are so peaceful around us now. Lionel’s like a tiny philosophy professor
and Greta’s shadow puppets have a Rothko soul.
We’re like the parents they were always meant to have.’
‘I love you so much,’ I said.
‘I’m still very angry with you, Mr Jefferson,’ you said.
‘I know,’ I said, breathing softly through my nose
as the sun came up on the Black Magic bar
and our battered faces. You bit into an apple.
‘My name is not Mr Jefferson,’ I said, ‘I am their gardener, Alejandro.
Let’s wake up the children and go home.’
Empty Nest
My home country has flourished
under the dictatorship of ABBA.
My son is studying the appreciation
of youthful male beauty at Poxthud,
the top university. My husband
chose to disappear and live the rest
of his life in anonymity. Painted
turtles use their vomeronasal organ
to smell underwater. There are
enforced breeding sessions.
The only thing my ventriloquist dummy
will say is ‘I am not an effigy!’ which
makes for pretty dire entertainment,
but the issue is not that. My therapist
and his friends made a short film called
The Lie is Dead. I’m either a brilliant
actress or a vacant chair.
Spat
‘It’s me or the dog,’ she laughed,
though by ‘dog’ she meant ‘void’
and by ‘laughed’ I mean ‘sobbed’
and by ‘me’ she meant ‘us’
and by ‘she’ I mean ‘you’
and by ‘or’ she meant ‘and’.
‘It’s us and the void,’ you sobbed.
How the Wild Horse Stopped Me
I was punching in the last digit of your number
when a wild horse came up to me and said
‘Would you agree gathering information is an important way
to help people make decisions?’ ‘I guess,’ I said.
‘So you’d agree surveys can help decide
where money should be spent, what products to purchase,
what problems there might be in the near and/or distant future?’
‘Uh huh.’ I tried again to dial.
‘And your ideal survey… would it have A) Big questions B) Small questions. C) Stupid questions. D) Impossible questions?’ ‘I haven’t time for this.’
The horse snorted in the manner of his species,
‘I’ll put you down for E) I just want silence in my head.’
‘I. Am. Calling. My. Date. OKAY?’
The wild horse shook his dark mane. Stood aghast.
He gave a thespian whinny.
‘Write your favourite colour on this scrap of paper then drop it in the fish bowl. Thanks. Now pick one from the bowl.’
‘There’s only mine in there.’ ‘Let’s see! Let’s see!’
‘Purple.’
‘We only accept primary colours. I’ll tick blue and red…’
Do you ever go down to the river?
A) Not since mother/father/sister/brother/everyone went mental.
B) Not since I fell in love.
C) Not since I pretended to move on.
D) My face is wet with river water. I have a watermark across my chin.’
‘B. No. C. No. C. No. C.’
‘Which of the following questions could be described as “open ended”:
1) Did you think I couldn’t tell your eyes wrote patterns of yearning on my chest?
2) Is there a second hand on this watch?
3) Has nature ever been violent towards you when intoxicated?
4) Will you marry me – just once – before I die?’
The horse was not a normal horse.
He had a look, like a sexual predator.
Three months had passed and I hadn’t called you.
You had found somebody else, or starved to death by the phone.
The wild horse was sobbing and soliloquising.
‘Do you realise what I’ve sacrificed for your pointless survey?’ I shouted.
‘What survey? I’m a horse.’
The Island Woman of Coma Dawn
My feet dart in the water.
Like sad guitarist fingers.
I’ve come here to carve.
Such calm mineral caves.
Tomorrow Trojan ducks.
Will bob, quack in beeps.
I’m ridden from all love.
Distilled in exiled pause.
Weightless soul-case, free.
Sunrise in Coma Dawn is.
A timid rising in the air.
Eyelash chance of a kiss.
Then one breath of light.
Reborn up yesterday’s pipes.
Stubs answers on my eye.
Jungle of parasols hears no.
Snores, no nosy footfalls, I can.
Defecate in orange groves.
2
The Truth about Camelot
If you love enough, you’ll lie a lot.
Guess they did in Camelot.
– Tori Amos
Prologue
Mother Earth offers naked, shivering king
blanket of snow.
‘Very funny,’ he thinks, already
dead.
I
A Confident Local Youth
(Ten Years Earlier)
Hark! Goatherd approaches. Perhaps he bears
the coveted eggs of the Queen’s wooden bird?
She is quite mad. Poor tart. I love her to bits.
She hires a midwife to watch her oven door –
‘a secret love spawns a burning babe’. Witches
talk a lot of shit. Just another day in Camelot
where love is law and dragons swear in Welsh.
No sallow bus traveller hurls a custard cream
in fire-red mouths, spit! A clean cornet toots.
Jousting. Archery. Karaoke. I’d do anything
for love: talk where Meat Loaf minces round,
no loop-hole chorus. Ping-pong. Spit-roast
wild boar, fork holes punch, I want! I want!
II
Some Last Words
A faint Town Crier speaks to the sky:
‘Yellow cannonball turban rainbow drop
in tunnel-sleeved dusk, sundial nods off,
good night town!’ Unloads big hat, quiet
summer, lifts pistol to his brain, blows.
Rumour is they find another malformed boy
living on canned crayfish in his wishing well.
A fixer smoothes over Camelot suicides.
Villagers call him ‘The Wolf’. He is a wolf.
III
Urchin Who Is Stalking Guinevere’s Scullery Maid
God she’s beautiful.
I think her face is the meaning of life.
The word ‘scullery’ is so dirty.
Have to stop chewing when there’s nothing in my mouth.
IV
Camelot Estate Agent
Unmarried live in mushrooms: R.T. squires,
cameo visions, magic-cloth tailors, two jolly
barmen (they alternate: law permits one paid
jollity per workplace. Disney season exempt
of-fucking-course). Well-lit one-bed shroom:
all mod cons, gilled floors for pacing suitors,
McLaren spore-print, a no-scary-face brass
door-knocker that confirms noteworthiness,
consolation fireplace, burnt old bramble bits,
love notes etc. Armchair with rocking options,
pearl-stitch snuggery, serene not lonely, spot-
less chimney, instant prayer-speed: whoosh!
(I sent up blank one there, as demonstration.)
V
Exiled Journalis
t Disguised as Shrub
Poky mushroom attic brings borderless
aura of homeliness? Maybe secret ambience
aerosols holding ‘the Sunday Roast Virus’
are sprayed in ventilation system? No.
Such stunts would disrupt the habitat
of the Air-Vent Vermin: Scissor-limb freaks
herniated inside tunnels that, yesteryear,
were the band of lucky boys, gifted boys
hand-picked by The Great King Arthur
himself for ‘His Holy Chivalric Order…’
Pre-Lancelot. Pre-circular desks.
Pre-riverboat tax on floating women,
there was one man with a crazy dream:
‘King Arthur and his Crab-Boy Army’.
I say it only once. Don’t believe me?
Ask any twitchy shrub.
VI
Arthur’s Crab-Boy Vision Faces Scalpel Practicalities
In his laboratory, King Arthur is secretly attempting to combine a crab with a boy to create ‘Crab Boy’, born wearing his own coat of arms. Unfortunately Arthur is not a scientist and one can’t simply chop off a boy’s hand and screw in a claw – as this blood-sprayed apron would attest. His lucky boys are looking worse for wear. Hung upside down. I’d prefer it if I didn’t listen to this one…
(Recording of Arthur in his crab-boy laboratory caught on
blind cleaner’s Dictaphone while she whispered ideas for erotic
novels edited out for compassionate reasons)
‘All my maths checked out: ‘Forwards of Man’
plus ‘Sideways of Crab’ equals ‘Perfect Thinker’.
But bones won’t merge ideas: mix beckoning claw
with half-cup opposable pink thumbs (human
body just spasm nerves blobbed in column) no
troops of amphibious damsels, no algae-beard
howls ‘Mollusc! Mollusc!’ in stoned pool, no
Crab born in Knight costume – just little boys without
hands. Maybe if I try. Give them bouncier knees.
The innocent never stop screaming. I’m trying to
make you into legends. Excuse me? Boy in blood,
did you just ask ‘Why a Crab and Not a Lion?’
WHY A NOBLE CRAB? You little sacrilegious fu…’
Tape cuts out.
VII
Crab Quotes
You can crab your way into the heart of God
if you’re prepared to crab your way out again.
Matthew
You know nothing about the sources of my honour.
A Crab
VIII
You
Somewhere along the line we started to believe
that mutilated boys were living inside the walls.
And now we are listening to a Raving King speech
beginning: ‘Guinevere, everything is suddenly clear.’
IX
Raving King Speech
‘Guinevere, everything is suddenly clear.
They dance crab-wise in synchronised formations,
very sarcastic rhythms. Pest control guns riddled
air-holes so their ghosts could breathe. Watch this:
as my pen moves they are writing the same word
backwards on the other side of the paper. Proof!
Loft scuffles in mutilated chirp. Inside the walls
they’re mimics. We fall silent together. Stop crying
Guinevere. Celebrate discoveries. I mutilated boys
to make them look more like Crabs. I know I did!
We have been living in a fairy tale! I hate that huge
pointy hat you wear. That hat has made me impotent.
Have you cheated on me? You can say. I won’t mind.’
X
Lancelot’s Poetry Reading in Smoky Bar
(His stubble shows the slightest beginnings of Allen Ginsberg’s beard)
Camelot, I have given you all and now I am everything.
Camelot, a room full of campaigning women is wetting stamps and throwing letters into the lake.
You know never to judge anything on the way it turns out.
There is no mailbox for the lady of the lake, is there Camelot?
You know things about the human heart the human heart can’t even feel
like ‘true love makes you lie which makes you honest to kindness which is love and love is truth’.
Camelot, Keats tried to paraphrase you.
Camelot, when will your factories cease the production of expendable brothers with rhyming names?
Camelot, I fell in love with a queen.
Merlin taped spoons to his hands and he prowls the forest diving at the eyes of eagles and always failing.
Camelot, I am adopted. There is mental illness in my family.
Camelot, I was a little boy raised in a magical kingdom by a woman made of water who could only touch by licking.
Camelot, I’m asking the difficult questions, not you.
Back the fuck off my blurry childhood Camelot it is not my spell.
Arthur must not die yet. I still want that interview.
Camelot, when will your mortal mermaids feel themselves clean?
Where is the holy grail?
They took it to paint it for a magazine and now it’s disappeared.
Camelot, I don’t want to be a monk who is alone forever just because she is a nun who is alone forever but this is the only symmetry left to me.
Camelot, symmetry is the last remnant of sexual desire.
I have made grave mistakes in the name of symbolism.
Camelot, the more miserable I get, the more handsome I become. If I ever commit suicide, a nation of women will orgasm simultaneously.
Camelot, lube up your cemeteries.
Camelot, the skies will crust with thick brown fluid and there will be acid rain storms.
Camelot, when I make love to her, I forget I am a man. Sorry.
XI
Arthur, Arthur, Arthur…
Scene. A mad and bedraggled Arthur sits alone in a dim cobwebbed garret, staring hard at the wall, consumed with guilt for everything he has ever done or thought during his entire life.
King Arthur tells dead boy in wall: you’re not alone.
Dead boy in wall tells Arthur: that’s nice of you to say.
King burns his eyes straight across any level on wall.
Boy feels faint warmth run course from other side.
On another level of wall King burns a straight eye-line.
From other side Boy runs same course for warmth.
Straight line burns across King wall any level on eye.
Burns a thin road Boy can run across until cold.
They follow each other’s eyes very closely in darkness.
XII
A Disgruntled Knight
(Not mentioned in a book or a poem or anything ever,
even in this poem I had to make up all the details)
My armour is not polished: I am not a poster boy.
I make the ugly red-brown stains on the battlefield.
The celebrity knights only stay for the fanfare
then make a big show of leaving purposefully –
‘What’s that you say? Knights with blow-dried hair
needed urgently for an Easter Egg hunt? Come on boys!’
Some have ten-year contracts as romantic leads,
can’t lose a fingernail let alone a leg. Later they’ll
canter back to the castle cheering, waving a flag
and our people will sleep tight as Camelot falls.
This is pretend war. I feel pretend hate. Unicorn!
Unicorn! My kingdom for a unicorn!
Someone still has to stay here and die.
3
Sea Bed
I continue slow and clear in my broken images.
– Robert Graves
Damage
Her teddy bear eloped with her mother.
Her father went to bu
y flowers for himself
on Father’s Day and never came home. Her grandma
was a waste-paper basket. She was raised by staplers.
Her skin was deathly white. Her birthmark
was the shape of Africa. No one explained
anything to her. She excelled at school until
she was abused by her own calculator. She ran
away from home to join a troupe of travelling
accountants. She could balance a Filofax on her head
and yawn at the same time. Audiences loved her.
She married a man called Jerry, who turned out to be
a hat-stand in disguise. She contracted a disease
transmitted by celibacy. She slept in a violin case, smoking
The Hat-Stand Union Page 3
