The Mannequins Are More Real Than You
11
Many of the objects and creatures Eve encountered in the House of Mirrors had no names. They blurred and warped in her gaze.
12
Deep underground, hidden from Eve in a room with no door, a man and a woman were exchanging gifts. The space around them vibrated.
13
In Room 13 Eve found the architect’s plans. The House of Mirrors seemed to have been modelled on a bird cage or a construction site.
Gastronomy
In exclusive circles,
the Bird King’s stools
are considered a delicacy.
The Bird King’s eggs
1
The Bird King’s eggs are
subatomic particles
created serendipitously
by
a
sneeze
in a quantum physicist’s dream.
Occupying a space
between existence
and nothingness,
reason and madness,
broccoli and cauliflower,
they lie dormant
in the brains of millions,
their presence sometimes hinted
by a little blackout,
momentary aphasia,
a smudged face in a memory.
2
Frequently mistaken for full stops
(periods, if you’re American),
the Bird King’s eggs
are in fact
commas.
They rhyme with horse,
daffodil,
sponsor,
pustule,
lurid
and curtain.
But because they’re neither poetry nor prose, those with a mania for classification refuse to acknowledge their existence.
3
It won’t surprise you to learn
that the Bird King’s eggs
resemble hand grenades
or suppositories,
depending on the time of day
and state of mind
of the observer.
They smell of parsley, plastic and piss.
If you don’t have any,
you can make some at home.
All you need are
a jar of dolls’ tears,
a strip of lightning,
a ghost’s moustache
and twenty pints of sour milk.
4
We’ve reached that point in the poem
where a discussion
of the author’s intentions
is inevitable.
So, what do the Bird King’s eggs represent?
Lacking the stable symbolism
of a cross
or a skull,
the Bird King’s eggs
flicker
in
and out
of meanings,
whirring,
blurring,
burning.
They are coffins, building blocks, severed heads, cocoons, seeds, paper weights, lumps of clay, shells, bombs, Russian dolls.
5
Some have argued that the Bird King’s eggs are merely imaginary.
Their naivety is astonishing.
Festivities
Although he lacks the patience required
to tolerate most entertainment,
the Bird King is nevertheless a fan
of the Carnival of Monkeys,
whose shrieking parade
is commissioned
to process through his palace
every Christmas Day.
Flute
“She’s so elegant, so graceful!”
The flute tires of such compliments.
In the velvet night of her case,
she dreams of being a foghorn.
Warning
A headache
is a nightmare
in its larval form.
Villainy
The nefarious Dr Dedalus opened his patient’s skull and let loose a monster in the labyrinth of her cerebral cortex.
13 floats reported to have disappeared from the chimeric carnival
1. Days of Innocence
Fluorescent maggot men dance the flamenco.
2. The Eyes of Medusa
Pythons and immobile pole dancers in grey body paint.
3. Golgotha
A drunken mechanical Christ grinds your bones to make his bread.
4. Big Ape Bollocks
Alpha males slug it out in a cage made of the bones of the beaten beta men.
5. The Other Side of the Mirror
A Hell of revolving doors, with screaming Red Queens.
6. The Triumph of Time
Hands pointing to blank faces, numbers crashing down.
7. The Dark Room
Thousands of photos of an empty bed.
8. The Mannequin
A smashed window in a department store display.
9. Punching Judy
A shrieking bride clobbers her red-nosed husband.
10. The Bald Prima Donna
A fireman, leaping from the window of an invisible house.
11. The Cocoon
A gigantic filing cabinet shakes violently, as if something inside is trying to get out.
12. Money Money Haha
Play-Doh recreations of disaster zones.
13. Limbo Dancers
Grey shapes wavering, neither here nor there. The music has stopped. The crowds are vanishing.
Debussy
Debussy is known for such mellifluous tone poems as La mer and Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. A less celebrated work is La foule hystérique for demonically possessed choir.
Painting
Sitting before her mirror, she paints herself. Her eye tracks the external workings of her mind, the ghost made flesh in wrinkles and a faint frown, her mind spiralling down a staircase of itself, vertiginous, into the pit of all the things she thinks she wants and thinks she needs, spiralling out of seashells, spiralling nowhere maybe just out of sight past the house at the end the pub on the right the tower block blocking the sky a place where land and water meet and mingle huge sea birds lost along the wastes scouting for familiar waves a place where matter is neither one thing nor another and never itself where people get lost and get wasted and lose themselves and try to work things out in their minds but they can’t their minds spiralling into dark tomorrows and smudged horizons sifting through caws and squawks for anything resembling a human voice and words that could be understood shifting in the creamy void artfully framed by two black slashes each a bird carrying death in its wings panicking towards the smudged horizon and in the foreground something that might be real or that takes as its starting point the representation of something that might be real a face her face framed by the black mass of her hair her frowning face sadder than hope looking out from the canvas into other eyes that flit from mirror to canvas to mirror flitting like birds tearing the horizon with razor wings flitting from canvas to mirror to canvas fleeing stillness flying from the stasis of the scene as it would appear to an observer she just sitting there sitting for hours her eyes moving but little else her arm her hand describing lines and curves guiding a paintbrush falling now and then into the murky palette rising again making little lines she just sitting there while a second she watches from the mirror and a third gathers on the canvas not one woman three women distinct but the same the same woman in three bodies and who could tell which came first which was authentic the woman in the painting the woman in the mirror the woman in the room looking at both looking like both.
13 clips from a horror movie filmed by the mannequins amid the ruins of Hollywood
1
His mouth opens and a red spider crawls out, followed by another one and another one and another one and another one and another one…
2
Her body is no longer her body. It looks exactly as it did before, but it is strange, wrong. She looks at herself in the mirror and weeps.
&nbs
p; 3
The sound of machinery wakes him. Iron grinding iron, shrill whistles. After a few seconds, it stops. When he sleeps it starts again.
4
The street is quiet. A few cars, people ambling along. A woman crosses the road, pushing a pram. Inside, there is a severed head.
5
Night. A luxury apartment on the 33rd floor. A bed, a man, a woman. The harder they fuck, the more horrible their deaths.
6
A man sits on a stool at a bar. He doesn’t know there is something in his whiskey. The barman knows. All the other customers know.
7
The suburb looks much as it did before, except there are no people and dogs roam free and windows are smashed and the flies are God.
8
They laugh. Life is easy. They’ve never had it so good. An ocean sunset. Meanwhile, in the cabin, a shadow twists and lengthens.
9
Their bodies are placentas, feeding something squalling, ravenous.
10
At school, the children sit quietly at their desks, devising a thousand parricides.
11
The camera was left running, by accident. He reviews the footage. Then he goes into the basement and shoots himself.
12
A spiral staircase leads to a corridor she doesn’t remember. She feels compelled to explore. Water drips from the ceiling.
13
The light is poor and there is smoke, but it looks like a large bird or a man dressed as one, tottering, lurching, shrieking, laughing.
Providence
God created the mannequins. And He saw that they were perfect. But lo! the mannequins were desirous of playthings, and so God created Man.
Piano
His most dangerous pet was the piano.
It rumbled threateningly in a corner,
showing its teeth.
To date, it had eaten
his wife
his children
and a health visitor.
When it slept,
it made skittering music
with their bones.
Eve’s eyes
Eve’s eyes make disastrous confessions. They glaze red then green then black. On Sundays they swim in a red currant sea, their currency bankrupt, ruptured and enraptured. Eve looks grimly through the window at the wino winnowing winsomely inside-out, and laughs with all her fight. At that moment the door enters with an excuse-me, sipping silver. What’s this annoying crackling noise? It seems to come from you or perhaps from Eve’s deadly aunties, who lie folded up at the bottom of her wardrobe. Their mouths are full of sausages and they hum in the night. A knight waves from somewhere far off – not me, you bastards! Yellow moments drip from bleak taps. Drip drip, your nose is gone. Which is all very well, witch is all very – well… which is not to say, knot to say, so difficult to say, I get tied up. The hanged man weeps and his cheeks burn with my shame.
This was never going to be a good idea. Try to concentrate, Eve. Try to concentrate on Eve. So. Eve’s eyes are wormholes into the devil’s dreams, spy holes into squirrels’ foragings, dirt holes filled with sugar, spite, lies and full stops. Why all this crap about her eyes? Does a woman not have any other bodily features worthy of comment or cement? Poor Eve, with her hopeless unhoped-for eyes, with her eyes like smashed lightbulbs, with her eyes like laughing testicles, sits at last and finds a piece of god or cod stuffed into the cushion gratefully receiving her terrifyingly angular rump. She falls to prayer. As her words ascend, the disgusting hatch at the top of her head is thrown open and her internal organs attempt their escape. Her brain does not want anything to do with it, however. How wise!
Soon, Eve is a husk. But her eyes, her eyes, you should see her eyes, still open, still limply inky and languid and smoky like coffee and arguments with strangers and regrets at 3am. Her eyes point at nothing, at you, at me, the person responsible for all this.
Lovecraftian
The
Bird King’s
guano forms a black
mountain of madness.
The Glitch Witch
1. Eye
The Glitch Witch
watches life
through a cracked lens.
Her breasts are
heavy
with love gone sour.
No one knows her name.
2. Terminus
The Glitch Witch runs
in
and out
of headlights,
along the last highway.
The cars are all broken down
or moving so slowly you can’t see.
The drivers are mannequins.
A rainbow apocalypse
settles
on the horizon.
3. Knives
The Glitch Witch’s teeth
are as white
as death.
A little water clears us.
Clean the utensils.
Put them back where you found them.
Close the door.
Sleep.
4. Success
The Glitch Witch falls
from skyscrapers
into daydreams.
Life is torn.
You’re bleeding under your nails.
She knows
all the numbers
from loss to profit.
She smirks behind the MD’s desk.
She’s supremely unhappy.
We keep a catalogue of disasters
in the basement.
Punters are admitted
Monday to Friday,
when the light fails.
The room is small.
There is a dressing table.
The mirror shows you as you think you are.
5. Mask
The Glitch Witch drowns in your day-to-day.
Dress for work.
Dress to hide your nakedness.
The room is too warm.
A little water clears us.
She is nowhere to be seen.
6. Nothing
The Glitch Witch is the
little blackout
you had yesterday
when you were
sitting
in
a
deckchair,
staring
at the hissing sea.
The waves eat the shore.
She eats you.
7. Mouth
The Glitch Witch hangs from your mouth
when the words won’t come.
Words won’t come.
She eats you.
She appears once in a month of drownings.
Little blackout.
8. Story
The Glitch Witch is
a steel mirage,
a bomb swallowing its own explosion,
sarcastic laughter,
rain on your face.
A familiar story.
He tried to write her,
tried to tie her to a page.
She slipped between breaths,
cut his thread.
Words blood knives hearts eyes hands screens dreaming bleeding leaving.
9. Vanitas
The Glitch Witch makes shadow puppets,
counts the days.
Clocks frown.
Outside,
the children are
running riot.
Her mouth
is a wasps’ nest.
Words won’t come.
My fingernails tear the horizon,
tear you.
Notes on the texts
The texts in this book were written between August 2013 and March 2016. The majority of them were first published as series of tweets.
“The Bird King in Love” was originally part of a long poem called “The Death of the Bird King”. Most of the Bird King poems can be found in my previous collection, Head Traumas.
“Orpheus and Eurydice”, “Scylla” and “Lotis” were written for Nicky Mortlock’s Transformations, a reworking of Ovid involving several writers and artists.
“Scylla” is an old-fashioned cut-up text. I chose source texts that leant themselves to Freudian interpretations of the monstrous feminine (to borrow Barbara Creed’s phrase): two excerpts from Bram Stoker’s The Lair of the White Worm, part of a public domain prose translation of book 14 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the stunningly grotesque description of Sin (daughter and lover of Satan, mother of Death) in Paradise Lost. Assembly of my poem was easy; anyone could have done it. I simply pasted the source texts into an online cut-up machine, then copied the resultant text into a Pages document on my iPad. Finally, I deleted some material, inserted line breaks where they seemed appropriate (making free verse out of prose), eliminated punctuation and began each stanza with a capital letter. I didn’t in any other way tamper with what the cut-up machine produced. The process generated some striking phrases and a serendipitous juxtaposition of the words “fair” and “foul”, which sums up the concept behind the poem, as well as bringing to mind Shakespeare’s monstrous females, the witches in Macbeth. Like Scylla herself, my poem is a tormented mess. Broken grammar and semantic ambiguity mirror Scylla’s horrified amazement at her own transmogrification. I’m usually a slave to grammar; in this instance it was refreshing to watch it being wrecked.