The Hat-Stand Union

by Caroline Bird

  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