A starving bard one day went strolling. He was walking off the hurt of a hep-cat’s screech. Contemplating the moaning of a song just heard, knowing it wouldn’t be written down anywhere legible. The night before some lout had bragged of having read ‘the world’s longest poem.’ The brief synopsis he gave was satisfactory, in the truest sense, and to go one further, more than a little gratifying. The only thing left would be to eat a little chicken. Preferably not farm-fed. You catch a chicken in the wild, you can be sure it’s going to taste superior; though good luck with pinning it down.

So the lout was something like a frog really, who when you just took the time to kiss it a little, started spurting out streams of millennia-old wisdom, quite implausibly. Lesson learned, but it won’t be the last. More than one art this noble rapscallion was ensconced in, seemingly. A well concocted man is worth more than the sum of his ports. So said he, and well the bard he went wailing and so on…

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Fly for me a little kite
And I will fill you full of shite
Bolster and brace you little one
A trembling hand laid on the gun

Mercy, please, you cry and rant
Feel free with me, go on and vent
A scaredy cat is a pound unspent
Circus-size, come circumvent

The billowed clouds of undesire
Hitch your hooks up to this here wire
The latch is creaking, thumb unstuck
In this wee game we make our luck

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A fumbling bee one day went buzzing. Stung a youngster as God desired it. The vinegar was fetched with bikes left behind in the shadow of Sunday trees. Sun was always on the weekend. We climbed trees while they played ball, never liked playing in goals. Always against an old blue shed they banged it, the rowdy lads who were quicker with quips. And my older brother, who never had patience for the flapping wee body that I had. He was my hero then, right up until big school. We climbed trees and built huts. And dug up old glass jars from God knows when. There were fields and there were hedges and there was endless exploration. We liked to talk a little deeper.

It seems to me that you can sell
Your soul and smile and tap the well
Whose sickly sap is hoarded keen
And feed the blood-run bean machine

The punters pace and stutter up
Hoping a drip will grace their cup
But it don’t come cheap, sweet buttercup
The time has come for growing up

Can you rake the yield of last year’s smiles
And fake your way up sickly aisles
Can you bear to grimace, fair and true
Whilst the child inside you cries ‘untrue!’

It’ll fetch a price, but not just yet
You’ve got to learn to market it
A burden further on your back
Grow up, take it easy, cut yourself some slack

You’ve grown up late, is the only thing
Words like Jaded take on meaning
And you see it’s only life is all
What of the gift? Shield it? At all costs?


I wanna write a little for the brethren. The sufferers. The sufferees. The suffragettes? Tis a weird one, to be clanged with the life-altering hospitalisation. Yeknow the one where you seen the inner-outer bits of reality, revelations, and the whole thing just changes. Then they fill ye full of medication that unadjustably alters your sleeping and living pattern. Gain a few stone, wake up every day depressed for two hours, need to eat but you’ve no motivation. You might end up in a hostel, you might end up alienating your entire family. You might end up in trouble with the law. I think a lot of people make it out you know. You might eek on out after some sensible lifestyle choices. You’re to all appearances a regular everyday ordinarily operating person. Then you get a family. You get a job, of sorts. People always ask, what are ye working at. Kind of hard to put it across, to some uncle, at a funeral. And they advise you to lie, ‘Yeah I’m CEO of a small but ambitious tech company up the road there. Aye. Yeah, DeckTech.’ But that kind of lying on the fly is hard too, especially to hardy old manly uncles who’ve a better winced-eye on the finer matters in life. Probably if you started into some mad conversation about shamans though they’d be freaked out, and they’d be the ones feelin’ uneasy.

But yeah aside from all the shit, the only thing that’s hard is passing yourself off as a normal person, or at least having the same expectations foisted upon you; only wanting, and probably attempting, to complain of your endless ailments at every given opportunity. It’s fuckin’ hard, and other people probably find you annoying as fuck. But what can you do. And then they shame you saying well yeknow we all have our troubles. I don’t know, probably true. And even when it comes to this, there’s a lot to be grateful for. But mainly I think, the danger lies in never really complaining.

-You, my friend. Are a horse’s arse.
-Aha! But you see, you! You are nothing but a swindler’s kitchen!
-And what’s that supposed to mean exactly?
-Mean’s you’re fuckin’ stupid, ye horse’s arse.

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-All you’ve got in this life. Are your auntie’s fuckin’ knickers. Ye goose. Ye’ve not even a snatter up your nose. Ye wee fried spud. Ye saucepan lid.

-Well ye see you. You’re like a wee bitta grease  hangin’ off the edge of that saucepan. Like a tiny wee thing clingin’, tryin’ just to cling in and have the craic, but ye don’t even belong. Cause the only place ye do belong, is in a bin. The greasebin for wee greaseballs like you.

-Is that right? Well let me tell ye this. I’ve had nightmares that haven’t come close to this, eh? See sittin’ in a room with you, is the stuff of nightmares. Try that on for size.

-Is that what way your wee psychic state is? Like all confused and troubled acause of somebody who’s imperfections cause ye to cringe inside and hurt? Have ye a wee bit of projection goin’ on there, mate? Eh? Haha. Losin’ it, so ye are.

-Look I’ll be completely honest with you here. I am more than a little attracted to you, and yes, this does trouble me. My head’s fuckin’ wrecked, to be honest like, but am not gonna fuckin’ show it.

-That’s good, wee love. A blow you a wee kiss look, wooooo. Love ye, wee love. Byyyyye.

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Thank fuck that’s over with. Let’s get down to writing some serious shite. Like the time I blew up a balloon with me own farts. Or fell out of a big tree and failed to hit any branches on the way down. Trees are like banks in a way, aren’t they? They both have branches. Hahahahaha. There’s better ones than that… What about the time ye uh, fuck. I don’t know. Hang on.

Aye. The game. Have ye all played the game? What’s your favourite level? Yeah, mine too. Would ye say the game is a drug? Or like a drug? Hmmn, maybe, I dunno, could be persuaded like. Thing I hate about the game is ye don’t always win. And, like, how much work ye have to put in just to get to the bonus rounds. Sometimes I get confused and try and sell a shed fulla coal to some bai for a rune broadsword, like up the street on a Saturday. Funny oul game. There’s all different versions too, the fame game, the shame game, blame game, that’s popular. I like that RPG craic, everybody workin’ as a team. Means if some man’s givin’ me hassle in an area I don’t like, I call in ma big mate who’ll sort him out, or at least advise me to steer clear of the fucker. So is Elon Musk the last boss or what? Look forward to facing Donald Trump. And then when ye’ve done all the rounds, you get called on to This is Your Life, and get to run the whole thing back. Feels a bit fake all that tv stuff, but I suppose that’s part of the game too, sometimes.

Frequently fluent flyby birds squawking like pickled pigs porcupine needle on the record groove groove groove. There’s some jazz. Scrambled pegs all a-clippin’ on your washboard scrub. Tinkle down your livery and let me know how squelch the liver is this fine winter’s eve. Quack quack said fiddlesticks tyrannising the whole booth whilst all the time poor Betty was trying to make a call to her dead grandfather. The séance was broken on a whim, when fiddlestix Major decided to break wind at an opportune moment, creasing the glass panels with laughter till their shape was altered unadjustabley. Well well it’s a wonderful day all the way anyway any how any which whey you look at it. Big Louis’ blowin’ an’ the whole place bops. Even the neighbour nextdoor is lifting his trouser legs just a little so his ankles have the freedom to express themselves as they did in the long ago eons of Scotsman pole flunking and sword-dallying. A merry man is he this night. Chicken hula hoop meringue lemon cypress groove a minute minute means very little when you’re tracing time with the lilt of a negro. Well the net is fucked, but that is all and well. Now is the time for writing!

She stood before me on the bus. I could smell her essence, it riled, roused something in me. I wanted to grab her by the hair and sink my teeth deep into the delicate nape of her neck. I wanted to grab her buttocks, those wide shapely hips. Men should be allowed to do these things. The animal in man is restrained these days. And maybe that’s not an entirely good thing. I’d love to have that freedom. But it creeps up on me somely one two three times usually in public with a girl I don’t recognise but for the fact her essence is calling something deep within me to grab out. But I’m a musician. That’s my trade. And that’s what draws the girls in, when they see the performer. Into a dream phantasy reverie of golden future thoughts, serenading by the river under some weeping tree that weeps of joy and summertime solace in the wild. Perhaps one day, if things carry on as they are, what with the woman situation, I’ll be the one that’s grabbed. Woman-handled. They’ll rip the flesh from my bones just to get a taste of that dream someplace in the cold reality concrete officeblocks and full to the limit 5 in the evening bustrips. Maybe it’s this cold horrible life we’re leading against nature that draws up a resistance instantly where some slice of the real earth man’s life might be glimpsed. Long live the farmers. I’m going to the bar now, full of pregabalin, notepad and pen in pocket, plenty of time to sip and observe before I take the stage and unleash everything that’s been crying out for release. Hopefully. You never know how these things might go. At any rate, a wee drink will calm my bursting head. I’m dressed in tight brown cords and the new tag still on it shirt that I nabbed today for four pounds a bargain. Yes, I am colour co-ordinated, and ready to schmooze. Talk jazz with the French. That’s a language we can all understand. A silly blue bag I’ll have to carry this all in, unless I find a suitable other. Won’t be long till these pills kick in. Mother had a dream some months back warning me off them. Proved prophetic as the beating that was meted out to me the other night shows. Tonight I’ll ride safely, embursed in my comort bubble. Lively chat and great colourful jazz writing. Let’s do IT.