tippity tippity tap
tap tap tippity tap
tippity tap tap tap
And
stop.

This is not it.
This is not art,
this is no way for me to start.
This glowing screen
this cold machine
can never catalyze my dreams into
                                       communication
                                                ­   conversation
or fire my
                                                            ­imagination (nor can
The mincing of a pen
across neat lines).  Writing only hurts my hand.

And so,
I stand.

Re-align the ol’ synapses
Click my fingers and my HOUSE collapses!
   And  THERE,
Planet Earth, with a grin, says,
“I dare you!  Throw form to the winds!”  And I,

I want to blast my words from the sky
with a big, black blunderbuss,
scatter the survivors to the four corners of heaven!

I want to ****** my fingers, scraping in the grit,
Frantically digging in the glaur and the grime for runaway rhyme

I want to haul my metaphors in, thrashing, from the sea
Hold them, know them, set them free!

I want my similes to flatten me
Like rhinos on the rampage

Tell me your stories, in everything you do
Make a bonfire of biros, a pixel pyre
And dance  your poems as the flames leap higher!

I want to write with my FEET across a Scotland-shaped sheet!

I do not want to be neat.

To tether in letters,
To file for forgetters.

Words on a page are birds in a cage,
Poetry unspoken
Life, unwoken.

Hunting has a noble heritage, for sure
Bringing us together, it forged a species
Keen-eyed, communicative, feared by the fierce

               So who am I to begrudge you your sport?
I, too, love wide open skies, tramping over bog and fen,
I even quite like dogs!

I imagine nature might reveal herself to you
In signs jealously guarded from the armchair carnivore.
I can almost reconcile your harsh percussion
With the croak of the raven, the sloshing tide
And the chewing and mooing of cattle.

But the pheasant!  For the love of God, the pheasant?
It can hardly be a battle of wits!
I've seen him as he sits, a big, red bullseye
On fences and *****,
Startled by every day he survives.

How stirring can it be,
Picking off the ones the cars and lorries never got?

When you carry him home,
Better off dead,
Hang him in your garage for a week
Feeling like Henry VIII,
Cut him down, slit him open and find the crop
Stuffed not with heather shoots and beetles
But with half a pound of store-bought grain
(Generously laced with antibiotics) -
I hope the realisation creeps up
That you may as well have asserted yourself
In the hen coop,
Blasting away at befuddled poultry
And saving yourself a walk.