Track 1: guitar - J. Connoly
                  engineered by Rodney Watson.
                  Do you even know what an engineer does?
                  Thought not.

Track 2: This one was written by our bass player who, quite frankly,
                    rather hoped that people would be dancing or making love to
                    it.  Not sitting on their fat backsides, stroking their chins and
                    stoking up on music trivia like you are.

Track 3: The big hit.  You're now old enough to realise
                    that this track was probably selected by
                    a record company executive, at the expense of another,
                    far more ambitious and rewarding track.  The track that
                  should have been here was so clear and concise
                    that no liner notes would have been necessary.

Track 4: This one doesn't sound as good as it did when you were 16.
                    Nothing is as good as it was when you were 16.
                    It wasn't the song that was good: it was being 16.

Track 5: The girl that this song brings to mind is not, however much
                   you may hope it, sitting in a living room somewhere,
                   listening as you listen, and thinking of you.
                   To be absolutely frank, she was never more
                    than slightly fond of you, and even if she had been
                   she would have got over it long ago.  Girls are better that way.

Track 6: You know, you could be outdoors right now, breathing in
                   the cool fresh air and having some new experiences.
                   Living in the past is very unhealthy, and you could stand
                   to lose a pound or two.

Track 7: Even the band think this one is ****: skip ahead.

Track 8: The violin is played by the lead singer's wife.  You never know
                    when that might come up in a pub quiz.

Track 9: By now you're regretting forking out for an album you
                  already owned simply because it is on a new format.  You are
                   wondering if your old pal would like this for Christmas.
                   He wouldn't.

Track 10: When you were a teenager were you keen a) to develop your
                      own identity, bond with your peers and get a grasp of the
                      zeitgeist or b) sit indoors of an evening and listen to your
                      dad's records?  If you answered 'a', then for god's sake turn
                      this crap off and let your kids listen to their own CDs.  If
                      you answered 'b', you probably never had kids, so don't
                     worry about it.

Betty Botter bravely brought her
best out putting pen to paper
built a book both brave and brittle
based it on the bitter battle
she had fought to beat the bottle
blossomed bigger, better, brighter
got the right to be a writer
Brought the book to Bertie Baxter
Baxter's Bookstore's biggest buyer
but the buyer was no biter
he thought vampire books were better
Tried to bate her and berate her
and belittle Betty Botter
bad benighted ******* bade her
"Be more like the bigger hitters!"
Better bet your bottom dollar
Betty Botter's ****** bitter.

The baker's wife
is neither surprised nor impressed
when he brings her cakes and pastries.
The child of a joiner
can take or leave a treehouse.

But since I am not a poet,
I hope you can take these inelegant lines,
their lack of rhyme or rhythm
and their false humility
and read this in them:

After all this time
you still make me think and see
in new and unusual ways
and for that, and all else besides,
I thank you.

It came from small beginnings.
A shaken woman left her car, engine still running
To see whether or not she had killed the rabbit.
Soft and broken it lay, and she wept, when suddenly
The rabbit drew its final breath
And spoke.
"Don't worry," it said.
"You humans, you're too sentimental!
"You should know, we admire you so much
"That it is a great honour to die at your hands
"Or through the speed of your magnificent machines!"

The woman was startled.

The phenomenon spread around the globe.
In the middle of the South China Sea
A fisherman was greeted by a cheer from his catch.
"Well done!  Well done!" they cried.
"Next time use a smaller mesh, you'll catch more!"

In a chicken battery in Idaho, a young labourer
Whose conscience was troubling him
Almost fainted when 60,000 chickens sang
"For He's a Jolly Good Fellow!" and thanked him for his kindness.

"We are here for you!" said a turtle, choking on a plastic bag.
"You have dominion - use it with pride!" cried a pack-laden donkey.
"We are nothing without your interest - catch us, keep us, eat us, please!"

Tabloids were quick to react.
"One in the eye for the Animal Liberationists,"
said the Daily Mail.

For 24 hours the animals spoke
and then they stopped.
And because their voices
had been strained and strange,
feather muffled and furred,
wrung from throats with no vocal chords
It was impossible to be sure
Whether or not
they were being sarcastic.

By the night-light's orange glow
I hold you,
Long after you have settled
Jealous of the years which wait
to take you from my arms
To schools and shorelines,
to woods,
to streets,
to parties, parks and pubs
While here and now, all you need
is my heartbeat
in your ear.

On the face of it, there isn't much about this bird
To stop me in my tracks.
             Brown, oblivious, busy with the ground
It totters along on stilted legs
Probing among the frozen fields.

It's the name that's the trouble.

Childhood hours spent copying pictures
From the Readers' Digest Book of Birds
Call to mind the name, 'Curlew'.
In my house, though, birds had Scots names
and my dad, a linguistic David Bellamy
Urged us to conserve these rare words
or lose them forever.
Goldfinch?  Gowdspink!
Starling?  Stuckie!
Blue ***?  Umm...

But the undistinguished gentleman before me
was definitely a whaup.

Curlew or whaup?
Which is it to me?
The English of books
or the fading Scots, maybe closer
to the bird's wild home?

Textbook reality
or romantic poetry?
Or both - can the creature sit
in two states at once?
"Schrodinger's Curlew", I think with a smile.
("Schrodinger's Whaup!" bellows the bit of my dad
that lodges in my head.)

           Here, under a cloud of my own breath
In the low winter light,
            Neither seems quite adequate.

And then, untouched by my musings
The bird spreads its wings and lifts,
Naming itself, with a long, pure note

          And my heart, in two states,
           Leaps
             and breaks.

Don't be scared, little thought!
I saw you, keeking out from behind some triviality
Reluctant to disturb me
(you could see I was tired), but please,
don't go, don't go!
I think we've met before?  Some years ago
When I was less careless with my time
And slower to retreat along well trodden paths.
I'm afraid I'm not the host I was,
but wait - at least remind me of your name?

Are you a vanished love,
Neither finished nor fulfilled?
Are you the speechless schoolboy view
From the summit of Ben Alder, won
By twenty miles of peat bog and scree?
(No wonder you feel a stranger here
In front of my T.V!)
Are you a question to which comfort was not the answer?
Oh please wait, I nearly have it!
You're a song, begun but forgotten?
You're something I meant to say to someone, once
You're a friend, a parent - a reason
For loving this great wide world

Don't go - don't leave me here
with Simon Cowell, cheap wine
And no momentum!

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.