Sitting here hoping you miss me
Cause things ain't been the same
Since that good for nothing city slicker
Keeps trying to give you his last name

Rolling into town
Like a brand new Cadillac
Well I'm here to tell you mister
I want my baby back

He may take you to far off places
Places we could never go
Like over there in Georgia
Where you could visit the streets of Rome

Or take you to a romantic dinner
With candle light just you and he
Toasting you by the riverside
In Paris, Tennessee

You can drive a world away from here
In his fancy sports car like it weren't nothing
Clinking your bottles of Lone Star beer
High stepping it out in Dublin

I even here tell he's taken you
To the sunny shores of Naples
Way down South in Florida
Something I was never able

But can he take you out frog gigging
Or catch fireflies in a jar
In all your worldly gallivanting
Don't you miss the way we were

Has anything he done for you
Been as sweet as chewing on a piece of Bahia grass
While standing in an open field
Watching the clouds blow past

Or listening to a Whippoorwill
Sing out it's nightly song
On the front porch you and me swinging
To it's rhythm all night long

Don't give a hoot about places he takes ya
That's about all I gotta say about that
After all this highfalutin society traveling
All I want is my baby back

You wear your presence lightly,
you politely undermine it
for the folks who'd find it fright'ning
in the normal daily grind
You are jocular and flighty
wear a self-effacing grace
although your shoulders might be mighty
were they not so undermined

We met at a rehearsal
for an amateur dramatic act
to shrink the universal
to a comfortable size
They took a work of genius
the timeless peerless grandeur
and they whittled it to meaninglessness -
There I caught your eye.

"I hear you need a drummer!"
you intoned in toffee baritone
and sad, diluted Shakespeare
did evaporate tout suite
"We're gigging in the summer!"
I replied in my delight and then
I knew I'd found a friend
who might just help me keep the beat.

I found you were an artist
of broken, brittle beauty
who believed an artists' duty
was to challenge and defy
Who had washed up in the genteel
artists' village of Kircudbright
where the art is safe and snooty,
boats and trees and sunny sky

But your canvas is elastic
is electric and eclectic
as you drastically cast an angry
eye across it all
Any prettiness is sitting
on a nauseous unwellness
where the skeleton of Elvis
boogies by a butcher's stall

Well we found some fellow feeling
in our mutual defiance
casting darts at art and science
and amusing just ourselves
Made some music, sank some bevvies
wrote a book, got raging drunk
but what we managed withered, shrunk
by what we planned and simply shelved.

Well it seems that I've been hoping
that our business was unfinished
that our plans were undiminished
by the passing of the years
That some catalyst would manifest
and shake us into action
dissipate the dull distraction
of the daily hopes and fears.

But it seems that you are leaving
that your talent, brightly blazing
and the fact that you're amazing
has been missed by this wee town
Well I undersand it, ******
but I'll miss you now, my brother
and the tumbled jumbled colour
that you spun from Solway brown.

You grab the fishing pole
I'll get a stack of dollar bills
And a red, white and blue bucket.
That should be bait good enough
To snare a few senators.

We'll fry 'em up easy,
God knows they're slippery enough,
We'll season each side carefully with the bitter dreams of the people.
And when they're nice and crispy,
We'll place them on white china.
They'll understand the irony.

Plans have been made
Rooms have been booked
The boat is finally ready
Start tying on hooks

The guys are excited
Will see them all soon
Port O'Connor get ready
Were gonna fish your lagoon

Also your bays
And maybe your jetties
Maybe the surf
Flounder gigging, get ready

Somewhere...

Music is playing
Cocktails are pouring
Lovers are loving
Friends are laughing
Families are hugging
Champagne is bubbling
Voices are singing
Children are grinning
Musicians are gigging
Dancers are jigging
Crowds are gathering
Heartbeats are racing

But right here
Right now
I am with my family
At home

Maja wanted to party.
Pachanga and rage,
Yodel see oooma and tunnel sing.

No alcohol she said,
A stupid juice, no switchin' lanes.

We dance tonight, she said, macarena, gigging,
A grind fest, dry ******* on a stanky leg,
Be ****** and true.

The word spread.
By 11 p.m. a thousand isadoras from Devon,
Mud sharks and ****,
Everybody smigglin' and dimplin' out.

We only have this day, Maja said,
So we bustamove and shuffle.
Tonight. All night.
And we rallied.

I took you in
We laughed, got drunk, smoked some stuff that was wrong
Went gigging
Stole ***** that we shouldn't have been swigging
You dragged on some **** of a ten pack of stolen ciggies

You used me but I overlooked this at the time
Maybe I used you as well but this worked out just fine
A free ticket to the singer of your choice
Friend or carer, you wanted my company but not for their voice
You had no money but I didn't mind helping you out
As I never asked for a dime in return, I could have gone to a tout

So now...
It's thrown back in my face from a man with no cares
He swindles a friend he's known for over 20 years
Lives life like a failed rockstar as some new hearts he'll now tear

Good luck to those who he'll now push from his window sill
As two-facedness is a very bitter pill
He'll never learn as failure is an option we look back in hindsight
Looking over the edge from these choices
But from from how many lies and to fall from what height

Thinking back it was everyone else who has always paid
So that's it now my once dear friend
Time to call it a day

JJB