My hair is white but not like how Moses’ hair is white

Peggy Shaw by Alfred Cheney Johnston

This is:
My hair is white but not like how Moses’ hair is white

I’ve always been fascinated by Moses’ hair:

Did it really turn white up on the mount.

From conversing with God, way up there?

I’m not sure it happened like this.

I’ve got white hair but I don’t count,

God’s number amongst my contact lists.

The Almighty took silence.

I got white hair waiting for the voice.

I don’t live in a deep forest, but I don’t care

Of angels who cannot see for the trees.

Conversing with burning bushes, they’re

Hollow acts setting fire to themselves.

I’ve got white hair but I don’t believe

In burnt angel shaped cinder memories.

My angels have combusted.

I got white hair from their settling ashes.

I’ve often wondered: Did Moses’ staff of prayer, 

Struck on the coast to set his people free,
Really split and part the deep Red Sea?

That conversing with waves to get over there

Wasn’t just part of the orbit naturally?

I’ve got white hair but separating a sea

Was not as hard as between you and me.

My lovers have drowned.

I got white hair from the salted air.

My gods silenced themselves.

My angels burned themselves.

My lovers drowned themselves.

And I got white hair.

But not like how Moses got white hair.

Every ticket is a loser

This is not an allegory. There are no hidden meanings. No riddles to be solved are here. Greville and the Tombstones are not enigmatic. We are not Travis. Sorry, I mean this one.

This is a song about going to any common and garden circus and seeing what is going on at the circus.

Apart from the part about the two-handed lady. That is definitely about someone.

Carnival Strippers (1976)

This is:
Every Ticket Is A Loser

In the rafters, the incandescent light

Of my lonely self. People’s lives on brighter screens

Far from the life I lead, the screams of skeletons

who are equals And some beyond thin.

Some really beyond my pale skin.

Want to know how it must feel,

To bare a smile like old paint peel.

No matter the times it turns over, it says the same.

Magic 8-Ball: ‘Ask me again’

So I head out to this circus of tents,

Under slumber sky, forwardly drawn to naked lights

Far from the life I lead,

 the delights of skeletons who are equals

And some beyond thin

Some really beyond my pale skin

And the ringmaster says:

Roll up! Roll Up! Every ticket is a loser.

Enter, Enter! It’s the only show in this town!

Only thing at all around!

See stripper carnival girls shake up and down!

And a fine-suited lawyer in make-up of a clown.

Visit Freaks n’ Geeks in their side-show home!

You can brush their teeth with a spider leg comb.

Watch the contortionist held in chains on high!

Suspend belief that self-made wings will really fly

And the ride operator says:

Roll up! Roll Up! Every ticket is a loser.

Hit the target with each throw: win a prize!

A fish in a bag of water.

Step right up to the Hall of Mirrored View!

Rows of unblinking eyeballs focus back on you

Hurry, board the glo-coloured Ghost Train!

Half-vapour regrets tied down on tracks prayin’

Sorry, the Tunnel of Love is out of bounds!

Closed until notice, that is, it can again be found

And the Fortune teller says:

Roll up! Roll Up! Every ticket is a loser.

Come close so you may know your future.

Feel my hot, wet breath.

Put the tin chip into the coin-slot cabinet!

Watch a mechanical man judder round in it.

Stand in awe at the belittlers and liars!

Witness audacious back bending on tight wires.

Walk in unease of a two-handed lady wonder!

One candy floss is another’s knife of a murderer.

And the candy floss is poisoned too, people eat it because it's sweetly vacuous.

Roll Up! Roll up! Join this circus!

My lonely self sees nothing is first what they seem

Far from the life I lead, this is a shriek

 of greased skeletons.

And some beyond thin.

Some really beyond my pale skin.