It was in a late-night bar

after some rapturous acclaim

that I asked the academic poet

if he was ever able to relax

he told that his imagination was

‘the brainchild of strangeness’

and added that his favourite bird was a parrot,

which I found typical of his tangential mind.

I pointed out that his exit music

was Psycho Killer by Talking Heads

and that his obsession with murderers

was something of a concern

he told me not to worry because

only today he had read in the paper

that some woman in Mexico City

had been strangled by her own snake

‘non-sequitur,’ I cried, which was

in itself an attempt at social engagement

‘you’re right,’ he said, ‘I’m bored with my voice’

so instead he directed me to e.e.cummings

swiftly adding that when he (the academic) writes,

he uses different parts of his brain

which allows him to produce results

like an abstract painting with added language.

I asked him whether that was a defence,

rather like a device to avoid judgement

then he reached into his jacket pocket

and produced a 3D map of his own mind,

he pointed and said, ‘look, it’s as if there’s some

weird obsession with the Old Testament’

which I suggested was something that

did not hang together in an ideological thread

he said, ‘okay, well maybe that’s just bogus,’

which actually also made no sense at all.

‘Ah, such are the tribulations of

the gifted,’ he shrugged himself into his corduroy jacket.

‘I’m no worse than a Dutch artist

who paints skull figures,’ he said.

After that he disappeared from the club

to the beat of revisionist hardcore acid music

I got home that evening to discover

that my bed had been set on fire.

By Henrik LeGrand

From: United Kingdom