Head Traumas

James Knight
 First published by Cipher Books 2013

All texts and pictures © James Knight 2013

ISBN 978-1-291-48498-4

All rights reserved

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

Further copies of this book can be purchased online at

[Link]
About me

I make bad dreams, in the form of poems and pictures. You

can follow me on Twitter (@badbadpoet), where I am a
member of Jeff Noon’s experimental writing group,
@echovirus12.

My website is [Link].

Thirteen is my lucky number.

My books

I have published several other books, all of which are

available from [Link]:

The Small Hours

Days of the Snowman

The Madness of the Bird King (with colour illustrations by

Diana Probst)

The Death of the Bird King

time lines (an anthology of Twitter poets)

13 (with colour illustrations by Diana Probst)

Mr Punch Dreams (with colour illustrations by Maxim Peter

Griffin)
 Contents

Thresold 1 9
The Madness of the Bird King 10
Threshold 2 23
13 clouds reflected in a lake, at sunset 24
13 sounds heard by a mannequin on a stormy night 26
Poetry 28
Threshold 3 29
Dream 86 from the Oneiroscope catalogue 30
Clocks 31
13 pieces of a broken mirror 32
Throne 34
Threshold 4 35
Dream 902 from the Oneiroscope catalogue 36
Mon 37
Threshold 5 42
Cars 43
Dressing room 44
Threshold 6 45
13 chess pieces… 46
Dream 13 from the Oneiroscope catalogue 48
Thresholds 49
Nectar 53
Threshold 7 54
13 transformations… 55
Fart 57
13 Medusa variations 58
Dream 620 from the Oneiroscope catalogue 60
Threshold 8 61
Mirrors 62
Josef K Through the Looking-Glass 63
Moon Faces 64
Dream 771 from the Oneiroscope catalogue 72
Seaton Beach 73
Threshold 9 75
Ventriloquism 76
13 machines from the Bird King’s private collection 77
Threshold 10 79
13 disturbing objects… 80
Dream 437 from the Oneiroscope catalogue 82
Fledgling 83
Threshold 11 84
13 imaginary tarot cards, unsuitable for cartomancy 85
13 anatomical studies 87
Coat 89
Threshold 12 90
13 deleted scenes… 91
Eat 93
The Ministry of Teeth 94
Dream 849 from the Oneiroscope catalogue 95
13 secret rooms… 96
Threshold 13 98
Grandma’s eyes 99
The Ministry of Teeth 101
Mechanical Muse 1 102
When the Bird King Died 103
Mechanical Muse 2 105
13 fragments of a somniloquy… 106
The Ministry of Teeth 108
Death 1 109
Mechanical Muse 3 110
Dream 347 from the Oneiroscope catalogue 111
Death 2 112
Mechanical Muse 4 113
13 confessions made by the Punchman… 114
13 cyborg poets 116
Mechanical Muse 5 118
The snowmen 119
13 terrible claws: a tribute to Maurice Sendak 124
Dream 63 from the Oneiroscope catalogue 126
Mechanical Muse 6 127
Brain 128
RIP, Bird King 129
13 variations on the theme of madness… 130
Mechanical Muse 7 132
Night 133
The Oneiropoem 134
Mechanical Muse 8 136
Mr Punch Dreams 137
Mechanical Muse 9 150
The Bird King Lies Dead 151
Jack Ketch in Hell 152
Respect 154
Notes on the texts and images 155
Threshold 1

9
 The Madness of the Bird King

The Bird King is mad again.

He caws
through empty midnight streets,
moulting tar-black
feathers.

10
2

The Bird King’s wings:

stiff machinery
cobbled together from wire,
wood,
corrugated iron.

But the feathers are real, seasonal:

Spring: urinous, downy.

Summer: purples, scarlets.
Autumn: rust-tinged greys.
Winter: a widow’s fan.

11
3

The Bird King spends much of his time

asleep on a throne of lightbulbs,
dreaming of love.

Waiting in the wings: his retinue of electricians.

Sometimes he wakes,
jovial.

His laughter breaks glass,

frightens animals.

He cackles and crackles on his electric throne.

12
4

Decrees, numerous
and arbitrary,
are issued by the Bird King.
He bans TV, chimneys,
singing, pears,
Wednesdays,
bacteria.

His subjects have to wear hats

made from murderers’ teeth.

13
5

The Bird King takes pride in his aviary.

In pretty cages: children, the homeless,
artists, lunatics.

Pigeons strut past,

cooing and chuckling.

14
6

Moonlight is bad
for the Bird King.

He becomes maudlin,
writes bleary sonnets.

In the morning,
incandescent,
he tears them up.

15
7

The Bird King dispenses nightmares,

pouring them
from coloured vials
into sleepers’ ears.

His calling card is a blue rose,

left on the pillow.

16
8

The Bird King’s heart:

a clunking clockwork contraption

wheels within wheels

jarring
grinding

triggering his body functions and rage.

17
9

The Bird King’s stomach

howls
with all the souls
he has devoured.

Souls of worms
insects
dogs
people.

He shits their hot husks.

18
10

The Bird King lays thousands of tiny eggs,

which hatch into black larvae.

The stench is incredible.

Most of the larvae perish,

wriggling abortively
until they’re eaten
by birds.

But some struggle upright,

hobble about,
chattering, febrile.

19
11

The Bird King’s palace is full

of his malformed offspring.

At night no-one can sleep for their gibbering and screeching.

Few larvae can spin cocoons.

Those that do languish inside for months,
fermenting,
sprouting,
changing.

When they finally drop

from their rotten cases
their proud father is there
with his camera.

He emits a terrible squawk of triumph.

20
12

Nostalgic for intra-uterine life,

the Bird King had a gigantic artificial womb built.

He hibernates inside for a few months every year.

The downside to having a womb

in which to withdraw from the world
is that,
when the three months are up,

he is
ejected
from
it
in a
horrific
re-enactment
of
birth.

21
13

A claw moon hangs

among torn clouds.

The Bird King is writing.

Plucking a red feather from his spine,

he scrawls words of horrible longing
in his own black,
black
blood.

22
Threshold 2

23
 13 clouds reflected in a lake, at sunset

1
A mannequin, in disjointed abandon.

2
A blown kiss: powdery, fatal.

3
A cocoon, hanging from the sky’s striations.

4
A memory of an account of a troubling dream.

5
A face made of crumpled tissues, soggy loo roll, bandages, chalk.

6
A foetus, revolving in the womb’s red night.

7
The fossil of a hunchback with tortured wings.

8
An eye, blind with cataracts.

9
A quill, writing the word BIRD.

10
An octopus wearing a coral crown.

24
11
A dismembered swan.

12
A fleet of phantom ships, evaporating into history.

13
Your brain, your mind, your sleeping mind, wondering, wandering,
unravelling, surrendering.

25
 13 sounds heard by a mannequin on a stormy night

1
An intake of breath like a rush of cold water over rocks.

2
The ticking of innumerable clocks, muffled behind walls.

3
The red sound: laughter.

4
The gates of space opening on constellation hinges, then angels
falling, bellowing brightly.

5
Something scuttling along the wainscot.

6
The papery sound of men’s voices in the coffee-stained conference
room.

7
A flicker of silence, like an owl’s eyes among spectral trees.

8
A sobbing orgasm.

9
Splintering wood. Open up! Open up! We know you’re in there!

10
The drawl of a lost poem, smoking into space.

26
11
Liquid machines churning the night.

12
A vow that turns into a curse, close to the ear.

13
Industrious chatter, a metallic clang. A voice like a tower: Silence on
set, please!

27
 Poetry

The Bird King rummages

in the bin,
where he’d left
your poetry.

He feels guilty
for having thrown it out.

Your haiku reeks

of rotting fish.

28
Threshold 3

29
 Dream 86 from the Oneiroscope catalogue

Words abandon pages,

signposts,
touchscreens,

and gather
in a seething cloud.

Later,
it rains
poetry.

30
 Clocks

Broken clocks hand out wrong times,

their wrong chimes
hanging
in the air,
portentous as film music.

My watch wears a smirk on its face.

31
 13 pieces of a broken mirror

1
A tight, tired smile. Downturned eyes. A hand brushing a cheek.

2
A woman who looks like you, who might once have been you, holding
a blue rose.

3
The ghost of a candle flame, guttering in the gloom.

4
A table, smooth, possibly metallic. On the edge: something pink or
yellow, alive. Looking more closely: a maggot.

5
The eyes of someone who has seen little, imagined too much.

6
Screens shedding light on faces, machines ministering in corridors, a
grey lump ticking and snapping in a sneering skull.

7
Nothing, just a silvered surface, indifferent as ice. Nothing, still
nothing.

8
Her laughing mouth, lips curling cruelly. In the background: a door
opening onto darkness.

32
9
A roomful of collapsed cocoons. Something smudges the light, panics
in little flutters.

10
A tensed hand with nails like claws.

11
A cheek, a shoulder, impossibly smooth. Barely moving, or perhaps
not at all. A curtain moving in the breeze from the open window.

12
A shoal of fish with serrated mouths, gulping black water, spiralling,
turning, dissolving.

13
An open book, a blank page. A face, probably your face, stooping to
see.

33
 Throne

It’s the Bird King

forming the words,
deforming my thoughts.

He sits in his cranial throne,

tugging levers,
making my blind wheels spin.

34
Threshold 4

35
 Dream 902 from the Oneiroscope catalogue

Looking into a mirror,

you see the sun
where one of your eyes
should be.

You dread its eclipse.

36
 Mon

It is suddenly very cold.

Mon opens his eye. He sees fog, the ground. A skeletal tree.

Where am I? he thinks.

...

Mon listens. He can hear distant noises through the fog: laughter,
gunshots, cars, birdsong.

So I am in the world, he thinks.

...

Mon shivers. He’s naked. The need to warm himself is sudden,

imperious.

His body’s other demands soon follow. He’s hungry, thirsty, horny.

...

With a lurching motion, shivering violently, Mon propels himself

through the fog.

...

Sloping ground gives way and he finds himself on a road.

The fog is thinner here. The road is empty.

The distant sounds seem fainter.

37
...

Mon curls up against the cold, foetus-like, on his side.

Despite feeling frozen, Mon wants desperately to get up and hunt for
food. His stomach moans mournfully.

And he has an erection.

He feels like a marionette, pulled one way then another by his bodily
needs.

So this is life, he thinks.

...

Mon falls asleep.

...

When he wakes he’s so cold he can't move.

Is it possible to be alive and have rigor mortis? he wonders.

...

A rat crawls onto Mon, taking him for a corpse.

He waits until it is near his face, then opens his mouth. A slow, painful
operation! The rat is curious. It peers into Mon’s maw.

Mon waits until the head is in his mouth, then bites it clean off.
Nutrition at last!

38
...

Mon has eaten his fill. This gives him the strength to straighten out
from his agonised coil. He stands, walks.

Rat is tasty, he thinks.

...

Further along, the road is overrun by vegetation. He trips, collapses

onto his belly and starts slithering through the tangled green. He’s
aware of movement.

Insects are at war. They seethe, scurry, make bristling formations.

Mon sees heads, abdomens, legs, thoraxes, severed, crushed.

To make matters worse, his progress is impeded by the aggressive

erection whose pangs continue to torment him.

Maybe life would be better if I were a girl, he ponders.

Around him, creation agitates, cries, eats itself.

...

Fog, wracked undergrowth, insects, the slaughterhouse of nature. Mon

closes his eye in horror.

...

Mon has slept again. He opens his eye and weeps.

39
He wonders what he is. He looks down at his body, taking in every
sorry detail. He concludes that he must still be in his larval phase.

...

Something is becoming visible in the grey haze: rounded, fleshy

forms, vaguely coalescing. Mon goes nearer. It is a woman. He stares
at her.

The woman moans, weeps, grizzles. When Mon is within her reach she
gathers him in. Her teeth are little gravestones, her hair wickerwork.
She smells of burnt wood.

He tries to speak, for the first time. His mouth twists.

A word, barely a word, a syllable, repeated, a non-word dragged up

from his core: “Mama.”

Again. “Mama.”

Gaining confidence, he says it over and over.

“Mama, mama, mama, mama.”

It accelerates, becomes a mad burble.

For the first time: joy.

The woman slams an oily hand over his mouth, so he stops talking. He
scrutinises her inscrutable face.

Then the fog erases her.

...

40
He finds himself back on the ground, on his back. No sign of the
woman. The road presents itself again.

He is overcome by a sense of loss. And he needs a piss.

...

Mon stands and continues along the road. The fog is at its thickest
here and he can’t see his feet.

No sounds now. He keeps walking.

41
Threshold 5

42
 Cars

Cars crouch on wet driveways,

dreaming of heat and distances.

Twist a little knife,

jump-start a cold heart,

roll the world under you.

43
 Dressing room

Alone in his dressing room,

the Bird King unclips
the feathery fastenings
around his face

and lets the mask fall.

The mirror reflects nothing.

44
Threshold 6

45
 13 chess pieces, hallucinated by the ghost of Alice Liddell

1. Mr Punch
His cracked right eye bleeds a little crimson tear. Put your ear to his
paunch: Judy sighs, lovesick, along his entrails.

2. God
Hard as pride, smooth as a skull. A thundercloud solidifying into a
pillar. Words fall like stones, break the lake’s mirror.

3. The Minotaur
Don’t do that, it’s a red rag to him, mate. He was stitched up all
wrong. Something lonely bellows in the night, lost in the neon-slashed
city.

4. Damien Hirst
Please don’t touch the vitrine. His master’s voice was caught in a
springe, then throttled and bottled. The price tag sags.

5. Josef Stalin
She marvels at the shirt-bursting magnitude of the iron-faced titan.
Flocks of birds volunteer for suicide displays.

6. Medusa
Prim and starchy behind the desk (Rothko bleeding at her back), after
office hours she sheds her skin, loosens into lithe lunacy.

7. The Bird King

Feathers turn to words that devour first the page, then the hand
holding the book.

46
8. William Shakespeare
The machine judders, steaming and hissing. Mysterious characters
flash across the screen.

9. Grendel
He’s hypersensitive. And you should see his tantrums! He’s like a big
baby. Alice looks up at a man made of blighted bone.

10. Angela Carter

Not a grin, but a knowing smile, lingering long after her face faded.

11. Medea
A nightmare, coiled dormant inside her, awaits the breath of a bitter
spring.

12. Satan
At the murder scene they found a baffling assortment of objects:
musical instruments, goatskins, red candles, a bellows, an uncooked
black pudding.

13. Judy
Punch drunk after the news of her promotion, she dances around the
house, smashing picture frames and mirrors with red fists.

47
 Dream 13 from the Oneiroscope catalogue

You’re aboard a galleon

with its beak-nosed captain.

The sea is a broiling mass

of blue rose petals.

48
 Thresholds

Between the sheets

Between the sleeps
Between one thing and another
One word and another

Spaces on a page
Pauses for thought
Little black-outs

What was I saying?

49
Which you are you now?
Let me find the night-time you

In bed, in the dark, we meet each other’s strangeness

We speak a different language now
A nocturnal language
Of silences
Motion

50
Later
Half waking
I see moving bodies where the room was
I see you
Multiplied
Your several selves

51
A door opens
A curtain shifts in the breeze

I try to write about it

But it resists expression

We’re in the spaces now

In the pauses
On the threshold

52
 Nectar

The Bird King mistakes himself

for a very
large
bee.

Craving nectar,
he shoves his
frazzled mug
into
the pale flower
of a toilet bowl.

53
Threshold 7

54
 13 transformations, witnessed by a nine-year-old boy on a
hot day in August

1
Rose petals quiver in the breeze, glow, become butterfly wings.

2
The gap between the evergreens, leading to the enclosed world of
compost heap, shed, greenhouse, is a solid shadow, tangible darkness.

3
The neighbour’s cat is an eye. Silently intrusive, it interrogates the
lawn, the flower beds, the leaves twitching on branches.

4
The sun is a disc of water.

5
A pigeon feather see-saws down to the grass, a leaf falling from a
bird-tree.

6
Up close, worming through a forest of blades: a blind, wingless
dragon.

7
Behind him: a house that is a cenotaph. Mum and Dad sit motionless
in a dead man’s living room.

8
Clouds are the fossils of impossible animals.

55
9
Young fingers follow the contours of the stone angel’s breasts.
Something stirs in the hot stillness. He hesitates, withdraws. The
house at his back is frowning.

10
Birdsong is a broken symphony played on Looney Tunes instruments.

11
The ants are going haywire. They scuttle, agitate, scurry, topple, their
circuitry fizzing and sparking.

12
The earth’s skin blisters and cracks in the heat.

13
The heat, the long summer, the garden, idle thoughts, boredom,
solitude, an old man’s death, are a limbo, a daydream, ingredients for
a story.

56
 Fart

Never fart
in the Bird King’s presence.

It is likely
that he will mistake
the sudden expulsion
of intestinal gas
for an expression
of love.

57
 13 Medusa variations

1. Dreams
At twilight Medusa becomes a tree. Brittle branches grasp at the wind
hissing through her leaves.

2. Little Black Dress

Medusa queues to pay for a little black dress. She’ll knock ‘em dead
tonight. But, fearing mirrors, she’ll never know how she looks in it.

3. Humdrum I
In Medusa’s kitchen, the kettle hisses and spits. She sits at the table,
buttering toast. Her eyes are empty; her mind’s elsewhere.

4. Book
Medusa is turned into a book, bound in snakeskin. Left on the shelf for
years, her pages yellow with age and envy. Her secret words will never
be read.

5. Mermaid
Medusa swims through the starless abyss, harpoon in hand, hunting.
Her eyes are pearls, her hair a crown of gaping eels.

6. Alice
He glimpses the reflection of a coil of Alice’s hair as she darts between
still white soldiers. In the frame of a mirror, she’s vulnerable.

7. Humdrum II
Medusa’s mother-in-law clucks over the baby, pecks his cheek.
Afterwards, in the stony silence of the kitchen, Medusa plans a roast
chicken.

58
8. TV
They sit in their millions, fixed by her stare.

9. Creation Myth
Medusa is the first monster. She hisses sweet nothings that become
the sea. At night, she’s mesmerised by the silver shield of the moon.

10. Cupid
Medusa meets the man of her dreams in a hall of statues. She shoots
love’s arrow through his heart, then caresses him until he’s rock hard.

11. Humdrum III

She inspects her grey skin in the hand mirror.

12. Art
Medusa takes up sculpture. Her subject is terror. Her material: life.

13. Reflection
Lost in the Garden of Eden, Medusa chances upon what she takes to
be a reflection of herself: a woman, ripe with sin, stroking a serpent.

59
 Dream 620 from the Oneiroscope catalogue

A cloud gazes
into the ocean,

falls in love
with a coral reef,

which it mistakes
for its own reflection.

60
Threshold 8

61
 Mirrors

Mirrors reflect in melancholy

on drab days, empty rooms.

Their mother, the moon,

keeps lunatic company.

Scratched silver makes a sad face.

62
 Josef K Through the Looking-Glass: sketches towards a
Lewis Carroll / Franz Kafka mashup

1
Someone must have been telling lies about Alice K, for one morning
the Queen of Hearts burst into her room, shouting, “Off with her
head!”

2
The two men introduce themselves to him as Tweedledum and
Tweedledee. “I am here to arrest you,” says one. “Likewise,” says the
other.

3
The warped geometry of Looking-Glass Land is such that, the quicker
he strides towards the Castle, the quicker it recedes into the distance.

4
After drinking the contents of the bottle, Alice suddenly found herself
transformed into a gigantic insect. “What will become of me now?” she
thought, forlornly.

5
Franz Carroll looks at himself in the mirror, dreams of escaping its gilt
frame.

63
 Moon Faces

Happy Jack Stuck-in-a-Box

64
Little Timmy Wind-Key

65
Grinning Willy Clown-Face

66
Bad Bad Jimmy Nighty-Night

67
Joyful Johnny Yawning-in-the-Morning

68
Poorly-Eye Bill

69
Artful Arnie Click-Click

70
Daisy-Chain Dave

71
 Dream 771 from the Oneiroscope catalogue

The statues come to life.

Those with artistic inclinations

struggle to represent our flawed forms.

72
 Seaton Beach

Above the curve of the horizon,

a blue sky with Simpsons clouds

Below,
a desert of water

No boats,
a few buoys, cactus-like

There can’t be anything beneath that granite mirage

Steep pebble beach, figures,

alone,
frozen in attitudes of quiet spectatorship,
eyes directed at the shifting thing
we confidently label: “the sea”

A thin arm repeating a gesture,

hailing or cursing the sea

A pebble over the water,

falling
again,
again

A further element to the scene:

a seagull,
a prop
held in place
by an invisible wire
or wing and wind
who can tell?

73
Sounds too, looped:
seagulls, distant voices,
the rasping of water sucked back over shingle
a barking dog

Again, that gesture,

aggrieved, excited, condemning, celebrating

and a pebble falling

74
Threshold 9

75
 Ventriloquism

Ventriloquists
terrify
the Bird King.

He fears
he may be
a dummy.

If so,
who’s jerking his head
and wings about?

And whose voice is that?

76
 13 machines from the Bird King’s private collection

1
The sparrows’ heads revolve slowly when you press the red button,
but the boxing glove attachments don’t work.

2
A weird weaving of voices, unmusical harmony. One phrase punctures
the texture: “The empty slot.”

3
Poems are processed into more useful verbal artefacts: shopping lists,
legal documents, instructions for the use of contraceptives.

4
Christ-in-the-Box leaps heavenward, eyes agog.

5
Don’t look too closely at the little dials and switches. They present an
infernal microcosm that will swallow you.

6
Tinier than a nanobot, it was once the scourge of the amoebae.

7
Simply place unwanted food in this funnel, pull the lever, and watch it
emerge from the opening at the other end as the man or woman of
your dreams!

8
I like the mouthpiece and the piston action of the fleshy appendages.
But I dislike being aroused so violently.

77
9
It can’t just be a cage. It must do something, surely, to be classified
as a machine? But it escapes me.

10
The user is invited to lick the touchscreen, and thereby induce nausea
or an orgasm (sometimes both) in whoever’s image appears on it.

11
You’re having a fucking laugh, mate. What’s so special about this heap
of shit? I’ve got ten like this at home, and they all smell better.

12
New from Mammon Inc: the Dream Egg. Let it hatch your secret
desires.

13
Some of the other visitors think Machine 13 is actually the Bird King
himself, encased in red plastic. Whatever it is, it terrifies me.

78
Threshold 10

79
 13 disturbing objects, recovered from a hypnosis-induced
nightmare

1
The head of a porcelain doll, face shiny with white paint. A red slash
denotes the mouth. The eyes resemble those of an insect.

2
A fifty pound note, on the back of which is a handwritten message, in
thick black ink: NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING
NOTHING NOTHING.

3
A greyish-yellow cocoon, the size of a man’s head. A faint whirring
noise can be detected coming from inside it.

4
A well-used copy of the complete works of Shakespeare. The words
have been arranged on the pages to form sinister faces.

5
Something that could be a hand, or perhaps a cephalopod of some
sort. When we attempt to examine it more closely, it loses definition.

6
A grandfather clock, whose hands have been replaced with knives. It
strikes the quarter hour with a rasping clatter.

7
A blue rose.

8
A cardboard box full of smashed lightbulbs.

80
9
Some sort of primitive adding machine, with levers, buttons and dials.
Although it does not seem to run on electricity, it glows faintly.

10
A twisted, resinous form; perhaps a sculpture of a tree.

11
A saucepan containing a reddish liquid, in which a small fish swims
tirelessly, in clockwise circles.

12
A shop window mannequin, onto the back of which a pair of skeletal
ostrich wings has been inexpertly grafted.

13
A brown leather handbag, zipped shut. Occasionally, something
flutters spasmodically inside it. We have not opened it yet.

81
 Dream 437 from the Oneiroscope catalogue

A smoking city.
Air black with ordnance.

A shell explodes
and out of the crater
steps Blood Venus.

82
 Fledgling

Whenever
inspiration
strikes,
the Bird King
grabs
his fledgling
idea
and stuffs it
into
a tiny
paper
cage,
whereupon
it dies.

83
Threshold 11

84
 13 imaginary tarot cards, unsuitable for cartomancy

1. The Black Hole

A starry-eyed god shifts in swirls, his roaring maw swallowing worlds.

2. Medusa
With one hand she strokes a snake. In the other: a heart of stone.

3. The Fly
Iridescent wings, meticulous mandibles.

4. Vivisection
Life distilled to geometry.

5. The Impossible Tower

A factory chimney, reflected in a lake.

6. The Blue Rose

A clawed hand places it on the pillow of a woman wracked by bad
dreams.

7. Blank
Turn it over, then back. Look again. Still blank.

8. The Bird King

His wings are a rainbow, his face a black cloud.

9. Ambition
A pyramid of corpses, surmounted by an office chair.

10. The Wolf

In the shadow of a fedora’s brim: sorrowful eyes, a snarling smile.

85
11. The Orgasm
An explosion in a skull.

12. Eve
A gorgon, holding an apple.

13. The Broken Mirror

A man crouches, searching for something among its thirteen dagger-
like pieces.

86
 13 anatomical studies

1
Behind her left eye is some sort of mechanism. If you look too closely,
the pupil contracts to a pinpoint.

2
All sale items now 90% off. Hands fumble over jumbled junk. Blind
eyes forget there’s a horizon.

3
First there was one man on his own, then there was a woman too,
then there was shame. He put his hand on her breast and she
laughed.

4
We tried to keep abreast of developments by dirtying our fingers on
the Financial Times. Filthy lucre made us stinking rich!

5
I found someone else’s fingers in my glove. They were wiry and hard.
I planted them in the garden and they grew into arm trees.

6
To take up arms against a sea of troubles…

I was dazzled by the lights and forgot the rest of the line. My head
throbbed; I felt sick.

7
He rested his head. He was only asleep for a few seconds, in which
time he dreamt that the Bird King was standing over him. When he
woke up there was blood on the pillow.

87
8
In the cabinet is a map showing your birth, your heart, your desires.
The red ink in which it is drawn is a blood-sample, stolen from you
while you slept.

9
She put her ear to his chest. I’m telling you, she could hear the
cockroaches scuttling around inside his heart.

10
It was a marble mausoleum, thick with shadows. Our ears strained for
sounds in the silence. A chesty cough made us jump.

11
The creature’s ears were attached to its abdomen.

12
You went in through the abdomen. Years lost in dark intestines.
Eventually you found your way out of the labyrinth. Looking at a
mirror, you saw the Minotaur staring back.

13
No good will come of this. Nothing lucky about the number 13. I don’t
even know why I’m doing this, wrist-deep in the intestines of dead
words.

88
 Coat

The Bird King likes

disguising himself
as a heavy black coat. He awaits his next victim on a peg
in the entrance to
a bleak restaurant.

89
Threshold 12

90
 13 deleted scenes, from a film existing only in the mind of
the director

1
A panning shot of the room glimpsed briefly in the final scene.
Stuttering fluorescent tubes, walls covered in graffiti, smashed bottles,
a camcorder still recording.

2
Man A greets Man B with a slow wave. Hot LA traffic thunders between
them, breaks the gesture into Morse code.

3
Alessandra Lucenti’s character sitting alone on the terrace of the
ruined hotel, laughing.

4
The young couple strew their clothes over sand and run into the inky
sea.

5
In the aftermath of the explosion, smoke cocoons a man wearing an
eye patch and leaning on a walking stick.

6
The Director locks his hotel room door and turns back to the woman
lying naked on the bed. A fly walks around the rim of a tumbler of
whisky.

7
A montage, in which we see all six main characters asleep.

91
8
A moonlit night. Man B walks by the towpath, hands in his pockets,
head lowered, whistling the tune heard by Man A on the staircase.

9
The man with the eye patch is disturbed by an unusual cloud
formation.

10
Leaving the theatre, James Knight and the Director argue over the
casting of Alessandra Lucenti as the blind poet.

11
The girl on the reception desk picks up her scissors, cuts the silk
ribbon and opens the white box. Inside is a maggot.

12
A repeat of scene one, with Man B taking the place of Man A.

13
A close-up of a wet black disc, radiating blue. The camera pulls back,
to reveal the Director’s eye.

92
 Eat

You are what you eat.

The Bird King eats words.

93
 The Ministry of Teeth

The architect of the Ministry of Teeth drew inspiration for her

idiosyncratic edifice from Venus fly-traps, black holes and the non-
Euclidean geometry evoked in some of the tales of HP Lovecraft.
Unfortunately, she soon found herself ostracised by her less
imaginative colleagues, who looked at her work with a mixture of envy
and horror. The press labelled her a lunatic.

Thirteen days after the building was officially opened, she went
missing, and was never seen again.

94
 Dream 849 from the Oneiroscope catalogue

The men are scratching at your door.

Small fish pour

from your nose
and mouth.

95
 13 secret rooms, rumoured to be located in the basement

1
Impossible to see anything in here, thanks to the total absence of
light. Torches don’t work in this room. No one knows how big it is.

2
It looks as if it used to be a bathroom. Tiled floor and walls, copper
pipes, damp-stained ceiling. But there’s no bath, sink or toilet.

3
Little voices, quiet, soft as the down on your arm. Little whispers,
words too faint to discern. You sink into a mildewed sofa.

4
Not so much a room as a closet. Not so much a closet as a box. Not so
much a box…

5
Cabinets, vitrines. The fluorescent tubes don’t work any more. Case 12
contains the remains of a creature that looks part man, part bird.

6
What the fuck you doing in here? Who said you could come in? Can’t
you see what we’re doing? Get the fuck out!

7
The basement is a symbol of the underworld, or Hades, which is in
turn a symbol of the unconscious, or id. To descend into it is to enter
oneself.

96
8
What they took at first to be a torture chamber transpired to be a
gym. Bodies in motion, strung out on equipment, broken in rows.

9
A bedroom, in which all of the furniture is formed from naked people,
contorted in attitudes of obscene joy.

10
A padded cell or perhaps a playroom of some sort. The people here
seem very happy.

11
A feast is laid out before you. Plates are hands, offering lurid
mouthfuls of food. The table’s ears are spoons, its eyes grapes.

12
There is nothing in this room, except you. When you leave and close
the door behind you, the room ceases to exist.

13
Hotels don’t contain a Room 13. The basement does. When you enter
it you fall into a dream that is a little death, a little surrender.

97
Threshold 13

98
 Grandma’s eyes
(13 unpleasant stories, dreamt up for the purpose of
terrifying and mystifying)

1
She found the book at twilight in the silence of the forest. It was
bound in red leather. When she opened it, the pages turned into
moths and fluttered in drunken spirals, aspiring to the moon.

2
In Grandma’s garden are gnomes, roses, a lovingly mown lawn. But
her greenhouse is home to a thousand desperate twisted things,
gasping, blind.

3
She pauses before the door to the forbidden room. The apple-shaped
doorknob is warm, smooth. In her other hand: a key like a snake's
tongue.

4
Grandma sips a cup of tea. A broken wolf stares at her from the prison
of a picture frame.

5
The curtains of her eyelids are the forest. Denser and denser into the
heart, into the wet darkness, into the house of phantoms.

6
Grandma’s teeth are knives, hatchets, crenellations, the serrated
canopy of the endless forest.

99
7
When she breaks the mirror she swoons into a long, restless sleep. Her
lips turn to rose petals, her hair to snakes. Her sex becomes a
seashell. Put it to your ear: listen to the mermaids murmuring in an
ocean of blood.

8
Red roses proliferate in the Kingdom of the Wolf. Grandma’s skull is a
cave. Inside, you’ll hear the voices of the dead.

9
Her heart is a mirror whose surface reflects the witch, an apple, a rose
bush, a broken sword.

10
In Grandma’s eyes you’ll see a red moon, red shoes, secret flames,
the howling storm. She shows her bleeding palms to the heavens.

11
Opening the door to room 13, she finds herself entering a candlelit
bedroom. Her double is sitting at the dressing table, smiling at her
own reflection.

12
In the Medusa coils of Grandma’s floral wallpaper: the statue of a wolf.

13
An axe, a grin, a labyrinth of trees. The girl, now a woman, writes her
name in blood on the mirror of the moon.

100
 The Ministry of Teeth

There is no easy way of entering the Ministry of Teeth, there being no

doors at ground level.

Inside, it smells of new carpets, bubblegum, coffee, insect spray and

burning plastic.

The walls of its latticework of corridors are lined with a collage of

moths’ wings, birth certificates, forged banknotes and pressed flowers.
No one ever cleans them, giving them a dilapidated appearance that
many of the employees of the Ministry find comforting and poetic.

According to some (unverified) reports, the moon’s power is greatly

magnified inside the Ministry of Teeth. A silver hand drags water from
bottles, taps and toilet bowls, moulds it into windows that evaporate at
dawn.

101
Mechanical Muse 1

102
 When the Bird King Died

When the Bird King died the world fell asleep. The clawed words he’d
cawed from his craw scratched at our dreams.

When the Bird King died the trees shed their plumage amidst a
sobbing storm.

When the Bird King died the shop window mannequins laughed and
tore off their clothes.

When the Bird King died the kettles sang a tea-time dirge. The milk
curdled in contempt.

When the Bird King died the sea and sky swapped places. A flock of
fish shimmered over a coral cloud.

When the Bird King died the ants turned on the anteater, ate him from
the inside out.

When the Bird King died the world fell under the yoke of Childhood.
From whispering huddles, toddlers issued bloody decrees.

When the Bird King died leaves became flames. Forests were lakes of
fire, from which scorched birds shrieked, falling upwards into clouds.

When the Bird King died the fridges turned on their masters.

When the Bird King died the loners and losers and lovers became
pupae. Everyone else fretted over the imminent mass metamorphosis.

When the Bird King died people wrote poems about daisychains and a
girl’s eyes and I love you and life is short. They’d learned nothing!

103
When the Bird King died the world continued to turn. Trains ran on
time. People died in wars. Old ladies farted in armchairs.

104
Mechanical Muse 2

105
13 fragments of a somniloquy, overheard by a burglar lost in
the basement complex on midsummer night

1
there’s nothing more to say about it and I don’t want to be drawn

2
beautiful she couldn’t hear me anyway I was desperate and there were
moths

3
they’d replaced his head with a picture of the moon he looked

4
none of them were speaking English more like a ticking a crackling
dripping on me down on me hot stinging on me none of them

5
where’s the door I can’t see it can’t see anything where is it there
must be one can’t have a room without a door where is

6
the treacle men are back

7
her teeth like a flower her teeth machine her teeth blue rose her teeth
birdseed and anemones stretching reaching out to me

8
whenever whichever whoever whatever why ever the evergreen
scream fills the chapel

106
9
trying to trying to read the instructions by the flame of the candle by
the moth blown flame of the candle held in her teeth

10
sharp and I think I must have cut myself when I looked my face was
broken into thirteen pieces

11
hissing and wishing in the well worn time before

12
someone laughing or loving in the radiator lost his top his spinning
head whirling whirring across dusty floors into her dusky drawers

13
hear me I couldn’t say still can’t anyway there’s nothing left nothing
look for yourself there’s nothing

107
 The Ministry of Teeth

Few know this, but the Ministry of Teeth contains the fossils of
thousands of imaginary creatures, meticulously catalogued and stored
in vast warehouses. What’s more, most of the world’s stolen happy
endings can be found in a suitcase in a locked room in the basement.

In the grounds of the Ministry, the roses are security cameras. But the
man in the Control Room died at his desk years ago and has never
been moved. To pronounce him dead, have him buried and employ a
replacement would be too tedious an undertaking for the Ministry’s
managers to contemplate.

108
 Death 1

The sarcophagus is black,

cocoon-like.

From a distance
it could be taken for
a monstrous turd.

Inside,
the Bird King rots
to a naked grin.

109
Mechanical Muse 3

110
 Dream 347 from the Oneiroscope catalogue

The storm cloud

over your house
transpires to be
a gigantic
octopus.

With the thunder

comes black rain.

111
 Death 2

The Bird King is coiled

inside an egg-shaped coffin.

His carcass blossoms

with maggots.

Who said death

was the end?

112
Mechanical Muse 4

113
 13 confessions made by the Punchman, after being
subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques

1
It was never me operating Jack Ketch. I let someone else do it. Never
saw his face. He smelt of burning oil.

2
I stole from the kids’ parents. While they watched the show, I sent my
mates round to pick their pockets.

3
I gave the arresting officers nightmares. It was easy. Once they’d
looked me in the eye I had them.

4
I made Punch commit his crimes.

5
On the night of the fire I hid behind the burger van and got wasted. I
could hear Judy calling for me, but I stayed put.

6
In that film of me, it isn’t me. It looks like me, but it isn’t. It’s
someone else.

7
I am the Bird King.

8
My nanobots took down Big Ben.

114
9
I called myself Insom and issued MP3 tracks that put listeners into
comas.

10
I wrote poems that eroded reality.

11
The Plague of Moths was my idea.

12
I force-fed Mr Punch an uncooked black pudding.

13
I hijacked the Oneiroscope and turned dreams against the dreamers.

115
 13 cyborg poets

1
Lost in the Vision Matrix, J0hn Clare transmitted a distress signal
designed to be audible only to himself.

2
T5 El10t ran on a complex algorithm that produced seemingly
fragmentary results. However, if you run Imagewise an underlying
order appears.

3
C0ler1dge suffered a non-integration glitch. His Narco Neurons were in
permanent conflict with routines instigated by a Homily implant.

4
Walt Wh1tman’s predilection for free verse was the consequence of a
series of malfunctions in his Metrical Regulator.

5
The deadly Anne 5ext0n devoured boys, cars and prayers, blades
whirring, shutter eyes snapping. Afterwards, sated, she cat-napped in
a coffin.

6
When the archaeologists finally extricated the monolith from the
embrace of the petrified forest, they found Tenny50n embedded in it.

7
Spinning a web of words, J0hn D0nne’s Sp1der Appendage resembled
an eight-fingered hand. In its nimble frenzy it misspelled “dove” as
“love”.

116
8
Lew15 Carr0ll processed language through a series of Whimsy Filters,
generating reams of dream words, realms and dream worlds.

9
W1ll1am Blake wrote Songs of Innocence after his Logic Node was
shut down. Following a S1N upgrade, the Songs of Experience howled
from him.

10
W0rsdsw0rth’s operating system crashed every time he looked at a
lake, mountain or gorge. The problem was caused by oversensitive
Sublimity Receptors.

11
Alexander P0pe’s Syllepsis Module strained his vegetables and his
relations with other poets.

12
Sylv1a Plath smashed her way out of the iron foundry, Thanatos mode
engaged. Later, she made the word “BABY” from scrap metal.

13
Hibernating in her Death Pod, Em1ly D1ck1n50n still emits little noises
that some commentators claim are philosophical questions.

117
Mechanical Muse 5

118
 The Snowmen

Snowmen are clowns

in sinister stasis.

While you sleep

they smother cats
and feast from bins.

At dawn
their paunches drip.

119
Watchful
patient
hollow eyed
the snowmen conspire in silence.

They know they won’t be around for long

but they don’t care.

One night
two nights
of misrule
will be enough for them.

120
Some of the snowmen are defective.

Ostracised from their own kind

they stare at your dustbin
contemplating waste
and endings.

The snowmen have unprepossessing names.

Snarling Jack
Belly Beast
Hang Dog.

But their hearts are full

121
of such pretty
flaky
poetry!

Arthur Clamps intones sonnets

in his sleep.

Over time the snowmen

turn hard
become uglier.

Charming tubbiness

122
becomes deformity.

They curse their makers

in wet whispers.

But Black Snow falls

into your dreams
and can never die.

123
 13 terrible claws: a tribute to Maurice Sendak

1
Max’s wolf costume is not a disguise.

2
Darkness makes us susceptible to the irrational. We lose our grip, if
only slightly. That scratching noise could be a monster.

3
The colour yellow is suggestive of cowardice or being pissed off. Do
the yellow eyes of the wild things signify melancholy?

4
Words in patterns, making rhythms, like a spell.

5
The boat bears his name. It could be argued that this delightful little
vessel is not so much Max’s property as a symbol of him.

6
We’ve all met the wild things. When we look at their pictures they
don’t surprise us.

7
Art is a wild rumpus.

8
Max’s crown doesn’t fit. He doesn’t know how to enjoy his despotism.
Mimicking mummy, he loses himself.

124
9
What does Max’s mum look like? She’s a voice, a reproach, morality,
accepted values. In Freudian terms, she may represent the superego.

10
The offer of a homecoming: “We’ll eat you up, we love you so!”

11
Max’s tale is one of transgression, forgiveness and redemption. But
don’t let that put you off.

12
Max’s dream recurs every time anyone reads the book.

13
Everything I have ever written has been a variation on Where the Wild
Things Are.

125
 Dream 63 from the Oneiroscope catalogue

Everything the artist tries to paint

turns into
a broken wing,
a fitfully fluttering heart,
a red scream.

126
Mechanical Muse 6

127
 Brain

Ideas
plot their escape
from grey cells.

128
 RIP, Bird King

The Bird King is dead

What was he?

He was a vampire shrinking from empty mirrors wiping blood from

black bristles burnt feathers
He was a giant maggot oozing in a throne a toilet his excremental seat
of power the chair a shocking sight the chair killing him frying
in the chair’s blue embrace
He was a fool telling impossible stories unable to cope with the
simplest of things doors shops television conversation
memory crisps road markings the silly billy
He was a poet who hated poets
He was a fop in flamboyant attire a right pretty boy pretty Polly
strutting peacock decorating himself for outrageous displays
of virility look at me look at me preening in a blaze of
feathers and fabrics
He was a tyrant a dictator a bird-brained autocrat
He was a monster a man an animal
He was a poor little thing quivering with desires longings despair
He was a sadistic experimenter hatching bad machines bad babies bad
dreams sending them out to harrow the world make it a hell a
mirror to the hell in his head
He was a hapless nobody an Everyman fumbling in the dark stumbling
tripping over obstacles bananas words
He was a daddy a mummy a creator a maker a broken god

He was none of the above

Now he’s nothing

The Bird King is dead.

129
 13 variations on the theme of madness: a composition for
violins, electric guitar, cymbalom, voice and chorus of
mechanical birds

1
Eyes like flies, a tongue like bees. Happy trapped thoughts. Up, down,
up, down, I’m coming.

2
The king face down on the riverbank, his double doubled up with the
usurper’s glee.

3
Silence on the stair, a hand or maybe the shadow of a hand reaching
clawingly for the bannister.

4
Sing a song of sixpence. Who sneezed? Laughter in blue halls and
sobbing under archways.

5
The cockroaches waltz through your kitchen, raffish and debonair.

6
Tired smiles, trembling smiles, forced smiles, anxious smiles, wily
smiles, wily crocodile smiles, vile wry wily crocodile smiles.

7
STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT
STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT.

Now, start again.

130
8
An idea for thirteen sequences of 13s. Let me write that down. On
second thoughts.

9
Uncle Mick smashes through the water towards us. Our terrified
laughter incenses him.

10
You called him Pillow Head. A childhood monster, nonsense, a nothing.
Thirty years on, you’re still talking about him.

11
Lights going on and off in front of everything else on and off can’t you
see them don’t they bother you on and off it’s too much

12
A rug, a cross, a book, some windows. A grey face drooling stories,
murmuring murdered memories.

13
The sign says STOP. A hand holding a skull. This is supposed to be a
symbolic moment. Stop talking! They’re not listening. Close now.

131
Mechanical Muse 7

132
 Night

The night is a collage.

Houses,
roads cut carefully,
pasted in specious rows.

An incongruous death’s head moon.

A barking dog
rips the page.

133
 The Oneiropoem, or 13 lines, imperfectly recalled, from a
bad poem that you think you read in last night’s dream

1
The cup, falling. Wine, a red halo, a dark constellation, in slo-mo free
fall. Blood runs from the corner of my eye, my little eye.

2
Watching from the corner of a room drowning in light, smooth zombies
sniff for incense. You stay in the doorway, eating an egg roll.

3
The man in the bobble hat offers tea, tangerines and transcendence.
Crumpled suits smile wisely, floating in a ballet of underhanded
dalliances.

4
The halo of wine spreads, shifts in space, becoming a hand, a hawk, a
fresh idea.

5
A handshake on the other side of your eyes. Chainsaw promises. We
apologise for the recent disruption.

6
In the cabinet is a map showing your birth, your heart, your desires.
The red ink in which it is drawn is a blood-sample, stolen from you
while you slept.

7
The Bird King, a unique monotreme, hibernates in the empty egg of
his favourite son. It’s pungent and slightly sticky inside.

134
8
The nine nocturnal policemen whose electrons you stole force you to
eat a quark sandwich.

9
Desperate to court scandal, the indigo terrorists transmute themselves
into protons and thrill along fibre optic alleyways.

10
The eyes of the moon turn enviously from the flamboyant sun. A dead
stone heart plots the next brief eclipse.

11
Your grandmother gives birth to thirteen orange squids. Hands, soft
and fat as tentacles, thrash behind shower curtains.

12
On Sunday mornings the cars form gangs. Lawn mowers watch them
suspiciously from neat green plots.

13
The Oneiroscope stops transmitting and the world is plunged into a
limbo of twitching insomnia.

135
Mechanical Muse 8

136
 Mr Punch Dreams
or 13 items discovered at the murder scene

A junk poem

1. An uncooked black pudding

Mr Punch likes the stars. They’re as pretty as his dreams.

They wink and twinkle, clink and tinkle

in the empty night.

put a seashell to your ear you can hear the sea actually it’s your own
blood roaring through you waves smash the shingle the moon hangs

- Well, here I am! What do you want, now I’m come?

- What a pretty creature! Ain’t she one beauty!
- What do you want, I say!
- A kiss! A pretty kiss!
- Take that then! How do you like my kisses? Will you have another?

Mr Punch’s head is in the clouds.

The crescent moon cuts his hair,
shaves his chinny-chin-chin.

137
 2. A glass eye, with a thin crack running across the pupil

It’s raining inside Mr Punch’s head.

His bedroom curtains are red rags.
Judy is somewhere out at sea,
on a ship with hand-shaped sails.

Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside!

There’s one wife for you! What a precious darling creature! She go to
fetch our child.

Mr Punch fears Jack Ketch’s gibbet.

It casts long shadows across his dreams.
The noose is the law’s reptilian eye.

There, there, there! How you like that? Nasty child. I thought I stop
your squalling.

The hangman’s eyes roll madly like marbles, like dead moons in
headlong orbit.

- Where is the child?

- Gone. Gone to sleep.
- What have you done with the child, I say?
- Gone to sleep, I say.
- What have you done with it?
- What have I done with it?
- Ay, done with it! I heard it crying just now. Where is it?
- I dropped it out at window.

138
 3. A length of rope, frayed at one end

Jack Ketch is a tetchy wretch with a scarlet rash.

He tends a tree in the public garden.
In the summer he deadheads the roses.

The curtains fall away, exposing the booth’s wooden frame. Mr Punch
shits himself: it looks like a gallows. Where’s Ketch? He turns around
this way. He's behind you! He turns around that way. Where? Where?
I no see him. Behind you! Picturing a rope in the air.

- Mr Punch, you’re a very bad man. Why did you kill the police
constable?
- He wanted to kill me!
- How?
- With his damned laws!
- That’s all gammon. You must come to prison: my name’s Ketch.

Ketch retches, fetches up ketchup

as red as the booth’s curtains.

He sleeps on a wooden bed with no mattress,

a portrait of Mr Punch hanging above his head.

139
4. An old-fashioned Gladstone bag, containing some forceps, a
stethoscope, hypodermic needles of various sizes and a vial of
blood

In the red gloom of the booth,

Mr Punch pops pills.
They make fuzzy theatre.

Frilly flowers!
Starry sky!

Pale poems pour from him.

“What a lovely tree!” says Mr Punch. Its blossom: Jack Ketch’s rose-
red ninny noggin, hanging on a rope. “You ill?” chortles Mr Punch,
hitting it with his slapstick. “You look ropey! What the matter?”

Thank you very kindly, but me very well where I am. This very nice
place, and pretty prospect.

Mr Punch’s brain is broken.

Thoughts fizz
across fried circuitry.

But one idea recurs,

throbbing, strong:
Judy.

140
5. A battered bowler hat, on which the words “KISS ME QUICK”
have been written in white paint

Mr Punch is a punk with a paunch.

His trousers pinch.
Was there ever suffering like his?

- Leave off your singing, Mr Punch, for I’m come to make you sing on
the wrong side of your mouth.
- Why, who the devil are you?
- Don’t you know me?
- No, and don’t want to know you.
- Oh, but you must: I am the constable.
- I don’t want constable. I can settle my own business without
constable, I thank you. I don't want constable.

When Jack Ketch pulled back his hood, there was nothing there. “You
lost your head?” screeched Mr Punch. “What a funny fellow!”

141
 6. A soiled nappy

A ripe cloud covers the sun.

“I’ll turn you into ketchup, Mr Punch, you nasty little murderer!”
bellows Jack Ketch, strangling a hurdy-gurdy.

Ingredients for a Punch & Judy show:

bacon
lard
chips
cigarettes
broken beer bottles
a truncheon
sand
clouds
a pram
doggerel
snot

defenestration /ˌdiːfɛnɪˈstreɪʃ(ə)n/
(n) Formal or humorous: the action of throwing someone out of a window.
Origin: early 17th century: from modern Latin defenestratio(n-), from de- 'down
from' + Latin fenestra 'window'

142
 7. A crayon drawing of a man with a beak and feathers

Jack Ketch’s bonce basket is a nest full of cracked eggs. He lowers his
rump onto it, plots the hatching of his bird-brained offspring.

Give it me. Pretty little thing - how like its sweet mama!

What sort of creature is Mr Punch?

He’s a pied parakeet,

parroting words
from the void
of his skull.

“Pretty Polly!” he caws, his slapstick standing proud.

Mr Punch straps on his wings.

And so the Bird King’s reign begins.

Eyes wet with deadly joy.

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 8. A copy of Razzle. Many of the models’ faces have been
scribbled over with a black felt tip

A face hooked with malice turns this way, turns that.

Judy pushes aside the curtain and steps into the forbidden room. The
bodies of Mr Punch’s previous wives hang from the beams.

- She always is so playful.

- Oh you cruel horrid wretch, to drop the pretty baby out at window!
- You shall have one other soon, Judy, my dear. More where that come
from.

Mr Punch’s nose is a crescent, nearly touching his chin.

In profile he looks grim and moony.

His cracked right eye bleeds a little crimson tear.

Put your ear to his belly:
Judy sighs, lovesick,
along his entrails.

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 9. An iPod containing only three tracks: Greensleeves,
Jerusalem and Anarchy in the UK

Mr Punch likes a nice tune.

His favourite is the one about “England’s green, unpleasant land.”
Or something.

Laughing and singing to the same tune as before.

On Sunday afternoons, after roast din-dins, a lethargy takes him. He

puts his feet up and thumbs through the paper.

He hears music when he’s sleepy,

in his head.

Pretty ditties flutter by,

pretty, dizzy butterflies.

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 10. An empty bottle of Daddies sauce

Jack Ketch is a pasty old bastard with a bullish look and bad manners.
His job bores him, slightly.
He thinks about pies when he’s working.

That’s all gammon.

Where’s Mr Ketch, children? Ketchup on bags of chips looks like the

blood throbbing from Mr Punch’s cracked head. Got sand in my burger.

- What, won’t you come out, and have a good dinner for nothing?
- Much obliged, Mr Ketch, but I have had my dinner for nothing
already.
- Then a good supper?
- I never eat suppers. They are not wholesome.
- But you must come out. Come out and be hanged.

The Punch & Judy Show kit contained torn pieces of red cloth, a set of
false teeth, sunglasses, a dead fly, a packet of pickled onion flavour
Monster Munch and a Rubber Johnny.

You’ve been framed.

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 11. A withered red rose in a clear plastic tube

He’s driven by the mad red hand clutching his mad red heart. Desire
croaks and squeaks from him. Judy, my love! Judy, my dear! Pretty
Judy, come upstairs! He hears his own sozzled, swazzled speech, as if
he’s outside himself. Again: Judy, my love, my precious darling
creature! He sees himself in the eyes of the kiddies sitting on the sand.
Reflected, magnified. The booth wobbles with violent magic. Judy,
where are you, my sweeting, my sweetmeat?

(Blackout)

How you like my teaching, Judy, my pretty dear?

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 12. A broken hand mirror

Mr Punch swallows his swazzle

and chokes on his own words.
Murderous murmurs die on his lips.
Judy necks her gin, grins grimly.

David Harsent and Harrison Birtwistle and lesser others fancying

there’s something tragic or poetic or symbolic or essential or
existential about Mr Punch’s shoddy tale told by an idiot full of sound
and fury signifying nothing less than nothing

What is the matter with it? Poor thing! It has got the stomach ache, I
dare say.

As the rope catches his throat, Ketch croaks.

Hidden in the night

of the booth,
the Punchman has fallen asleep.

His dreaming hand

twitches around
Mr Punch’s heart.

A lifeless Judy
lies on his lap.

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13. A glove puppet, bearing a strong resemblance to the prime
suspect

The curtains jerk open for the thirteenth time today and Mr Punch
lurches into view.

I’m come to make you sing on the wrong side of your mouth fuck
them and their law fuck you fuck the lot of you I’m come to make you
sing fuck you

- Now, Mr Punch, no more delay. Put your head through this loop.
- Through there! What for?

It starts raining on Punch’s empty body his head is empty too he likes
the stars the pinprick stars they wink and shrink and sink in the empty
night the night seeping a black cloud black water lungs filling with it
giddy with it drunk with it punk with it pied ninny asleep not dreaming
vacant as a holiday no vacancies here sorry everything’s closed the
crimson curtains the Punchman’s mouth Hellmouth

That’s the way to do it!

Mr Punch took up his stick,

then smashed the bony moon with it.

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Mechanical Muse 9

150
 The Bird King Lies Dead

The Bird King lies dead, locked in the embrace of his sarcophagus,
a mummified homunculus in a bandage womb,
a grotesque Russian doll with REM-twitchy eyes, inside a
grotesque Russian doll with REM-twitchy eyes, inside...
a squirming expiring spermatozoa in a rolled up wank hanky,
a sardine in a fetid tin,
a pen in a presentation case inscribed with platitudes,
a penis, raw, dwarfish after orgasm, weeping in a condom,
an idea incapable of expression,
an engagement ring kept in a case, never to be opened,
a moth in a cocoon, dreaming of the moon,
a chapter in a book that no one has read for years,
a blind eye in a laughing skull,
a FUCK in the mind and on the tip of the tongue of the schoolboy,
greying in the classroom,
a feathery yellow creature in an unbreakable egg,
a play within a play,
a womb within a room,
a filament in a lightbulb in an abandoned house,
a stuffed bird in a tiny cage,
a secret, a dearth, a sneer, a fever, a rose, a beak, a letter, an email,
a crisp packet, a fart, a speech, a rival, a hand, a doorway, a
fire, a car, a lie, a chair, a gasp, a poem, a little poem,
several little broken poems, spliced together (you can see the
joins!), whole, unwholesome, wholly unholy, a hole, a gap, a
pause, a silence.

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 Jack Ketch in Hell

Lost in the booth of Mr Punch’s dreams,

Jack Ketch flinches at the images
flickering across torn curtains.

The chirpy projectionist

sits in his nest,
flinging pictures:

A snake, rising from a discarded pair of clown’s trousers.

A monkey, balancing on a watermelon.
A burning sofa.
A boat made of newspaper, translucent with vinegar, sailing on a sea
of soggy chips.
Blackpool Tower, shattering into confetti.
A spiral staircase that is a shell, revolving in the salty breeze, turning
into an ear.
An eyeball, floating in a toilet bowl.
A glove puppet and a love puppet, waltzing in space.
Flowers in a trance.
Two black chess pieces: a knight and a king with feathers, in place of a
crown.
A tiny man, drowning in a bottle of tomato ketchup.
An upside-down bowler hat, full of custard.
A beach ball, bouncing in slow motion through a hall of mirrors.
A puppeteer, hiding in a bin.
A small child, cheeks pink with joy, holding an ice cream made of
seagulls.
A dirty puddle, in which someone has dropped a slim paperback called
Mrs Punch Screams.
A man with a knife for a nose.
A chainsaw-winged angel, slashing his way out of a cocoon.

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A round mirror, mimicking the moon. A face like a cloud crosses its
surface.
The forest in which stories are born, bloody, raw, bawling.
The Umbrella Men, sacking the City of Rain.
Judy’s moody brood, sulking in the shadow of a bouncy castle. But
there’s one ninny enjoying himself, bouncing, ferociously
alone: Punch.
A palace made of crumpled lager cans, on the wet waste of a beach.
A blancmange, thrown at a face.

Roll up, roll up! Come and see the Tyburn Gardener get his just
desserts. Roll up, roll up!

The mirror frame above the chest of drawers

is a yellow loop
around Ketch’s head.

The Tyburn tree,

the stinking crowd,
a rotten egg sun.

153
 Respect

In the mausoleum
of the Bird King,
visitors are required
to pay their respects
by taking off their clothes
and defecating
on his coffin.

154
Notes on the texts and images

All of the texts in this volume were written between April 2012 and
July 2013.

The images were all made on an iPad, using a combination of public

domain photos and pictures taken with my phone. They all date from
July 2012 to July 2013.

“The Madness of the Bird King” is a revised, expanded version of the

poem, which was originally published in June 2012, with colour
illustrations by Diana Probst.

Thirteen of the pieces in this book originally appeared in 13, with

colour illustrations by Diana Probst.

“Mr Punch Dreams” was published in a slim volume of its own, with
colour illustrations by Maxim Peter Griffin.

“The Oneiropoem” deserves a few words of explanation.

The Oneiroscope is an interactive Twitter project that reflects my

obsession with dreams. I invite people to tweet me words for inclusion
in a bespoke dream tweet.

“The Oneiropoem” is an extension of this principle. I tweeted that I

was writing an Oneiroscope poem, and that people could request lines
by replying with up to three words they’d like included. Eleven people
responded, so I decided to construct a 13-part piece, using the
requested words in the first eleven parts and free-styling in the
remaining two.

Many thanks to those who tweeted me; without you, the Oneiropoem
would not be what it is! Lines were requested as follows:

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@DianaProbst (cup, wine, run)
@binkeyannexe (egg roll, incense, zombies)
@RenZelen (transcendence, bobble-hat, underhanded)
@BenCoopEr666 (fresh, wine, hawk)
@kneeldowne (disruption, handshake, chainsaw)
@jeffnoon (cabinet, blood-sample, map)
@minafiction (hibernate, slightly, monotreme)
@CharlieAlcock (nine, eat, quark)
@OpinionGeeks (scandal, fibre optic, indigo)
@LainadAngouleme (eclipse, sun, eyes)
@sleeping46 (orange, birth, grandmother)

156