for PATTAYA TRADER 129 (B)

IT'S-BARS-AND-BUTTERFLY-
MEN-FIND
You've heard about the Mothman
who flutters around America?
In Siam men are butterflies -
say the ladies in the bar -
who flit from flower to flower
or rather from girl to girl.
Bar ladies do not do that
here in their fantasy world !

JUST-FALLEN-ANGELS-
IN-THE-FLESH?
Britain's Angel of the North
is a tourist attraction,
but the numbers it must pull
are surely only a fraction
to what the Thai ladies pull
with their ready smiles and glances -
in the beer-bars of Pattaya -
and far less steely stances.

KICKED-HIGH-THE-DANCERS-
THEIR-LONG-LEGS
High-kicking girls of the can-can,
under your spell was the-crippled-dwarf-like-man.
Fit ladies dancing on the deck.
Fine frames for the painter Tolouse-Lautrec.

A HOOKER
In her fishnet stockings
by the park gate,
the girl's the hook
and she's the bait,
and if your appetite
has been whetted,
you'll be hooked
as well as netted !

FISHING-FOR-WORD-OF-
A-PAST-AND-FUTURE-KING?
A kingfisher is on the wing
to the home of a Fisher-King
who's the guardian of the holy-grail.
The bird is swift in its flight
to the home of the noble knight
and it carries such a tale.
Of what will the kingfisher speak?
What words come-forth its beak,
bird that is gifted so?
Shall it speak of Arthur woken?
Merlin from his cave out-broken?
Morgan-le-Fay's new heart of icy-snow?

for PATTAYA TRADER 129 (A)

END-OF-BLACK-SLAVERY-
ENFORCED
Throughout the British empire
the slave trade ran its course;
the ship to smash-on-the-rocks
when stormed aWilliam-Wilberforce.

A-CROSSWIND-SKAG-
AND-BONE-MAN
His coat is but a filthy rag
upon a pole of bone,
its tail flapping like a flag
in the gust. The guy's wind-blown.
Blown-away - too - by skag.

GENERALLY-GOING-BELOW-
GROUND-AROUND-LONDON-TOWN
There on a London Underground train
a guy is touching up-close girls again.
A pickpocket, too, has his claw
inside a coat, eye on the door
like a hawk, surely ready to fly
at-the-next-stop, where some will try
to board the coach already full
with passengers who'd gladly pull
an emergency chord so as to bring
a halt to the very-suffocating
idea that they all are bound
never to emerge from the underground.

A-PISSED-PICASSO
You think yourself something,
well let me tell you this:
you're a picture by Picasso who
painted-you-while-on-the-piss !

COMETH-A-MAROONED-
UNEARTHLY-SPACE-CAPTAIN'S-
NON-DESCRIMINATING-CALL
"Like strangers in a strange land
to the earth we were to fall.
The planet from which we came
bears no resemblance to yours at all.
You are white-folk and black,
you are tiny folk and tall,
you have male and female-folk
we are purple hermaphrodites one-size-all,"
is the grounded-cosmic-captain's unbiased call.

THE-LOU-REED-ALBUM-TRACK-
WOMAN-I-CAN-BETTER-DO-
WITHOUT
She was a cryptic song from Dylan.
She was a personal song from Lennon
and a love song from Cohen.
What I surely didn't need
was to find her a street song from Reed !

WITH-A-FAIRY-GREEN-IS-EVER-
AWAY-THE-WANDERING-
ARTISTIC-GUY
Absinthe for breakfast, dinner and tea,
the guy's always away with the green fairy.
I think you might know the man,
he claims to be an arty bohemian.
"Don't bottle up the magic," says he,
"see  the pictures the best way you damn well can."

A-PARADISICAL-PATTAYA'S-
PARASITES
Phantom fiddlers are surely all-around
to fiddle you out of baht, dollar and pound.
Of the phantoms' music best beware
or they're gone with your money, up into thin-air.
I read the Pattaya People Weekly news
and get the Walking Street Blues Factory blues,
sat at the breakfast table with a frothy beer
wishing last night's bar-lady was still here.

EN-ROUTE-IS-A-KEROUAC-KIND
You have hit the road Jack.
To the city lights you show your back.
They shine in the beatnik-black.
You're just a sort of  Kerouac.

for PATTAYA TRADER 128 (B)

A-DEAD-CERTAIN-SAILOR?
My uncle was a sailor
who'd later live in Hull.
Claimed he saw a mermaid.
Drunk and out his skull?
"No, oh no," my mother said,
"and your uncle never lied.
It turned him into a wreck
having drowned in her eyes."

GADFLY-GWYNNE
Naughty naked Nell;
glinty-eyed gadabout Gwynne;
the door was always open
for King Charlie to come in
and your beauty there espy.
You sure were fly. Yes you were fly.

FLAPPER GRANNY-GRUMBLES FIND
(In Society 1920s)
"I don't understand
today's generation-gap !!"
fired their great-gran
in her usual flap.

ALFRED-AND-HIS-GIRL-
FRIENDS-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN
Alfred de Musset
and his 'priestesses-of-the-night'
hadn't been doing anything holy,
or then again they might.

A PRECIOUS-PRESENTATION
A gold watch offered
now work is done.
Happy retirement,
try to have fun.
Time on your hands
to chase the sun;
not  the girls.
You're sure not young.

ROMANY-RAINBOW
Rain has ended. Time to go
and chase after gipsy-rainbow.

NO-ROGER-BACON-ARE-YOU
You're just a waster, Roger.
You don't bring home the bacon.
You are a work dodger.
Won't rise above your station.
And even idle in your wish
to be a Doctor Merabilis.

NAUGHTY NAKED NATURE
D.H.L. wrote-naughty-stuff,
though-nature's-always-in-the-buff.

for PATTAYA TRADER 128 (A)

A-DARK-DOG'S-DAY
Here comes the black dog again.
The brute's a bulldog off his chain.
Yes here comes deep depression again
like a heavy dark cloud in the brain.
Winston Churchill had his black dog
for want of another name,
and the comic Spike Milligan -
no laughing matter - had the same.
When that dog is on the loose
it runs down the hall of fame
as well as down the city street
and down the country lane.
Who says right as rain?
Who says right as rain?!!

DOTTY-DEAR
I am now older than your age
as I look back to your age when
I was just a teenager
and you the older woman.
But oh we had fun.
Oh yes we had fun.
No you didn't lead me along,
dear Dorothy. Dot on the horizon.

THE-NIGHTMARE-NAVIGATION-YES
He was setting sail to nowhere,
or to nowhere in particular.
He was leaving it to chance
was the strange-navigator.
Or leaving it to the Fates
that one day he'd find her
beyond the seas of octopus.
Perhaps in the land of the hydra?

But oh what monstrous dreams
and oh what a drunken sailor
who struggled with his loss
like the Moby Dick impaler.
The man promised his girl the moon
and so was to fail her.
Now he's out on a limb
like the limb-lost whaler.

HIGH-TIMES FLY
My girl's the shape
of an hour-glass,
and time with her
I love to pass.

Time passes swiftly
you'll understand,
that is the nature
of the shifting sand.

A BEAUTY-BOUNCES-
BEACH-BALL-LIKE
With a wavy-sea-of-hair
she walks along the street.
The men gaze like sharks
at a tasty-treat.

The Thai-girl bounces
down to the beach.
The men's eyes surely follow
till she's far beyond reach.

A-NAGA-GIRL
Her face was wet with tears
and he, being wet behind the ears,
didn't see her tears were fake,
or that from the waist downwards
she sure had the tail of a water-snake.