”I remember remember recall I think this guy called called Erwin or Ursula or Pakistan or was it a girl with yellow what’s-the-name of those things you wear on your poles or legs or what I can’t remember if Erwin or Ursula or Nepal or what it was if a human can be called an ’it’ did anything special but I remember laughing and on that day I discovered my toes. Look, I can still wriggle ‘em! Look!”

(Sniffs around in the air): — Doesn’t it smell a bit like cat piss? (Reading intensely in the local rag): — What? - I think it smells a bit like cat piss here. (Seemingly too absorbed to pay attention): — We don’t have a cat. - Not a real one. What about your imaginary cat? - What imaginary cat? - Mortimer. (Blushing, ill at ease): — I didn’t think you knew about him. - I do and I don’t mind. At least he won’t trigger my allergy. - But you can smell his piss? - Yes, that’s odd, innit? - Especially since I just emptied, washed and put new litter in the tray. - The imaginary tray? - The imaginary tray.

Looking out of the window, then at his watch, then out of the window again John Smith says: It’s early. 23 minutes to be exact. - What’s early, Apple lying on the table next to pile of semi-used paper tissues asks. - The rain. - The rain? - Yes. It’s says on the weather…

You’re bored and lazy so you write a poem about being bored and lazy in which you, bored and lazy, write about being bored and lazy and blaming it on the humid heat and the stupidity of the world at large. You mumble a spell that should turn the neighbour’s goldfish into orange flavoured sorbet but stop at the critical point; you don’t want to add to her troubles. She’s got lobsters, you’ve heard. Lobsters everywhere, they say.

waltzes pop up in the most unexpected spaces like when you wear a blackbird on your head and meet “the man who talks so very loud” on his red bicycle and you’ve barely finished drawing a chalk line around a newly deceased puddle. he’s too busy talking to no one in particular whom he also expects will not listen and you eye a berry in a tutu and wonder if THAT is what’s coming. You don’t know the days and the days won’t know of you so you resort to a calendar of grapes and smoke.

John Smith stopped believe in hobbits when he saw them on film. “Their teeth are too perfect and too blue”, he said to his pet manta ray Bernie, but Bernie never listened to anything John Smith said. always between two fields the hawthorns herd the dead

For a good couple of weeks John Smith thought his shoes were dogs but after the medication started to work they stopped chasing the sticks and balls he thought he threw and he got bored. “I need a new appointment with the doc”, he said to his chair. On the other hand he was relieved that the shoes had stopped chewing themselves to pieces and keeping him awake at night with their barking at every little shadow that moved. “After all”, he said to anyone that would listen, “shadows are human too”.

Jane Smith imagined a swan but really needed a cow to get to the top of Rainbow Hill. It was 4 PM and her hedgehog kettle whistled. After that she could no nothing. untimely snow your clock’s searching for jackdaws

Old McDonald Old Henry McDonald’s farm was full of flamingos. Pink, of course. Of polystyrene, of course. With green steel wire legs, of course. Old Henry McDonald didn’t have to work a lot with them. Apart from the annual anti-fungus spraying and gathering of eggs for omelets and for frying. Every evening he counted them and before he reached 57.809 he fell asleep and slept like baby. After his wife died he sometimes had to count to 57.811. But that was then.