Plan B

If plan A doesn't work there's always plan B...

Image by Lorri Lang from Pixabay

PLAN B

A magpie in the hand
Can never be exchanged for two in the bush
Unless you’ve got a lot of bread
To entice them out of hiding,
And even then you may find
Your work cut out for you,
So always have a plan B.
Jumping off a cliff without a plan B
Is a terrible idea
Unless it’s a small cliff
Full of bushes
To catch on to,
And there’s chocolate
And a cup of tea waiting for you
At the bottom
You can cut up plan B any way you like,
But unless
It has been well thought out before-hand
To cover all the eventualities
Then you may as well stick to plan A.
After plan B doesn’t work
Then try it again,
It may be just bad timing.
If you’ve lost plan B
And you end up
Looking in the big dustbin in the sky for it
Then it is too late
And you may as well forget about all your plans

THE EMPTY SHOWROOM

And remember the dissociative society
Knows your name
And where you walk
And where you eat;
But out on the frozen boulevard of the old boys’ network
In the hive of impersonality
There is a big difference
And even though you say
You want to be original
The mind is an old shovel,
No surprise there,
And eats out of a dirty shoe
For a bone at thanks-giving
Anyway,
Now that we are all here again let us begin:
Industrial strength soda anyone?
And who dances in the empty showroom of their regrets?
And where will you not be next week?
Why are you doing this, is not the answer
So don’t forget to look in the lunar trash
To be disposed
If that’s what you want to make of it.
What other options do we have to pass the old camel?
On the side to exchange notes
To escape out of it and be somewhere else.

QUIXOTIC

When drinking hot coffee in the rain
Carry an umbrella
To stave off the echoes
Of all you don’t want to hear
Coming from the lemongrass
You can’t afford to buy
With the money you don’t have.
There are many black bags
Walking to the tip of the moon
At the edge of your reason
Brooding to be heard in all the din of society,
So be a deaf dancer if you want to live there.
We are not amused
When you carry 63 and a half pieces of rust
From the old tractor
That can’t speak for its-self anymore
To say
If women have less bones than men
Then how many sharks does it take to sail the boat?
We know you have an answer,
So wrap it up tight
And give it to what’s left
Of the rust still dancing on the old tractor;
There will come Sundays
Where even more can be bitten off
Under your thumb,
So leave it a note to say
The quixotic dinner is in the oven
And we have gone out to play.
And feel free to sow only seeds of love
The way you want to,
The way your heart says it is best done
For you the traveller
In life’s highways
And as you go from place to place
Let love guide you.

LEARNING TO SLEEP IN THE MOVIE

Can we learn to grow, balanced on the wire of love
Where we are today?
And if my hair grows long it is not my fault,
And what is that,
That goes bump in the night
And goes hey ho, hey ho, it’s off to work we go?
And if I come back crying
We cannot be all here at the same time
If we are there somewhere else
To be so
How do you do
When you are somewhere else;
Well I would not go if I could be somewhere else
But I am here
And so here I am,
Or else here I am not;
And then the plastic bag
Scrambled me rudely awake
Maybe it is not time to sleep yet,
Maybe it is the mad cow singing in the living;
So if you’re looking for a street to like,
We have free entry for all your desires,
Just step this way into our boudoir
Of the wire
Where we are learning to sleep

SOMEWHERE

Somewhere in all the words
There were bridges burning:
I am not here to be abbreviated;
Do you think me another holy cow in the mist?
I am a writer,
And this is what I say,
And so ‘be’ we say,
This is what I say;
I say, do you really think I look like a German?
Perhaps we should all read another book,
The one that is inside of us,
So that we don’t all talk sideways at each other;
But I am not after this,
I am after that,
On the other side of the bridge,
But I won’t speak a word more of this,
Of what is there
Because I am thinking
You don’t care for a word of it,
Not one tiny word,
And maybe I don’t blame you for that;
Now where were we in all these words?
Talking about this
And that again with my eye
Twitching
And the night being what it is
Full of romance
And plates of food in my dreams
And if I was to walk out of the door
Would I find you there?
Somewhere

Image from Pixabay