I have become a genuinely obsessive 'Twitter-twat' (even Tories can talk sense sometimes). I enjoy sharing my words of profound banality with others and the haiku-like restriction of 140 letters.

   Not that I've mastered a great deal. I don't seem to have many followers and have a long way to go before I become a quasi-religious cult and lead them all to salvation on the Blessed Waun ( pronounced 'wine', but no relation).

   I began in a surrealist political mode, but have rapidly lapsed into political commentary and ecstatic reactions to the Championship play-offs. Pretty soon, I will be commenting on my struggles with flatulence and the woodlice in our bathroom, judging by the prevailing subject-matter.

   In search of enlightenment on Twitterdom , I decided to 'follow' a few of my musical heroes (all sounds a bit too much like stalking). The ridiculously under-rated and amazingly talented singer-songwriter Thea Gilmore was having serious problems unblocking her toilet. Where was her guitarist partner Nigel Stonier with his plunger?

   More disconcerting, the completely unique American singer-songwriter (see a pattern here?) Sufjan Stevens appeared to be tweeting only the opening lines of his songs! I thought he'd got a form of cyber-dementia, till I discovered that Sufjan's site was actually controlled by his fans.

   Trying to catch up with legendary.......you got it......singer-song-writer Tom Waits proved more fruitful however. The tweet from Tom made welcome reading, when he said - ' I never get on the radio. Marcel Marceau has more air time.' Typically witty.

   Yet I quickly found out the power of the ubiquitous tweet. I read comments on the election eagerly and one struck me - 'The electorate have spoken and they have said.........'Erm...'  When Ian Hislop repeated this word-for-word on last Friday night's 'Have I Got News For You' as if it was his own invention, I soon realised there was no copywright on these twitterings.

   My older daughter warned me not to use Twitter to be poetic, yet I follow a number of observations about low-flying clouds and birds singing to annoy insomniacs. Friends would probably argue that I've twittered for far too long anyway and ex-colleagues would merely state - 'Haven't you got anything better to do?'

   Well, sometimes things are beyond a tweet,especially the cockerel up the hill -

Rooster and Cowboy

 

 

 

The rooster knows no better

‘What-a-day-for-me!’

he calls across valley :

the sun’s already downing west,

he shouldn’t be so cocky.

 

                                                                    The boy by the fence leaning

                                                                    ever-watchful, his bike

                                                                    a steed in shallow ditch :

                                                                    on look-out over grass the colour

                                                                    of sand, for a single movement.

 

Can’t see him, only hear his loud

doodle-dooing: imagine his strut,

his crest rising in the wind

among so many hens, his wings

flap-fluttering in dalliance,

his cries of always dawn.

 

                                                                     On his bike riding down the lane

                                                                     gun held aloft, a cowboy

                                                                     in baseball cap and hooded jacket,

                                                                     he shoots at something there

                                                                     in the bushes, misses

                                                                     a solitary swallow reaping air.