Saw the news today, dunno what to say

Dropping barrel bombs where the children play

Sell arms to tyrants just because they pay

We’re falling out of love with love today

Yemenis, Syrians, Iraqis, Kurds

All are now victims of misguided words

Those religious partisans tend their herds

Where people once were freer than the birds

I wish they would stop

Falling out of love with love

I wish we could stop

Falling out of love with love

Stop

Falling

Falling out of love with love

My daughter said why can’t we get along?

Why can’t we all sing the same happy song?

All this senseless killing is so plain wrong

People just want somewhere they can belong

Outsiders look on whilst the wild wind blows

When it will end? Well now, nobody knows.

Right across the world we keep on our toes

As all this stupid mayhem grows and grows

I wish they would stop

Falling out of love with love

I wish we could stop

Falling out of love with love

Stop

Falling

Falling out of love with love

Harry Rogers: In Harriboy’s Hut, Aberbanc – 22nd September 2016

The lord works in mysterious ways,
What, when, where, who, how,
Things change all the time,
Sometimes for the best,
Now Billy Graham’s grandson got Covid,
Another Christian test
Don’t matter if you pray,
Hallelujah every day,
Covid”s gonna get ya,
Every whichey way.
You can go to the mountain top,
Sing from the highest tower,
This plague will never stop,
By week, by day, by hour,
Even Billy Graham’s grandson got Covid,
Like Boris and the Donald,
Nobody’s safe no more,
This ain’t a spirit war.
Billy Graham’s grandson got Covid
Now he knows the score,
Billy Graham’s grandson got Covid
It’s part of God’s law.

Harry Rogers, In The Red Bedroom, 26th July 2021.

Sat in Club Med Aberbanc
We’re baked beyond Alaska,
In our room with two foot walls
It’s over twenty five degrees,
Across the hills pregnant clouds
Scud by day by day by day
Never birth one drop of rain
All our grass has turned to hay.
Lazy buzzards ride thermals
On high way above our plot
We melt here, it’s too damn hot,
We got the drizabone blues,
Oh yeah,
Sure got the drizabone blues,
Ooohh weee
Those drizabone blues again.

Harry Rogers, In The Red Bedroom, 25th July 2021.

I sit in shade of prunus hedge,
The sound of Satie’s Gnossiene number four dribbles from my phone. I look across the valley towards the three stationary wind turbines on the horizon that undulates across the sky. For days now the temperature has been in the mid nineties and the air has been still, the sky an unblemished azure. This is about to change, there is a breeze, the red leaves on the hedge tremble in expectation. If anything it’s getting hotter and a hazy mist imperceptibly fills the valley. Fluffy white clouds appear from nowhere, they billow and form a ridge as if a giant invisible steam engine is at work. No birds fly and have stopped singing, even the crows are skwawkless, they know something is coming. The breeze increases, the underneath of the cotton wool ball clouds are tinged with grey. But… it doesn’t come, no thunder, no lightning, the clouds fade away as quickly as they came, the relentless sunshine is back. Two magpies sqawk to each other, the silence is broken, the breeze fades away. It’s another sticky night in prospect in the hills in Aberbanc. Maybe we’ll see rain tomorrow, or on Sunday. The weather has gone awry, I ponder this as a handful of swifts systematically fly two feet above the field picking off confused insects along the way. I take the hose pipe to the beans and the courgettes, seeing as mother nature ain’t about to do the honours.

Harry Rogers, 23rd July 2021.

Sometimes I write a song I want to sing.
There are songs I know I will never sing,
Because I know about the pain they’ll bring,
It doesn’t do to sing of everything.
But when that pain is trapped inside of me,
I lay it bare for all the world to see.
Catharsis helps restore normality,
Pain’s better out than in, it seems to me,
Hidden in darkling corners of my mind,
I never know exactly what I’ll find,
I drag pain into the light from behind
Curtains closed by actions truly unkind.
If I don’t sing about the way I feel,
There is no way that I can ever heal.

Harry Rogers, In The Red Bedroom, 24th July 2021.

Welcome to Zoomville On Sea,
Goodbye sardine train commute,
Home office overlooks beach,
New garden is full of fruit,
Car in garage, seldom used,
Away from big smoke air is clean,
Even the kids are amused,
Happier than ever been,
We’re happy here
Zoomville On Sea
So happy here
Zoomville On Sea
Goodbye to old office stress,
Farewell politics of hate,
No more dressing to impress,
Impossible to be late,
We’ve both got a comfy chair,
With views beside the windows,
New lives, with time to care,
To see which way the wind blows.
Zoomville On Sea
We’re happy here
Zoomville On sea
So happy here.
Zoomville On Sea,
You here by me,
It’s a new life,
Could be for life,
Next to the beach.
Zoomville On Sea.

Harry Rogers, in The Yellow Room, 22nd July 2021.

Freedom’s just another word
For let’s go out and booze,
Let’s go out, get off our tits,
There’s nothing left to lose.
All the pike are smiling as
They leap upon the floor,
Next day turn into spreaders,
Minnows seen it all before.
They see themselves as martyrs,
Who deserve to go and play,
Throw caution to the four winds,
As they rave on freedom day.
Glitter balls and ticker tape,
Midnight countdowns, sweaty hugs,
Best time of their hemmed in lives,
Callow kids with shoulder shrugs.
“We’ve got our lives back again,
It’s what we have waited for.”
I watch news convulsed with shock,
Now paranoid evermore.
I do not begrudge them fun
Remember I was once young,
But how quick this recklessness,
Feeds into the greater mess.
Now, once more, I hunker down,
Scared to venture into town,
Self inflict isolation,
From younger generation.
No more ice creams on the beach,
Normality out of reach.
Don’t trust herd experiment,
Seems we don’t have any choice,
Eugenicist government,
Cares not for our elder voice.

Harry Rogers, 73 and three quarters, in The Red Bedroom, 20th July 2021

Freedom Day?
Freedom from what?
Freedom to do what?
Freedom at what cost
Freedom for whom?
Freedom in where?
Return to normal?
What is normal?
When was normal?
Who was normal?
Who isn’t normal?
Who determines normal?
What is power?
Who has power?
How did they get power?
Why did they want power?
How do we remove power?
Whence came power?

Harry Rogers, In The Red Bedroom, 17th July 2021.

Will we ever know their secrets?
These sly folks that rule our rulers,
The ones way back behind the scenes,
Anonymous to all but Queens,
Future kings, selected MPs,
High ranked spads and civil servants,
Cross party, beyond politics,
Above democratic control.
Part of a giant Ponzi scheme,
Designed to create illusions
Of genuine access to change.
An old friend of mine once told me
“Understanding our system is
Akin to trying to knit fog.”
Special advice from researchers
Gives documents a key word gloss,
Commons library table creaks
Under sheer weight of paper bills.
Subtle nuances abounding
A myriad of gaslighting
Phrases to aid bamboozlers,
Written under extreme pressure,
Mostly unread, then stored away,
Added to historic mountains,
Laws that await fevered usage
In debates within status quo.
Behind the veil of ignorance
Bliss fueled rhetoric purveyors
Spaff and bluster as walls crumble.
Cherry pick as midnight oils burn,
Latest wheeze, slung upon the pile,
Designed to make the people yearn
For fake impossibilities,
Squared circle hope filled elixirs,
Obfusticated essences,
Blind belief that things will improve,
We can all start levelling up.
Only some are on the level,
Mostly we’re on slippery slopes,
Horizons crooked from the start.
Watch as Atlas shrugs in the dark.

Harry Rogers, In The Red Bedroom, 15th July 2021.

My friend, George, said that Johnson and Patel et al are just not up to the job following the latest twin fiascos re racism and masks,tossers.
I respond as follows:-
What is the job as they see it? These Tories wheel out confidence tricksters such as Schapps to smooth over cracks with silver tongued apologies on breakfast Radio Four etc. It’s the nasty underbelly of our society that has never unpicked white chauvinism, even by non white Tories. It’s like even though we no longer have an empire we are still consumed by imperialist mores, a kind of long imperialism that is not properly understood by many. It’s heartwarming to see footballers, black and white together, taking on deep seated prejudice directly and consistently, calling out the bullies in the full glare of public scrutiny. Such bravery is rare but this feels like a turning point, bullies hate confrontation, but confront them we must. It’s time to paint racists into an ever decreasing corner and I admire the England football squad for their stand. Football isn’t coming home, it never went away, those sick fucks in the white supremacist parties who have invaded the terraces since the 1960s have to be called out, as must their fellow travellers in the Conservative party, who are, indeed, tossers.

Harry Rogers, In The Yellow Room, 14th July 2021.

The bunting, the flags, now folded away,
Footballers live to play another day.
Next year embark on new world cup caper,
Euro defeat yesterday’s chip paper.
Meanwhile penalties humiliation
Starkly revealed the worst of a nation.
Those that point fingers and apportion blame
Do not understand this beautiful game,
What is it that fuels racism hate?
What thing can these fascists not tolerate?
They see it, writ large, in front of their face,
Team friends and humans, regardless of race,
They hugged each other with love in defeat.
Match lost but team love did bigotry beat.

Harry Rogers, In The Red Bedroom, 12th July 2021.

Alpha, beta, delta, lambda kebabs,
Pick and mix menus, long covid rehabs.
Atomised rules destroy kids mental health,
Midst clamour for restart of rental wealth.
On terraces fans bring back wondrous roar,
This is what bread and circuses are for.
Occupy minds with dreams of fake glory,
Media moguls control this story.
Outdoors in country gardens bucolic
Lurk pandemic hordes of alcoholics,
New victims of lack of joined up thinking,
Cheap supermarket booze fires home drinking.
Blue tits and sparrows pay no attention,
Nature continues, beyond prevention.

Harry Rogers, In The Red Bedroom, 11th July 2021.

Pale rider shifts shape, slides across borders,
Passes detection, jumps over hurdles,
Ignores vaccines, laughs at end of lock downs.
Invisible and ineluctable,
Taunts experts and opportunists alike.
Third wave breaks on freedom day in summer.
Never have so many hands dripped so red.
Prime Minister, Blondie Bombshell Boris
Poses with three lions on an England shirt,
Naked opportunism breathtaking,
Such audacity blown beyond The Pale.
The fetid reek of fake populism
Blows hard from Downing Street to Wembley Way.
Not your day, you Eton rotters, not yours.

Harry Rogers, In the Yellow Room, 11th July 202.

I am not a genre
I am not in a bag
I am not a genre
That would be such a drag
I am not a genre
I play outside the box
I am not a genre
Nobody shot my Fox
I’m a free man
I’m a free man
Free man that rocks
I’m a free man
I’m a free man
Breaking the locks
I am not a genre
Don’t stick labels on me
I am not a genre
I won’t be what you see
I am not a genre
Conforming to your rule
I am not a genre
Ain’t gonna be your mule
I’m a free man
I’m a free man
Free man that rocks
I’m a free man
I’m a free man
Breaking the locks
I
Am
Not…..
A Genre.

Harry Rogers, In Harriboy’s Hut, Aberbanc, July 9th 2017

Three men in rocketships
Aim to be into space
Each before the other.
This is meant to be “news”.
An MP talks about
Indigenous people
On the Channel Four News,
Also meant to be “news”.
Elderly New Labour
Wrecking ball mega stars
Ever regurgitate
Via purported “news”.
Major-minor royals
Act out stupid events
And other cunning stunts,
Also portrayed as “news”.
Current affairs rise large
With Cabinet members
Caught polishing their desks,
Hailed as important “news”.
Yet hundreds of thousands
Demonstrate on our streets,
Silence is deafening
As they don’t make the “news”.
What is “news” all about?

Harry Rogers, In The Red Bedroom, 9th July 2021.

She’s my garden girl

She’s got pollen in her hair

She’s my garden girl

She plants smiles everywhere

Look across the valley

On a warm day

You’ll see my garden girl

On a warm day

She’ll be busy planting

On a warm day

Outside with her radio

On a warm day

She’s my garden girl

She’s got pollen in her hair

She’s my garden girl

She plants smiles everywhere

Look across the valley

On a hot day

She’ll be there again

On a hot day

Watering the vegetables

On a hot day

Outside with her radio

On a hot day

She’s my garden girl

She’s got pollen in her hair

She’s my garden girl

She plants smiles everywhere

Look across the valley

On a wet day

She’s in her greenhouse

On a wet day

Sowing seeds in compost

On a wet day

Inside with her radio

On a wet day

She’s my garden girl

She’s got pollen in her hair

She’s my garden girl

She plants smiles everywhere

Look across the valley

On a cold day

There’s my garden girl

On a cold day

Digging over fruit beds

On a cold day

Outside with her radio

On a cold day

She’s my garden girl

She’s got pollen in her hair

She’s my garden girl

She plants smiles everywhere

Copyright: Harry Rogers – 25-11-11, Recorded in 2018, Edited 6th July 2021

This appetite for risk
Beyond the sour point,
Beyond immunity,
Encouraged from above.
Once more new variants
Wreak havoc where we meet,
Feed manna to the herd,
Theatre of the absurd.
Go dancing in the street,
Soon Lambda there you’ll meet,
It’s a new infection,
Bypass vaccine action,
Shapeshifting pale riders
Care not for elections,
Endless replication,
Beyond application,
Still rampant in Peru,
Danger for me and you,
Now inside our borders,
Still sing that road map tune,
Reach destination soon,
Like zombies under moon,
Heap praise on blond pultroon.
Dance Lambda Lambada
Whirligig spins faster.

Harry Rogers, in the Red Bedroom, 6th July 2021.

Today he said
“If not now when?”
If not now when?
Did he say that?
Did he really?
If not now when?
As spike rises?
Mid pandemic?
We are all now
Responsible,
Trust common sense,
Roll out road map.
Road map to where?
Randian bet
On new cult of
Post vax freedom.
So where do those
Anti vaxers
Fit into this
Chaos theatre?
What about those
Double jabbers
Downed by Delta?
Hope folks enjoy
Drinks at the bar,
Shisha pipe smoke,
Strip clubs, clip joints,
Hugs in the Park
Dances in dark.
If these take your
Fancy once more
It’s up to you,
You know the score,
Just remember
Do what thou wilt
Is not yet the
Whole of the law.

Harry Rogers, In The Yellow Room, July 5th 2021

Take time, look up into the sky,
Beyond the realm of wonder why
You’ll find that place of love and care
A galaxy beyond compare
Very special, so far out there
Focus to right above Great Bear
There has appeared a brand new star
That beams so bright from oh so far
Day time, night time, astral splendor
Marvel at that star called Brenda.

Harri Rogers
Pencnwau
12th January 2020.

Labour Roller Coaster jumps red wall rails,
Embrace nationalism when all else fails,
Wrap butchers apron around leaders waist,
Shout I’m buying British, I love the taste
Of Melton Mowbray pork pies, Bakewell Tarts,
Jellied eels, Stilton, things that make one fart,
Wear Burberry on the doorstep,
Order pre TV patriotic prep,
Be all things to all, Brexit or remain,
Ride a dozen donkeys, blame left, again.
Claim victory from nigh on disaster,
Demolish red castles ever faster,
More than half electorate stay at home,
Smells like a whiff of fall of ancient Rome.

Harry Rogers In The Red Bedroom, 5th July 2021.

On the road to Harrifest
To catch up with all my friends
In nineteen ninety seven
When I was fifty years old
When Bill Fleming met Bob Fish,
A musical path was lit
Beneath red barn we gathered,
For more than twenty one years

At Harrifest
Where songs ran free
In the wild West
Our songs ran free
Times were the best
The beer ran free
At Harrifest
Where we ran free

Barbecues and veg curries,
Manicured garden camp site,
Poets, bands, some jugglers too,
From far and wide all did come,
Dave Sutherland missed not one,
By jingo did we have some fun,
We rocked out through setting sun,
Everyone loved everyone.

Our Harrifest
Best in the West.
How much we do remember.

Harry Rogers In The Yellow Room, 3rd July 2021.

Welcome to Senedd Kinema,
Stuck in the middle of the road,
Where first minister has become
The Boris Johnson squirmy toad.
How comes blood stained butchers apron
Flies on high in our capital?
In these dog days of the empire,
A move like this has capped it all.
Ancient projectors belch dark smoke,
Mirrors reflect the worst of proof,
On days like this in Cardiff Bay,
Through blue light, Labour screens it’s truth.

Harry Rogers, In The Yellow Room, 1st July 2021.

The New Normal will likely be a permanent Precariat.
The Capitalist Realism practiced by neo liberal governments and the Covid 19 pandemic are in a real sense a perfect storm for all of us.
Blairism and the stalinisation of the Public Sector left us closer to total privatisation of the NHS. That open door has allowed a section amongst Tory polititions to actively move further towards the American approach to health care over the last ten years and more.
Education, Education, Education, the slogan of Blairism has led to the implementation of a regime within Higher Education that has led to a complete and ridiculous shackling of Academia into a maelstrom of performance indicators and monitoring which in turn is now in total chaos due to Covid 19. Blairism signalled the end of opposition to capitalist exploitation. Despite the blip that was Corbynism, the Stalinist Blairites have never relinquished control of the structure of the Labour Party, and the mainstream media have conspired with this clique to bring about the destruction of the integrity of the left through the use of blatent lies.

Why do people not care about corruption? Or perhaps they do care but realise that there ain’t anything they can do about it once it becomes so all pervasive.

At this juncture we have a Government composed of the very worst political criminals who have exploited the biggest health crisis in a hundred years for personal gain. The corruption that comes from a complete disregard for tendering proceedures for procurement contracts is utterly outrageous.

Why is there a basic acceptance that politicians and senior managers in public services and state run businesses are on the take? Such fatalism comes in part from a catastrophic failure of mainstream journalism.

That corruption is now the status quo is a given amongst vast swathes of the public. There is no longer a culture of integrity, no expectation of honesty, in those who control our lives. Politics has become a term similar to crime, no-one trusts their elected officials any more, no matter what their ideological position is.

What we are now experiencing is Long Capitalism, an affliction that spreads under the guise of freedom and the future fulfillment of unattainable dreams through the giant Ponzi scheme that is thrust upon humanity by an elite cadre who believe that they are immortal, beyond control, and entitled to behave as they like, using state apparatus and the subservient media to protect and enhance their position.
We recall when Thatcher said there is no alternative to capitalism after the collapse of communism in Russia and the Eastern Bloc. The struggle to articulate an alternative in these times is harder than it was back in those tumultuous last decades of the twentieth century. Yet those of us who believe that such rottenness at the heart of our society should be cut out have to find the means to not just articulate an alternative but to convince people that there is a better way. This is the imperative that faces us as we stare into the abyss of fascism.

Harry Rogers, In the Red Bedroom, 1st July 2021