The Witch Finder general hides between the pavement cracks. His breath smells of something  something sinister.

He lives in an old peoples home and he smells of **** sedated by beautiful nurses in stockings.

In flickering moments of lucidity he wonders how he has come to be in this place, this pitiful existence. His mind feels strong during  vague vignettes but he is imprisoned by his failing and aged body.

More drugs administered by the ***** nurse soon weaken him again, his awareness washes away
his mind slowly slides down
                warm
                   nylon thighs.

On his knees,
hangnails scratch against stockings, ladders and runs.

Red post boxes stand on street corners like aged prostitutes
rusted and flaking
and they are going the way of phone boxes and TV aerial?

Are there still milkman?

Who writes letters?

Postcards from men
working down a pit?

Stuck in the trench
I killed time by attening seminars about powerful words,
the history of things,  
body language as legitimate currency
exposing the micro.

A craven emptiness screaming extinction.

Contradictory

messages erased. Right now

we look for the truth.

I don't think I've ever been the stuff of woman’s fantasies

I doubt a stranger passing on a street has given me

a second glance you see,

I can't play guitar I can't sing a song I can't even dance

I am what some magazines would call “out of shape”

I have a beard but contrary to stereotypes

it doesn’t smell nor does it contain

remnants of food like Mr Twit .

But maybe if I died in some immaculate way

I'd be revered and future people would pray to effigies of me,

have images of me dangling from their neck.

Alters made up of an old shoe I once wore,

or perhaps a piece of paper I had scribbled on?

My pathetic writing suddenly prophetic.

Until then I guess I continue to exist

and grow my beard in readiness.

...will have a bearded left wing protagonist raging on behalf of the proletariat.He'll share a flat with a metaphor for the 21st century malaise

and when they talk

they will talk in the forgotten syntax of washing powder ads from the 50's and construct sentences from toilet graffiti remembered from youth.

Their flat will be infested with insects and disgruntled middle management, grumbling about the lack of vertical opportunities and the implementation of a new computer system.

Filing cabinets will contain stolen secrets of unknown cultures, manilla folders will hold evidence of unsolved ****** cases stretching back a hundred years where the suspects all look uncannily the same.

The theory of a time travelling murderer is considered but never openly discussed.

The fridge contains nothing but under developed ideas and stale rhetoric.

This is a flat with no doors.

The artist only used black,
he wouldn't say why his mum named him after a King

in palaces where feral children investigate
the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle from their sofa where

they translated “idiot savant” as
stupid servant was written on permanent files

somewhere hidden alongside
DVDs that were posted on line showing monkeys in boxes
throwing themselves to death against perspex walls

splattering Rorschach patterns of childish nightmares,
the boogeyman.

A butterfly.

Some people think aliens from another planet have been here, right here on earth,

possibly webbed of foot
sticky talons,
sharp lizard skin,
six gills
revolutionary eyes?

landed in a field of sleeping cows,
perhaps
somewhere -

then again some people
say they have have never been on a bus

while others insist they have never eaten an orange - juice shooting - sticky fingers

And I just don't know who to believe.