Winged messenger

Vow, that’s what she calls her­self. She sits in silence, because someone might be listen­ing. Watches the walls, because they could be cast­ing sly glances at her frame, hid­den beneath such unas­sum­ing clothes.

Ten o’clock. There is burble and hiss. It seems the news is not good. The drought is worsen­ing; the live­stock are fall­ing before they even get to the trough in a final, futile attempt to slake their thirst. She blinks into the pic­ture, wish­ing for interference.

The time that was now is not. It’s in the past. Days ago. That moment was merely the last in which she moment­ar­ily dragged her gaze away from fixed for­ward, dead centre. There.

Vow doesn’t hope for much, yet she dares to mouth a wish that all the sheep will be long dead, that the flies and nature’s ravaging caress will have picked their car­casses clean and white. Skel­et­ons are easier to sweep into pyres. Flesh isn’t as clean as it should be: it dis­gusts her.

The walls are still watch­ing. She doesn’t take her eyes off them, because she can never be sure. Some­times the wall­pa­per — no, no, it doesn’t. Impossible, with a face that she still hasn’t touched.

Vow listens to music from her youth. From her father’s youth. She can feel his hardened rural hand tap­ping out the rhythm of a simple blues. A fist­ful of hair becomes a strummed chord, pulled into the lurch­ing melody by blun­ted fin­gers. He plays her, but she won’t sing.

The bird will come. That’s what Vow is hop­ing. Only then will she look away, take a cal­cu­lated risk and let her­self be watched, just for a moment. She doesn’t get many visitors.

This bird, it has eyes that don’t give any clues. Cer­tainly no sug­ges­tion of where its migra­tion may have car­ried it. But if Vow con­cen­trates, maybe she can fol­low its flight. If she coaxes it inside, over the peel­ing sill, this could be the one time when the creature allows her to wash its feath­ers clean, squeeze the sponge on her tongue to quench her need, and taste the city’s acrid fumes in her sand-blasted throat.

Whither tumour? Whither growth?

Do you have that dis­ease? Do you have that raging poison in your veins? Will you give it to me? Will you bestow your dread­ful ill­ness upon this feeble mind and body? Will you course through my blood­stream? Will you beat me into sub­mis­sion? Will you fuck me into oblit­er­a­tion rather than simple obli­vion? Will you force my skull back into my head? Will you infect me? Will you? Will you?

I used to be a junkie. I craved Now I feel clean. Too clean. So pure and vir­tu­ous, so lack­ing in scars and puke and semen and pus that I want to smother myself in shit and fall against barbed wire fences until I pass out.

I feel cheated. They told me that I would feel some­thing. Cheated, I was. They said I would know it like a sud­den, bru­tal, mean­ing­less death. I’ve been cheated. I didn’t even get the shivers. There was no shak­ing, no sweat­ing. I didn’t retch. I didn’t evac­u­ate my bowels in a rush of filth and debase­ment. My bod­ily func­tions retained their per­fect self-control. In short, I didn’t feel. A thing. I didn’t even feel a thing. I didn’t.

Let me kneel. Let me look at myself now. My reflec­tion grows older even more quickly than I do. Take my hair in your hands. Whis­per to me. Give me your hoarse truths, your gut­tural threats and your prom­ises of new hor­rors that will surely befall me. Force my head back. Take me and force me and smash me. Don’t stop until the mir­ror and I crack together into a thou­sand shards or more.

Keep going. I will col­lapse inwards. I will fall out­wards. And I’ll start again.

Sandbox

This is just a box. You can­not come into this box. You can­not come into this box with me. I do not share this box. This box is mine. I will climb into this box. I am now climb­ing into this box. I will close the lid of this box. I am now clos­ing the lid of this box. I will pum­mel the walls of this box. I am now pum­mel­ling the card­board walls of this box with my pathetic fists. This box is mak­ing my knuckles bleed. This box may spat­ter with blood. I am bent double, curled up and foetal in this box. There is not a lot of room in this box. There is not a lot of room in this box because I am sit­ting in here with a large tick. In this small box, the tick is push­ing its harsh and aggrav­at­ing corners against my break­able spine. I am still in the box. I am still in the box but I am open­ing up, unfurl­ing, undo­ing. I will think myself out of the box. I am think­ing out of the box. I am now out of the box. I am crush­ing the box under my foot. I am stamp­ing on the box. I am stamp­ing on the box. I am beat­ing the box to a pulp with my bloody fists. I am killing the box. I am killing the box. I am stamp­ing on your head. I am beat­ing your head to a card­board pulp with my pathetic bloody fists. I am not killing you. I am not killing you. This is just a box. That was just a box. That was not you. Just a box. A box. Your head. A box.

Queries regarding the disabling of a reflective canine

If you’re still here, you’re a bet­ter per­son than I am. So let me send you away again. To Dog­zplot. Or rather Reflect­ive Dog, the non-fiction lit­er­ary magazine part of the Dog­zplot flashand­po­etry­and­fic­tion lit­er­ary empire, where I have a piece of, yes, non-fiction cur­rently avail­able. It’s all about my tra­gic con­di­tion. Please don’t cry (too much).

Also: don’t for­get that Bur­eau de Books is cur­rently ask­ing Ques­tions About Life and Shit. For only five crisp Eng­lish pounds, you are guar­an­teed abso­lutely no shit, but instead lots of thought­ful ques­tions from people who are far more illus­tri­ous than me. Though I am included too, for some strange reason.

Bus, taxi, car, pedestrian

In a bid to resus­cit­ate my pathetic, dwind­ling cre­ativ­ity — or rather, repeatedly kick its body in the stom­ach as it lies on the floor, plead­ing for mercy — I am attempt­ing to dis­cover whether, via the mir­acle of sleek ‘n’ sexy mobile tech­no­logy, I can write some­thing elo­quent and pro­found whilst ‘on fhe move’, being driven through the streets of Lon­don by a thank­fully mono­syl­labic cab driver who is, rather less thank­fully, listen­ing to the inane bab­blings of a pos­sibly coke-addled break­fast radio presenter.

That’s a no, then.

So I’ll see you again in a few weeks, I guess. Thank you for con­tinu­ing to hang — des­per­ately, long­ingly, hope­fully in a state of con­stant arousal but an equally frus­trated lack of orgas­mic release — upon my every infre­quent utterance.

Oh look, there’s a chim­pan­zee rid­ing a bicycle.

Ask a silly question

Have you got a poem in a new book soon to be pub­lished by Chris East and Cath­er­ine Maskell and their Bur­eau de Books? Well, funny you should ask, but yes, yes I have. Who are the other far more illus­tri­ous writers that I’ll find between its cov­ers? There are people I’ve heard of — such as Ani Smith, J.A. Tyler, Jimmy Chen, Sam Pink, Greg Gerke, Ben Brooks, Jes­sica May­bury, Crispin Best, and Chris and Cath­er­ine them­selves — and people I’ve not heard of, which is always the best kind of mix. What’s the book called? It’s called Ques­tions About Life and Shit. Why is it called that? Because the title of every piece is a ques­tion. So is that why you’ve chosen this pain­fully tedi­ous format for a post about it? Yes, that’s right. Are you bored of it now? Yes, I am very bored. Are you going to stop soon? In a moment, yes. But you’ve got to ask me the final two ques­tions. Oh, do I have to? Yes, you do. So when will this book be avail­able? In Octo­ber. And how can I buy it? Go to the Bur­eau de Books site and pre-order the delight­ful volume for just five crisp Eng­lish pounds. Will they ship it to [insert far-flung coun­try of res­id­ence]? Yes, the price includes world­wide ship­ping for any­one who lives in the wide world. Will my pur­chase raise money to save a cute little rab­bit from a cruel and unusual death meted out by a heart­less farmer beat­ing it over the head with a spade? Abso­lutely guar­an­teed, yes. So are you telling me that if I want to save a poor inno­cent rabbit’s life, I need to buy a copy of this book? Yes, I am. But what if I hate rab­bits? Oh, fuck off.

Footprints in the butter

Unless you’ve been hid­ing under … well, an ele­phant since about June, you’ll be well aware that the superb word­smith and web per­son­age known as xTx has declared this to be Ele­phant Sum­mer. Since you’re all clever people who went through school, I’m sure you don’t need me to remind you what ele­phants are. That’s right — the big grey things, long trunks, flappy ears, use­ful for hos­ing down amor­ous nud­ists. For the past couple of months, just about every inter­net writer worth their buns has writ­ten a story about the afore­men­tioned ele­phants, each of which has appeared over at xTx’s place. And now it’s my turn. Meet Mer­rick.

Blogging as therapy #1

In this new — and God help you all, let’s hope mer­ci­fuily short — series of posts, I am seek­ing to shake, punch and kick some life into the dis­eased, fetid corpse of blog­ging by hark­ing back to the medium’s golden age. When blog­ging used to be about the tedi­ous minu­tiae of one’s life. When its grand­est ambi­tion was to tackle noth­ing more sub­stan­tial than point­less navel-gazing, rather than enga­ging in the much more ser­i­ous and worth­while busi­ness of upload­ing a point­less photo of said navel to dis­play along­side your latest tweet about how much fluff it holds.

Indeed, it’s almost like my very own first fal­ter­ing steps on the inter­net — don’t fol­low that link, because it’ll make your stom­ach heave — and I’m get­ting misty-eyed (and faintly naus­eous) as I recall those more inno­cent days when I was a wide-eyed and naive young blog­ger, sit­ting alone in my attic room lit by a single naked light­bulb, furi­ously bash­ing my key­board late into the even­ing as a means of pur­ging my soul, whilst des­per­ately hop­ing that someone, any­one, would hear my plaint­ive cries. Sniff.

For­tu­nately, I’m now older (much older). And wiser (but not much wiser). And uglier (oh Jesus Christ, will you look at that face — yes, def­in­itely uglier). And incred­ibly cyn­ical (though it was always thus, in truth).

So I’m going to start occa­sion­ally using this site as a self-indulgent tool for per­sonal ther­apy. You see, the thing is … I keep think­ing about my first primary school teacher dressed as a nun, beat­ing me soundly with a black­board eraser whilst singing Madonna’s Like a Vir­gin, and I’m won­der­ing what it all means? Oh wait, not that one. Here’s the del­ic­ate mat­ter on which I require your assist­ance, my dear unre­li­able reader.

Ques­tion: I am con­sid­er­ing hav­ing a mid-life crisis. How should this mani­fest itself?

Let me help you for­mu­late your answers by telling you, right from the start, that I can’t drive. So a gleam­ing red sports car, com­plete with its obvi­ous phal­lic sym­bol­ism and a £2.99 CD of ‘wide open road’ rock music in the ste­reo sys­tem, is a com­plete no-go. As is a motor­bike — I’ve only got one leg, you see (sshh, I don’t like to talk about it), so I’d just climb on it and then imme­di­ately slip off the other side. Oh, and no steamy, sala­cious, Sun head­line affairs with eight­een year-old bleach-blonde nymph­ettes, please — I’m knackered just think­ing about that one, espe­cially as these days I like to be tucked up in bed by 10.00pm and passed out by 10.01pm hav­ing not even man­aged a single sip of my Horlick’s.

In other words, I require sens­ible and cre­at­ive ideas for how to live out my mid-life crisis — though com­pletely ridicu­lous sug­ges­tions will also suf­fice since there’s no point in set­ting the bar too high, is there? After all, this is blogging.

Do your worst. I have faith in you.

A nasty case of Dead Writer Syndrome

… as in: you prob­ably thought I was dead, but I’m not. But also: I have a piece of writ­ing / fic­tion / prose (whatever you wish to call it) in the new issue of online lit­er­ary magazine > kill author. You can read my con­tri­bu­tion here. It fea­tures bar­codes. It does not fea­ture para­graphs. Para­graphs are so last year. The magazine also includes work by people like Jimmy Chen ‘n’ Lauren Becker ‘n’ Rox­ane Gay ‘n’ Sam Pink ‘n’ Stephen Daniel Lewis ‘n’ Steven J. McDer­mott but also many people I had never heard of before whom I now have heard of and indeed read and enjoyed and will look out for again and com­mas are so last year too apparently.

Caffeine suicide

An over­whelm­ing sense of self-loathing makes me want to shoot myself in the head in the middle of Star­bucks, spray­ing slith­ers of my brain and skull shrapnel into the Soy Lattes and Tall Skinny Hold The Froth No In Fact Give Me More Froth Give Me More More More Froth Until I Froth From The Mouth Capucci­nos of my fel­low aspir­a­tional consumers.

Increas­ingly, I find myself unable to begin the work­ing day without skulk­ing side­ways into Starbucks—before the cor­por­ate revolving doors of gleam­ing glass grab me in their spin cycle—to get myself a hit of hard, unfor­giv­ing caf­feine, and then shiver as it passes through my needy, greedy veins.

I sit by the win­dow, drink­ing over-priced liquid that has, some­where back along the retail chain, been swilled in the gul­lets of taste test­ers and passed through the bowels of cor­por­ate focus groups, before being squeezed out into the cupped hands of well-heeled urban social­ites in need of a fix. I am a will­ing pawn of the global brand, all because I need to stay awake and on edge for the next few hours, in a state of false alert. I am only a stone’s throw away from the well-known media organ­isa­tion that I call home for at least forty hours a week. I am typ­ing mes­sages into my desir­able con­sumer touch-screen mobile phone, com­mu­nic­at­ing in 140 char­ac­ters or less with people I have never met and who don’t really have any desire to know what I’m think­ing at 8:32am on a week­day morn­ing, but who believe it’s a mir­acle of the mod­ern world that they have such know­ledge at their fingertips.

As I sip and breathe and breathe and sip, I watch the sheep wend their way through the bru­tal­ist street fur­niture towards the first rung of the busi­ness lad­der. I moment­ar­ily con­vince myself that I’m far too good for them. Too good for this. I’m the pred­at­ory wolf, laugh­ing at their dumb com­pli­ance. Need­less to say, my sheep­skin jacket is stuffed out of view under my chair until I leave; until I return to the suf­foc­at­ing warmth of woolly-minded acceptance.

I sum­mon a younger me from the shad­ows, and out of the corner of my eye I can see the look of dis­gust on his face. He gulps down a cheap instant cof­fee, while I patiently and hope­fully wait for the cold metal­lic click against my right temple.

Infallibly papal

Ex Cathedra is a new lit­er­ary magazine that is “unaf­fili­ated with any reli­gion, except that of fine lit­er­at­ure”, and I have a piece of prose entitled ‘Swal­low’ fea­tured in it. It’s in PDF format, so click through to page 80 to read my vague out­pour­ings. Or rather don’t, not imme­di­ately, no mat­ter how much you quite rightly adore me. Because if you do, you’ll miss rather won­der­ful poetry by the likes of Ani Smith and Mat­thew Savoca, J. Sul­li­van, Brad Lien­ing and RC Miller (the last three being unfa­mil­iar names to me — I always enjoy mak­ing new dis­cov­er­ies), plus evoc­at­ive prose by Brad Green and Barry Gra­ham. And me, yes. But I men­tioned me already. So enough about me. Enough. I’m quite shy and self-effacing, really.

Suck pen, chew tongue, swallow phlegm, write

People con­stantly ask me — as in no people, not con­stantly and never ask — about my raison d’être for writ­ing. When I write. Which isn’t very often these days, seem­ingly. But when I do, they ask me. And since I am the quint­es­sen­tial shy, retir­ing type, I never reply. I just shift uncom­fort­ably in my seat, turn bright red and won­der if I can stab them in the chest with a plastic fork.

The editor* of a site called Writers’ Bloc, how­ever, tried to per­suade me to divulge at least some of my rais­ons. I chose to ignore his advice and just wrote some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent instead. Then I ate my knuckles, crack­ing them between my teeth like small walnuts.

* Yes, I sup­pose I should declare that I am the editor of Writers’ Bloc. In other words, I asked myself. What can I say? It was a quiet week­end and I don’t get out much.

Things to do with your hands when not writing #1

While sit­ting in the dark, move your fin­gers in front of the glar­ing light being pumped out from your laptop screen. If you con­cen­trate hard enough, you’ll soon be able to con­jure up some short dra­matic scenes per­formed in sil­hou­ette, with your digits por­tray­ing each of the char­ac­ters. As long as there are not more than eight char­ac­ters, of course. And if you’re con­cerned about your thumbs miss­ing out, maybe they can take on the roles of dwarves. Bald, mus­cu­lar dwarves.

For instance — yes, there is a for instance, because I do these things so you don’t have to — my right ring fin­ger just bru­tally attacked my left fore­finger dur­ing a re-enactment of a mar­tial arts scene from a Quentin Tarant­ino movie of which I have only ever seen a few clips on the inter­net. It was sur­pris­ingly graphic. The re-enactment, I mean. Not the film. Though the film might be. I haven’t seen it. Only clips. But I men­tioned that already.

Earlier this even­ing, I also per­formed my own back­lit fin­ger ver­sion of A Room With A View, the mem­or­able 1985 Mer­chant Ivory adapt­a­tion of the E.M. For­ster novel, using only my little fin­gers. It was dread­fully uncon­vin­cing, since neither pinky par­tic­u­larly resembled either Helena Bonham-Carter or Julian Sands. And after their first tender kiss, Julian Sands (right pinky) wanted to go fur­ther with Helena Bonham-Carter (left pinky) than she was pre­pared to allow due to her prim and proper deport­ment. Whereupon Julian became a sexu­ally raven­ous mon­ster con­sumed by unres­trained Edwar­d­ian lust, and the whole scene des­cen­ded into just another Quentin Tarant­ino mar­tial arts movie, with Helena (left pinky) deal­ing Julian (right pinky) a swift blow to the clavicle fol­lowed by a sharp kick in the testicles.

I am cur­rently immersed in the dif­fi­cult task of plan­ning the cast­ing for my fin­ger sil­hou­ette ver­sion of 12 Angry Men. It is prov­ing trau­matic. I may need to bor­row two fin­gers from somewhere.

This is my life. Pity me.

I am not sure this series of posts is one of my bet­ter ideas. I feel — because to ‘feel’ is all the rage, you know — that it will not make it to a second instalment.Though I will, of course, keep you informed. Won’t we, left pinky? Won’t we, right pinky?

Dead people’s things for sale #5

So on and so forth

Hello. I have been think­ing about try­ing to write here again. Or just write. Any­where. But I am not sure. Not sure. Yet. So. How have you been? I hope you have been well. I have been. I have been some­where. Things have happened. Other things have not happened. And other things have happened in other places in the lives of other people. Need­less to say, how­ever, I am not even aware of those things. Or those people. I do not talk about those things. Or those people. We do not speak. We are not on speak­ing terms. So. Yes. Writ­ing. It’s dif­fi­cult. Except it isn’t. Or it shouldn’t be. Mae West came to me in a dream. She looked old. And dead. Obvi­ously. She was pre­cari­ously bal­anced atop a small uni­corn. She spoke to me in sleazy, come hither tones. She said: “You know you don’t have to act with me, Steve. You don’t have to say any­thing, and you don’t have to do any­thing. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just write. You know how to write, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and … blow.” I was con­fused. I told her that my name wasn’t Steve. I also told her that she was wrong. That her most fam­ous movie line applied to whist­ling. Not writ­ing. That she was clearly senile in her old age. Or her old dead­ness. She was not amused. She hardened her gaze. She was no longer come hither. She com­manded her pet uni­corn to gouge out my eyes with its myth­ical horn. So now I sit here. Without any eyes. But only myth­ic­ally. All because of Mae. I keep hop­ing that Kath­ar­ine Hep­burn will come to me in a dream and tell me the secret of inspir­a­tion. But she does not. She is too busy lurk­ing in the sub­con­scious of Ian McE­wan. Prob­ably. I don’t know. I have not spoken to Ian McE­wan lately. Or at all. He doesn’t write. He doesn’t call. He doesn’t send me verb­ose billets-doux. Noth­ing. So. Writ­ing. Not yet, I don’t think. I need to make these sur­round­ings more aes­thet­ic­ally pleas­ing. Except I don’t. That is called pro­cras­tin­a­tion. I need to make these pages pret­tier. Pretty. Pret­tify. No, I don’t. I am still pro­cras­tin­at­ing. But that is what I do. When I don’t write. I arrange. I am a flower arranger. But with words. I make words look good. Look bet­ter. I reju­ven­ate them. With my gouged visual designer’s eyes. Give them a nip here and a tuck there. Espe­cially to ugly words. “Obsol­es­cence,” I say, since obsol­es­cence is a rather hideous word. “Obsol­es­cence, you look twenty years younger. Obsequious, you no longer have a double chin. Obstin­ate, your skin is pos­it­ively glow­ing.” I am work­ing through words begin­ning with ‘ob’ at the moment. As you can tell. This will be a long pro­cess. So I know that I do not need to arrange words in ways that are pleas­ing to the rest­ful gaze. Not needed. Need­less. But I enjoy it. It keeps me off the streets. It keeps me out of gut­ters. Stops me sit­ting on kerbs, with my eyes gouged out by a uni­corn, drink­ing methyl­ated spir­its and shout­ing at passers-by that I used to be some­body. Even though I didn’t. Used to be some­body, that is. I used to be me. I still am me. Still. Am. Appar­ently. But we’re not talk­ing. We’re not on speak­ing terms. I don’t write. I don’t call. I don’t send myself verb­ose billets-doux. Only Ian McE­wan cares. He keeps chat­ting to me via email. Or so I ima­gine. “Come out and play,” he says, like a five-year-old child. “We can build sand­castles in the sand on sandy beaches with buck­ets and spades and then write about build­ing our sand­castles. It will be fun. My mummy has put me in shorts today. Just for this. I have scabby knees.” I ignore him. I have blocked him. Ian McE­wan didn’t want to talk to me before. He didn’t want to oust Mae West from my dreams, heal my unicorn-assaulted eyes and inspire me to write. So I don’t want any­thing to do with him now. Good­bye, Ian McE­wan. Haruki Murakami, though. Haruki’s a dif­fer­ent mat­ter. A dif­fer­ent kettle of fish. He keeps call­ing me. Keeps call­ing me at work. In the middle of the night. Every hour of the day. Cry­ing down the phone. Weep­ing. Wail­ing. He is beg­ging me to recom­mence writ­ing. That’s what I think, any­way. In truth, he is speak­ing Japan­ese. Of course. So he could be say­ing any­thing. So I speak to him in sooth­ing tones. Though not erotic tones. We do not have that kind of rela­tion­ship. Yet. “Haruki,” I say. “Haruki, you know I love and respect you. But you have to stop call­ing me. This rela­tion­ship can go nowhere. I am not Japan­ese. I can­not spea­kee de lingo. Inglese. That’s Italian. Oh. Must speak Japan­ese. Konichiwa. Domo arigato. Say­on­ara.” But he doesn’t under­stand. Or he is offen­ded by my clumsy attempts at speak­ing Japan­ese. So he hangs up. Only to call again a few hours later. Weep­ing. And wail­ing. Again. So. Writ­ing. Yes. But no. But yes and no. I am unde­cided. I equi­voc­ate. I vacil­late. I pre­var­ic­ate. I have a thesaurus stuck in my throat that is pre­vent­ing me from vomit­ing. I am try­ing to slowly work it free by drink­ing gal­lons of castor oil. It isn’t work­ing. Writ­ing. Def­in­itely. Pos­sibly. I think I should stop now. Tem­por­ar­ily. Fleet­ingly. Per­haps for longer. Sylvia Plath is on the phone. She is being pestered by Ted Hughes in death. She wants to talk to me about him. She is inter­ested in someone new. Someone younger. Someone virile. Deadly virile. She has met Heath Ledger in heaven and wants to relieve her womanly urges by hav­ing phone sex with me whilst mas­turb­at­ing over center­fold pic­tures of Heath ripped from cheap and taw­dry movie magazines. This is my life. You see? This is my life. I simply don’t have time for writ­ing. My life is filled. Burst­ing. Throb­bing and expect­ant. My head hurts. Both of them. So. Writ­ing. No. I was going to close the com­ments on this post. Not because I hate you. I don’t hate you. I hate Ian McE­wan and Haruki Murakami. I would hate Sylvia Plath too. But she is just about to erupt into a bliss­ful wave of after­life orgasm and it feels rude to inter­rupt. I am find­ing it dif­fi­cult to con­cen­trate. It is dif­fi­cult when Sylvia Plath is breath­ing heav­ily and errat­ic­ally down the line from heaven. So I don’t hate you. And I haven’t closed the com­ments. I was prob­ably just feel­ing insec­ure. I am cer­tainly feel­ing very brittle. I may snap at any moment. Like a twig. Or a cracker. Or a for­tune cookie. Or a tibia. Sylvia, no. No, Sylvia. I won’t do that. It’s wrong. It would feel wrong. So wrong. Yet so good. So very good. No, I must not. You have sig­ni­fic­ant men­tal health prob­lems. And you’re dead. We shouldn’t for­get that small fact. You are dead. You may have vener­eal dis­eases of the soil. Or worms. Or worse. Your deadened, dried-up lungs might still be full of gas from your oven. And Ted Hughes would hate me if I did you. Even if I did you only vir­tu­ally. He would come after me on a uni­corn, scream­ing poetic obscen­it­ies. And assisted by the black-robed fig­ure of Death wield­ing his scythe. Death hates me. He does not like my writ­ing. He used to read me all the time. But he stopped early last year when I lost the plot and star­ted get­ting too obscure. There he is. Death. With his scythe. And a mali­cious grin on his face. I must go. Mae West, Kath­ar­ine Hep­burn, Ian McE­wan, Haruki Murakami, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes and Heath Ledger are all after me. I’m feel­ing houn­ded and vic­tim­ised. I will be back. Maybe. You know. Don’t wait up. You may pine gently, if you wish. Just don’t wait up. I will be. Thing. Stuff and non­sense. Back. Yes. No. Oh, I don’t know. Not right now. Don’t ask awk­ward ques­tions of me. I may snap. Like a cro­codile. Sylvia, stop it. Stop it, Sylvia. I’m going to hang up, Sylvia. I’m going to hang up. That’s it. Quite enough. That’s quite enough of that. And of this. I need to make a swift unicorn-assisted escape. Help me. Goodbye.