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You think you know her but you don't

You see just what she wants you to see

I'm the only one who got through to her

Who knows quite how she used to be

The way she used to be was so beautiful

Kind and caring and wide open to ideas

Not the cracked empty vessel she became

A sad broken woman in thrall to her fears

We met in New York when life was young

It was at a ...

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Einstein's mind had depth, Kepler's too

Alchemists once swung on the gallows

Scientists long suffered for anything new

There's little of note in the shallows

Into the shallows you dragged me

Barely enough water to cover my gills

Once I swam free in the open sea

Now its a murderous battle of wills

You keep me indoors out of daylight

To the neighbours I'm a stran...

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Though your dough is plentiful

And you never leave me short

I cant stand this life no longer

Where my love is being bought

Crush me, dont bribe me

I admit I've done you wrong

Why dont you punish me,

Show me you can be strong?

Instead you ply me with goodies

Try like mad to keep me sweet

Yet you know I never loved you

You never swept me off my feet

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You loved peering at gravestones

I'd popped out of church for a smoke

In a tempest of wind and rain

We managed to enjoy a quick joke

After we met in a graveyard

That hinterland of heaven and hell

You became my rock of ages

My very own graveyard belle

You spoke of granite and marble

Sandstone's tendency to crumble

How weathered stones, though mossy

Made yo...

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I hold my hands up, I admit I was careless

That cocktail bar was far too close to home

Your friend Jo saw me with another woman

I've always had that tendency to roam

In hot water was where she dropped me

You arraigned me as if I was a mobster

I'm disturbingly red about the gills now

At last I know what its like to be a lobster

I wish you could learn how to forgive...

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Its great when the sun shines no clouds to be seen

And luck is on your side and there's no sign of pain

But life is a roller-coaster its all ups and downs

Sometimes you must shelter from intervals of rain

Intervals of rain intervals of rain

No sky stays forever dry

Intervals of rain intervals of rain

Bring tears to clear your eye

Remember the people suffering out ...

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Things had stalled then tapered off

For Bill and Gwen had reached the stage

Where sex is what other people do

When love has turned its final page

Salad days gone and keen to downsize

They found a bungalow, cheap they said,

It had leaky flashing and woodworm

Above all, a full-length gilt mirror over the bed

That first night under a wrinkled reflection

As the pai...

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I always took the sky for granted

Never really cared about the stars

Stuck strictly to the daily round,

Women and booze and fast cars

Sunsets are for walking into with you

At last I see the magic in the sky

Sunsets are for walking into with you

How did sunsets ever escape my eye?

You taught me about love and nature

How they go hand in hand together

Giving lo...

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The vicar was doing renovations

His churchyard wall needed repair

A pile of waste stone remained

Who took it he didn't seem to care

My share made a fine rockery

Planted with Alpine flowers

There in the moonlight it lies

Above it a yew tree towers

How those stones seem to glow!

Do I hear church bells at night?

I've drawn the conservatory curtains

Those roc...

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In those eyes, tears do brim

All a-quiver are your lips

I've done wrong again

The latest of many slips

I rack my brains for reasons

Did I omit my morning kiss?

Or fail to hail your daily bloom?

What critical need did I miss?

As the baby's due next month

I'm watching my p's and q's

Skating on thin eggshells

Pandering to your mute clues

Then it dawn...

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As I recall, you cried the first night we met

I found it unusual though charming

Soon it became clear you cried too easily

That daily weep was something alarming

Tears should be for special occasions

Justified by unmitigated joy or grief

Not turned on like a tap by ephemera

But controlled, orderly and brief

I decided to give you something to cry at

Began to roa...

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I was out for an eye test when we met

We stood there, chastened, two old lags

It must have been quite thirty years

You couldn't see her eyes for bags

Straight off, I grasped her clammy hand

She blinked at me, looked even sadder

When out of guilt I blurted out:

"Did you ever see about your bladder?"

She'd had it since the twins came

It meant our love life did a ...

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Nothing is more permanent than memory

Cast-iron files of pain locked in your head

The mind gets drawn back to errors and loss

Magnetised by things you should have said

Torturer is chief is villainous hindsight

Squatting by the guillotine with a smirk

Chewing over all those might-have-beens

In lost chances where grief and loss lurk

Even in dreams we face the angry ...

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We all have thoughts

They're in our heads

During the day or when

We take to our beds

But where do thoughts go

When we're brown bread?

Do they expire when we do

Or emigrate instead?

Do orphaned thoughts stray

Seeking a new home?

Is the air alive with ideas?

Does a corps of notions roam?

And is that where poetry begins?

Idling like taxis, do rhym...

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Many times he'd been round the block

To prove it he still had the scars

He'd mixed with a host of bad women

Yet even now he aspired to the stars

A wholesome girl was what he wanted

He needed someone clean and refined

Not the hard types that had fleeced him

The worn-out bodies his had entwined

Then he met Martha who wore no perfume

Her contours she carefully dis...

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When love fever swirls into passion

Making life seem a bed of roses

Its natural to applaud your lover

Dodging the questions love poses

Its a mistake to praise a lover

Never go overboard with salutes

With some lovers it goes to their head

Then they get too big for their boots

Rather refrain from acclamation

Go easy with those pats on the back

Remember that be...

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I never used to look at people's faces

My body language was out of kilter

Then I met you and saw the world

Through a life-changing filter

The thing about you that gets me

Is the quiver of merciful lips

On a mouth adorning the face 

That leaves my heart in bits

The quiver of fond lips cant be beaten

It makes my soul leap and rhyme

Should yours ever stop quive...

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