Jackself Read online

  and the future, which came as a shock

  when I first began to

  drink it instead of pulling the plug

  the rain’s turning to sleet

  snakes eat their old skins,

  dogs their own sick

  Jackself steps out from under the eaves and squats

  to give his reflection in the first puddle

  on the gravel path

  a lick

  Snow Dad

  won’t he do,

  Jackself says, longing at the red

  front door of Lamanby

  behind the door is the great hall

  and black stove he and Jeremy Wren could be

  sitting in front of

  with buttered crumpets and sugary tea,

  taking turns to gob on the hotplate and consider

  each frothy gob’s

  bead-dance and shrivel to a brief darkness

  on the iron

  WAKE UP

  Wren yells, and Jackself starts

  back into snow-glare and the cold

  that’s radiating from the white

  nine-foot dad Wren’s

  had them build to replace his own

  if you go to sleep, that’ll be it,

  Wren says

  I climbed

  into a chest freezer once

  and before I could tell my lolly from my lick-stick

  I was tucked up toasty warm,

  a bag of petit pois for a pillow

  there’s no dreaming,

  he says, when you’re dead

  what do you want a new old

  man for anyhow, Jackself says, shivering

  so I can give him a smile

  stonier than a lip smile

  poke myself

  in the eyes on his hand sticks

  run clean through him

  and leave a me-hole

  hide a penny in his body

  so when he’s gone, I get it back

  Pact

  Jeremy Wren puts a finger-pistol

  to his temple

  and fires

  Jackself steps off

  a thirteenth floor

  hold on, hold on,

  Wren says

  you can’t speak, Jackself says,

  your head’s blown off

  if I can’t, you can’t,

  Wren says

  I’m still falling, Jackself says,

  his arms rigid

  at his sides

  quick then,

  write a note, Wren says

  and write one for me

  while you’re at it

  I can’t write you a note,

  I don’t know why you’ve done it

  I’ll tell you, Wren says, just get your pen

  and pocketbook out of your pocket

  and scribble yours

  before you hit the ground

  Jackself sighs

  but does as he’s told

  what have you written, Wren says

  I’m not telling you

  what,

  Wren says, and narrows his eyes

  you think I don’t have my own reasons

  I’ll show you, he says,

  and he storms home, stamps upstairs,

  throws a dressing-gown cord

  over the rafter in his bedroom,

  pulls the slipknot over his head

  then kicks away the women’s underwear

  catalogues he’s balancing on

  and hangs thinking fuck I’ve left

  no note until he’s fucking dead

  The Hole

  they’ve put Jeremy Wren in a box

  the children ask, is Jeremy in the box

  yes, Jeremy’s in the box

  say the pale adults who hold their leaky faces

  above the children’s heads

  it’s hard for Jackself to hold

  in his head the box that holds Jeremy Wren

  his shirt collar frets

  his black shoes are Frankenstein to walk in

  Jeremy Wren’s

  choked his way into a box

  he just isn’t here

  and who’s to say he’s in the box

  he isn’t in the box,

  the adults say to the older ones

  he’s leapt clear

  and left his empty body in the box

  for us to get rid of

  he was always leaving

  us to tidy up

  but there’s a hole in the grass

  to hurry his mess into

  is this what they mean by grieving

  wet-combed hair, flannelled ears

  and a look at the hole in England where Jeremy Wren will sleep

  will not sleep, but rest

  will not rest, but lie

  wide awake, staring at the underside of the lid

  Jack O’Lantern

  the leaves are slimy yellow light

  the year’s a sticky door

  the wind bangs in the barest trees

  and shakes the apple core

  no

  again

  the leaves are slime

  the year a bloodshot eye

  the trees the rooms of bedlamites

  with bars across the sky

  the wind’s inside the apple core

  the moon bangs like a drum

  and

  no

  again

  the sky’s a door

  the year a slum

  the wind a house of bedlamites

  with trees in every room

  the leaves attached like leather straps

  and light a yellow spoon

  the moon’s beside the

  no

  again

  the year breaks down the door

  the leaves are shut inside the trees

  the trees in apple cores

  the wind bangs in the barest rooms

  of bedlam

  no

  again

  the leaves are rooms, the

  no

  the moon’s

  a

  no

  the year a vein

  of narrow gold, the trees gold flakes

  the leaves gold leaves, the wind

  a whiny

  no

  again

  the rakes

  are brooms, the moon is skinned

  and

  no again

  the bedlamites

  have wedged the no

  again

  the wind is bare and yellow spoons

  are banging on the brain

  the year’s wedged shut with apple cores

  the no a leather stain

  the slimy moon an open sore

  and every room the same

  Redbreast

  Jackself’s in the outdoors, mucky snow

  still hanging on sticks and slushed

  against the roadside,

  the wind in his face, his hands claws

  and there’s nowhere to go that isn’t toe-

  stubbing stone

  or a dripping blackwood

  the fields stuck

  full of stalks,

  the sky torn polythene, flapping

  how long

  since Jeremy Wren went into the earth

  like a seed potato

  no

  like a sunflower seed

  no

  like a seed potato

  livid-skinned, with unseeing eyes

  and hair-sprouts

  Jackself has three lines of a song

  that aren’t even three

  because one’s a repeat

  sing them anyhow, Jackself

  I see a robin redbreast in a blackthorn tree

  I see a robin redbreast in a blackthorn tree

  the seasons turn but all year round it’s wintertime in me

  The Misery

  Jackself has rent his jeans, is shrunk

  into an armchair in Lamanby
while the year wheels

  round and the days pass like light

  between the spokes

  ash under his eyes

  and his fingernails, sweepings for his meals,

  his face battered, sorrow-bright

  he needs a quest, thinks Jeremy Wren,

  who’s been watching Jackself from the coals

  of the stove

  across the fields, into a copse where a black pond lies

  staring, Wren drifts with the chimney smoke

  and settles like goose-down on the water

  wake

  up, Wren says, and the pond

  blinks

  to the door of Lamanby they come, tales

  of chewed off tractor tyres, blood clots

  in the milk, trampled corn, midnight snuffles

  at virgins’ bedroom windows, weird

  fires in unpeopled places, slime

  on doorbells and apple trees, headaches,

  power cuts, bankruptcies, skid marks

  on the seesaw and whipworms in the ale

  squeaky voices from the topside of the world

  tell them, but Jackself lifts his grief-mask

  a little to listen

  he’s at the keyhole

  for Jenny Reid’s testimony at the kitchen table

  she glimpsed the monster

  goat’s ears,

  chapped lips

  by the mothy glow of the village phone box

  there’s a tickle

  electric, thawing

  and Jackself’s deep blue

  indifference to brushing his teeth and wearing clean socks

  is dislodged in a slump like a snow crust

  from his weapon chest,

  the sheath knife, Eglantine

  from his wardrobe,

  his denim jacket, torch, tool belt, tin camping cup,

  rucksack, horned hat and Gore-Tex breastplate

  for six days and nights he tracks the fiend,

  dipping his cup at cattle troughs, gnawing

  the kernels from beech nuts, the marrow

  from earthworms, and at dusk

  on the seventh day he enters the copse

  fishhook twigs, deveining briars

  cold fuming from the leaf-mulch floor,

  then the knockerless basalt door

  of the pond on which he hammers

  twice with the bone hilt of Eglantine

  tarry bubbles

  break

  and from them, word by word, a voice like a fart

  asks

  who is this halfwit who brings his heart

  happy to my larder

  hey, Jackself cries,

  I bet you lick the undersides

  of stones, the black chassis of trucks in laybys,

  asking who am I

  deep in the pond, past shelf

  after grisly shelf, the monster is laired,

  listening

  how does he know,

  it thinks

  hey, Jackself cries,

  I bet you’re loved like a motorway

  service station litterbin

  yes, the monster says to itself,

  whoever you are, you understand

  hey, Jackself cries, I bet you sing

  with the wind through the rust-holes

  in the corrugated iron roof

  of a shed where no one goes

  I do,

  the monster says

  I do

  but that won’t stop me

  skinning you

  and up, up

  into the lightening

  green silence kicks

  the creature, dismembering hands

  clasped like a bride’s

  and Jackself is thrown back

  at its bursting through,

  the pond smashed miles

  into the night and falling

  as foul rain onto his face,

  and his body mounted and churned

  deeper into the slurry by the Misery’s

  writhing down on top of him

  with all its gristly weight

  but skin me, Jackself says,

  and you’d see I’m

  monster underneath

  and he rips out the Misery’s

  throat with his teeth

  Jackself’s Boast

  I am hero, a harrower of hellish meres

  and dragon haunts,

  demolisher of demons, overlord

  of ogres, wyverns

  I feel sick

  moans Jackself as he stumbles home

  in the dark, the Misery’s head heavy in his rucksack

  sawing it off

  he’d blunted his knife on the spinal cord

  then fouled his jeans and lost his footing

  in slicks of blood as he’d hauled

  at the flaps of hacked-open hide,

  his knife-hand so slippery he’d nicked

  the bowel and gagged at the reek

  that hosed out, steaming

  hard to feel heroic

  when you’re up to your armpits

  in dog meat, and what’s Jackself

  to show for it but a suit of gore

  that’s stiffened to him,

  a ratty, still wet skin

  and between his shoulder blades

  the weight of the dead

  face he’s sure is Jeremy Wren’s

  no

  if it was his, he’d be calling

  Jackself softshite

  and worse through the webbing

  but Wren is gone

  and here Jackself is slammed

  by his loss as he hasn’t been

  and starts bawling

  into his crusty, stinking hands

  by the time he’s under the outside light

  of Lamanby, Jackself’s shaken his heart

  clean and full of fresh night air,

  and on the doorstep

  he undoes his rucksack to find

  a rabbit’s head

  A Haunting

  Jackself is sitting on the wall

  outside Lamanby, watching the thingamybob, whatsit-

  called, rising

  it’s prettier than a suicide’s face,

  Jeremy Wren says, but there’s something about it

  of the death’s head

  shut up,

  Jackself says, you’re still

  full of shit

  me, Wren says

  you’re the one moping

  you shouldn’t even be here, should you,

  Jackself says

  aren’t there rules

  this is a haunting,

  Wren says, and it’s perfectly within the law,

  such as it is

  with his forefinger Wren is stroking a great

  moth that purrs

  like a cat

  have you, Jackself says quietly, met anyone

  do you think I’d be here gassing to you if Marilyn Monroe was upstairs

  Jesus, it’s like

  well, never mind

  like what, Jackself says

  just watch the pretty stone

  and forget it, Wren says

  they sit,

  gazing up at the unmentionable

  when I’m on the toilet, Jackself says, I imagine you

  watching me

  yes, Wren says, we all are

  me, Shakespeare,

  Einstein, Joan of Arc

  we all make sure to never miss

  a poo

  I think it’s giving me

  issues,

  Jackself says

  don’t talk to me about issues, Wren says,

  look at this old sheet I have to wear

  it’s then the moth

  wobbles into the dark air

  and up towards the unutterable thing

  you know I’ve got nothing

  on under it, Wren shouts,