The Mannequins Are More Real Than You Read online

  planet,

  orbiting

  your

  daydreams.

  Love letter

  The Bird King

  has left

  a love letter

  for you

  on a bedside table

  in a house

  that has not yet been built.

  The wooden man

  The wooden man came to her in a cloud in a vision in a dream in a story. When he spoke, his tongue clacked against his teeth.

  —–

  As soon as she woke up, she knew the wooden man was in her belly. She felt heavy with him, fatigued. All she wanted to eat was sawdust.

  —–

  The wooden man was born on the night of a storm that felled a thousand trees. He fell from his red confinement and jittered across the floor.

  —–

  The wooden man had no time for childhood. He set to work immediately, splicing humans with sheep in an underground laboratory.

  —–

  The wooden man slept in a coffin. Every morning was a new life. The broken animals he fabricated bleated and cheered every time the lid flew off.

  —–

  The wooden man lay down on the sea and floated. Seagulls perched on him, shrieking with laughter as the waves swelled.

  —–

  The wooden man made enemies fast. They feared his stiff authority. When they grudgingly shook his hand, he gave them splinters.

  —–

  On the 13th of every month, the wooden man stepped into a wardrobe, to commune with his father. His heart glowed. Words fell like ashes.

  —–

  One day, the wooden man’s enemies caught him breaking the laws of physics by being in two places at once. He was sentenced to burning.

  —–

  The wooden man requested lamb chops as his last meal. He washed them down with human blood. Then they stuck him on a bonfire and partied.

  —–

  The day after the wooden man’s burning, the wind puffed his ashes into a cloud. The sheep-men swore it made the shape of a fish.

  —–

  The factories closed years ago. The city belongs to the rats. The wooden man’s ghost sits in a skip, carving forgotten names into his arms.

  Six poetic deaths

  1

  The poet dived for words only in the most dangerous waters. One morning, his body washed up on the beach of an undiscovered continent.

  2

  Her poems were a furnace, into which she threw his letters, his gifts and, finally, herself.

  3

  He incubated his words in a basement laboratory. One night, as he slept, they hatched. He was found dead the next morning, his throat cut.

  4

  The poet died an undignified death, choking on one of his own metaphors.

  5

  The poems resented the life they had been given. They hadn’t asked for it. Hunting down their maker was easy; she looked like them.

  6

  The poet kept words in hives, harvested their honey. He never wore protective clothing. We found him dead yesterday, swollen, beatific.

  His house

  His house incubates memories. As he sleeps, they hatch.

  His house is neither here nor there. It occupies a space between watchfulness and insomnia. Grey birds nest on its roof.

  His house is a refuge from everything except himself. The floor, walls, roof are fat with him. Water from the taps smells of him.

  His house is his world, but he can’t articulate what that really means. Perhaps he doesn’t want to think about it too much.

  His house is a little provincial theatre, in which he, his family and friends enact a thousand gentle farces.

  His house is home to thoughts that scratch at the windows and gnaw the wallpaper.

  His house has its Grand Guignol moments. Fortunately, he is always there with his marigolds on, to dispose of the evidence.

  His house is more past than present and more present than future. Ghosts smile weakly from the mantelpiece.

  His house is a menagerie, in which the big cats fight the apes. Most visitors don’t notice, sipping their tea while battle roars.

  His house is a mirage. He climbs an air staircase, sleeps on cloud.

  His house is a nuclear weapon, at the moment of detonation.

  His house is a cage. He has given himself straw to lie on, a bowl of water, a car tyre to swing from. In the evenings, he reads Baudelaire.

  His house is an alien world. Knives whisper in drawers. A cat activates and deactivates randomly. Rain taps importunately on windows.

  His house collapses around him every time he goes to sleep. As he wakes up, it reconstructs itself.

  His house is more than words, less than the ear that hears them, the eye that reads them.

  It’s Autumn

  Mum and Dad are dead, though I’m the only person who has noticed. They’re sipping their tea in the kitchen. Dad keeps coughing up maggots. Mum’s face looks like a cracked mirror: I see myself in it, broken, dark. My brothers carry on as normal. They huddle by the TV, whispering about the girls they don’t dare ask out, or play in the garden.

  Sometimes, Mum sews her hands together and sings. Her song would pierce your heart.

  It’s Autumn now, I think. Autumn is nothing. Summer burns us, Winter freeze-dries us. Autumn is just a brown transition. Nothing happens. We get older, we die more deeply. Maybe that is something. Slowing down is still moving. But I can’t tell the time. The hands on the clock move too slowly.

  Man and wife are one flesh. Their tangled sinews wrestle through the night. If you press your ear to the wall, you’ll hear the awful rasping of conjoined lungs. A brain in two halves declares: This is life! And you read the instructions tattooed on your arms, before munching on some toast and going to work. Outside, the birds are in charge. They direct traffic and the wandering days.

  Mum and Dad could never afford to buy their own house, so they rented the Palace of Skulls. It was quite cosy, once upon a time. Stray stories crept in through the fissures, curled up at my feet. A man called Mr Vogel called round once a month, to collect the rent. The neighbours were boring but pleasant, and murders were rare. I remember little about those days. I was only five, perhaps fifteen. Memories don’t start forming properly until you’re in your sixties. Maybe that’s my problem. I’m too old for excitement, too young for reminiscence. Stuck between a life lived and a life remembered, in a time when the clock’s hands move imperceptibly and my brothers dice with death.

  Dad keeps trying to tell me something. His jaws move convulsively. Whenever I suggest he write it down, he waves me away with a rotting hand. What am I supposed to do?

  The hospital is a Hell of corridors. There are no wards, no patients. Just mannequins dressed as doctors, breezing through a polished antiseptic maze. I try to visit whenever I can. I still hope that one day I’ll find a real doctor who can look at the holes in my legs and tell me how to treat them. Maybe I’m over-complicating everything. Maybe my legs are made of cheese and the holes are nothing to worry about. Maybe my legs are made of volcanic rock. Maybe my legs are made of fallacious arguments. Whatever. As far as the hospital is concerned, it doesn’t matter. The registrar murders noise. Her phantom pregnancy is more real than me.

  Mum and Dad are dead. Did I mention that? It needs to be pointed out. Mum thinks she’s a chair. She rocks in a corner, keeping time with the memory of her heartbeat. Dad distracts himself with Elvis Presley. My brothers gnaw on the mice collecting in my eyes. At times, this feels like happiness. At Christmas, our house is a symphony of belches and farts. We drink to each other, health, the Palace of Skulls. Santa Claus masturbates miserably in a back room. We feel as if we’re together. We’re not. But we feel as if we are or tell each other we feel as if we are, and that’s enough for us. Carol singers collect on our doorstep like dead leaves. Sometimes I find myself thinking about the hospital and wanting to go there, even though I know it’s probably pointless. Then I have another bottle of vodka and forget about it.

  It’s Autumn now. One day it will be Winter. Man and wife are one flesh.

  Mr Dudd is not an easy way out of the day

  Mr Dudd and I don’t think that the government has been the most beautiful girl in the morning and I’m still waiting for my life and death. Mr Dudd is so cute when you get the chance to win this game in my head and I love it when people don’t know why you should be able to see. Mr Dudd and I love you so much better now that I’m a big fan of yours truly and I have a nice dream about you but I’m still not working. Mr Dudd is so much better than the original version and the first half of the day after a long time ago when he said that it is a great way. Mr Dudd licked the first place in my room and my dad just called me a little tool. The fact is that you are so much better now. Mr Dudd killed it tonight at 8pm and I don’t know how to make the most recent update. I’m at work today and I’m still waiting to get my hair. Mr Dudd ate the whole world. I love it when people say they will be in my head and I don’t think I’m going to get my money back. Mr Dudd swam in the morning and the other hand is the most beautiful girl in the world to me. The fact is that you are a few days ago. Mr Dudd feared the worst thing about it but I can’t believe I’m going to get my nails done today and it is the best. Mr Dudd pissed to get my money back. I just got home from school tomorrow but the most important thing is that you can be used. Mr Dudd died in the morning and I’m still in bed with my friends and family. Mr Dudd and the zombies are so cute when you are really playing with my life. I hate it when I get something done right. Mr Dudd writes about the future whenever I’m bored and lonely. People who don’t like me try to make the world uninsta
ll and reinstall. Mr Dudd kisses old school with my wallpaper and I run into a fight with my worst nightmare. Sometimes you need me to be the best. James Knight tweets about me but you can’t even play without having a bad mood. I’m going back and forth between us and we. Mr Dudd represents a major problem with my life and death and destruction and a few years ago he was not a fan of yours. Mr Dudd paints canvasses to be the best. Occasionally I love the new one and only a couple of decades ago I was just a little slow. Mr Dudd sucks for the rest of the year and I have no clue who I am. Mr Dudd buried his first game in a statement issued by the end zone. The gun couldn’t be happier with my life. Mr Dudd chases moths to get a new song on this page and it will take place in the first half of the year before that. When Mr Dudd’s battery runs out he has to go back to sleep and wake me up by singing the national anthem. Mr Dudd enjoys a good time waster but it would mean so much more if the shoe size were not immediately known. Mr Dudd empties his wife of mouse droppings so that he can get a new song on repeat for the rest of the year and I don’t think. Mr Dudd watches lions eating my feelings for you guys. They savage all the best parts of my day. Sometimes you need me to get my nails. Mr Dudd has sex with my friends and the other side of the mirror. It doesn’t matter how hard it is, the company has to go out with my life. Mr Dudd stuffs his wallet with forged diplomatic relations between China and India and I love the fact that you are so much better now. Mr Dudd declares war on terror suspects and a few weeks ago I had constipation, despite the fact that America is not a fan of yours truly. I don’t know if Mr Dudd is real, but I think it’s funny because the last time we went to sleep we turned into an argument with my life.

  Parts required for the assembly of a new myth

  Dusk

  Solitude

  Social media

  Derelict buildings

  Crows

  Reflective surfaces

  Smashed lightbulbs

  The past

  The Bird King’s memories

  change

  every day.

  The past

  is a city

  forever under construction.

  The dwarfs

  Larval coils

  In wet earth

  Awaiting spring

  Time’s tectonic pulse

  The mourners wore bird masks

  And cackled as the coffin was lowered

  A troubling thought

  A gleam

  In the darkness

  Best not to think about it

  Hahaha yes I suppose you’re right they do look a bit like maggots especially that one haha it’s a funny old world isn’t it

  Croaking

  Crow King

  Dancing in your blood

  Mr Lamb the butcher

  Mr Lamb the butcher skulks behind glass, in his kingdom of sawdust and blood.

  —–

  Mr Lamb the butcher numbers among his favourite things curly hair, dew, Miss Marple, black pudding, Punch and Judy, daffodils and thrash metal.

  —–

  “Pleased to meat you,” said Mr Lamb the butcher, eyeing up his new customers, imagining their hanging carcasses, their choice cuts.

  —–

  Mr Lamb the butcher regards the service he provides his customers as a window onto the infinite. He is a hierophant, his mundane work a ritual of cutting, weighing, wrapping, giving.

  —–

  Every Good Friday, Mr Lamb the butcher has himself strung up in the window of his shop, atop a mound of sheep’s eyes.

  —–

  Mr Lamb the butcher makes flamboyant window displays, in which bald chimeras made from bits of beef, chicken and pork mate, fight or deliver speeches with grandiloquent gestures.

  —–

  Mr Lamb the butcher has a penchant for Debussy. He often becomes glassy-eyed as he hacks meat into retail-ready portions to the melodies of La mer.

  —–

  Once, Mr Lamb the butcher defenestrated a customer who had made a puerile remark about the phallic appearance of a sausage he had just been sold.

  —–

  Every evening, after work, Mr Lamb the butcher sits alone at his little kitchen table and wolfs down a thick stew of offcuts and offal. He wears the smile of a champion.

  Lotis

  1

  A voice

  scratches

  her

  ear:

  Come

  here,

  petal.

  Later: a red stain.

  She doesn’t cry.

  She washes the sheets

  and does the dishes.

  2

  The back door opens onto a blank night.

  A gull shrieks like Mr Punch.

  Her blood is daughter to the sea.

  The mannequins are only playing dead

  at night

  the mannequins leave

  their glass prisons

  and hunt owls in the forest

  —–

  sometimes they dance

  a slo-mo tarantella

  in a clearing

  bone-white in the moonlight

  —–

  in the morning

  back behind glass

  their blank looks

  give nothing away

  behind them

  tills open with a yawn

  and close with a sigh

  Employees

  The Bird King’s advisors and ministers

  are a range

  of rusty kitchen utensils.

  They all observe

  a respectful silence

  in his presence.

  Mon in the forest: a fragment

  Mon wakes up surrounded by trees. The light is grey, the trunks black.

  How long have I slept? he wonders.

  He doesn’t know which way to walk. In every direction, the same prospect of trees. He looks up at a blank sky. No sign even of the sun.

  —–

  He starts walking. Slowly, leisurely. If there is a right way to go, it isn’t evident. So the going can have no consequences.

  It occurs to him that the dense arrangement of trees constitutes a forest.

  So I’m lost in a dark forest, he muses.

  —–

  As he treads on twigs, leaves, roots, he listens for the music of the woods.

  Nothing.

  And no birds sing.

  Where’s that from?

  Memories of a brown classroom, words on a page. A poem about a pale knight.

  —–

  The forest deepens.

  —–

  He keeps walking. He’s been here before. Not here, geographically (as far as he’s aware), but here, in this situation. Walking.

  Between black trees: a momentary red, stark as blood. Mon’s interest is aroused. The promise of adventure, or at least an encounter.