Not The Furniture Game His hair was a crow fished out of a blocked chimney and his eyes were boiled eggs with the tops hammered in and his blink was a cat flap and his teeth were bluestones or the Easter Island statues and his bite was a perfect horseshoe. His nostrils were both barrels of a shotgun, loaded. And his mouth was an oil exploration project gone bankrupt and his smile was a caesarean section and his tongue was an iguanodon and his whistle was a laser beam and his laugh was a bad case of kennel cough. He coughed, and it was malt whisky. And his headaches were Arson in Her Majesty's Dockyards and his arguments were outboard motors strangled with fishing line and his neck was a bandstand and his Adam's apple was a ball cock and his arms were milk running off from a broken bottle. His elbows were boomerangs or pinking shears. And his wrists were ankles and his handshakes were puff adders in the bran tub and his fingers were astronauts found dead in their spacesuits and the palms of his hands were action paintings and both thumbs were blue touchpaper. And his shadow was an opencast mine. And his dog was a sentry box with no-one in it and his heart was a first world war grenade discovered by children and his nipples were timers for incendary devices and his shoulder blades were two butchers at the meat cleaving competition and his belly button was the Falkland Islands and his private parts were the Bermuda triangle and his backside was a priest hole and his stretchmarks were the tide going out. The whole system of his blood was Dutch elm disease. And his legs were depth charges and his knees were fossils waiting to be tapped open and his ligaments were rifles wrapped in oilcloth under the floorboards and his calves were the undercarriages of Shackletons. The balls of his feet were where meteorites had landed and his toes were a nest of mice under the lawn mower. And his footprints were Vietnam and his promises were hot air balloons floating off over the trees and his one-liners were footballs through other peoples' windows and his grin was the Great Wall of China as seen from the moon and the last time they talked, it was apartheid. She was a chair, tipped over backwards with his donkey jacket on her shoulders. They told him, and his face was a hole where the ice had not been thick enough to hold her.

Taken from Zoom!

From the long lifeless mud of the River Colne...

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