It's alive! It's alive!
So, as we are dealing with the topic of Freaks this week, I thought I'd take the opportunity to share a guilty pleasure of mine. I am absolutely mad about horror movies. From the days of my Dad scaring the bejesus out of me with Nightmare on Elm Street as a kid, to me making my girlfriend sit through the awful remake fifteen years later, horror movies have a special place in my heart.
So it is with great pleasure that I have for you six exclusive, original poems written by some of the most infamous psychopaths of hollywood history.
Do not read if you are uncomfortable with the macabre...
Dr. Heiter (Human Centipede)
As you asked, OK, I don’t usually
do these but my interest has been piqued
my all time dream-team centipede would be,
um, well I have two, am I allowed two?
Well three, but the last one is more
of a metaphysical idea… follow me.
So firstly, I would have done anything
to sew up the Hilton twins with their Dad…
their Dad would be in the middle
and there would be a constant screening
of ‘The Simple Life’. Paris at the front…
make her eat Tinkerbell, shit it in Daddy’s mouth.
For a back-up splice though, I’d go highbrow,
(you didn’t say they had to be alive)
I’d put Chaucer in the middle spouting
middle-English gobbledygook then wedge
the bard in as the keystone, Eliot at the back…
see if he shits out the Burial of the Dead.
Honestly though, when I first had this idea
(and they say you should always go with your instincts)
I thought it would seem the perfect opportunity
to knit together an Englishman, an Irishman
and a Scotsman… after months of training them
to crawl round, crapping into eachother, I’d
march ‘em into bars to a thunder of laughs.
Annie Wilkes – Misery
with such a venomous cliché but… kids today!
Do they even know what creative writing is?
I’ll tell you, workshops in the old days used to
get the best out of you… and it wasn’t through
pussy-footing around and sparing feelings.
Did I tell you what it was like
to be in one of Ezra Pound’s workshops?
He was once mildly irked at what he saw as
a forced rhyme I’d made between ‘played’
and ‘employed’. Do you know what he did?
He punched me square in the vagina.
He wasn’t even angry that time… he just
wanted me to learn.
And so suddenly Sheldon’s offended
on account of his shattered ankles
after he let himself destroy the one
good thing he’d ever been capable of?
I tell you if he’d been in one of Wilmot’s workshops
he’d have lost his whole scrotum in a second.
But he has the gall to moan at the role I played
at keeping his mistress Misery employed.
Norman Bates – Psycho
When did they stop selling candy
in those nifty brown paper bags?
I loved the kooky crinkle of the things
all creasey round the sweeties.
You know it’s so hard not to laugh
when a car flumps into a swamp
and the air pockets plop out the trunk
like a sneaky night fart.
It’s funny how many things seem
like breaking wind to me, I don’t
think I’m obsessed, I’m not an obsessive
type of fella. But it gets me every time
I make the first incision to
taxidermy a bird (always at the anus)
they let out a kind of
(oh for god sake I’m giggling)
Crane was the same,
just before I wrapped her up
I pressed a foot down on her belly
and ‘woop’, there it came alright.
Mother would be livid if she knew
what fun I have without her.
Leatherface – Texas Chain Saw Massacre
It’s not hard to stay on my good side
I’ll give you a clue.
Are you paying attention?
KEEP OUT OF MY FUCKING HOUSE.
Does that seem unreasonable to you?
You’re sat at home… life is not great
you haven’t worked in several years
and making ends meet is not smooth sailing
when all of a sudden a complete stranger
comes into your house, demanding
the use of your telephone?
I’m not an unreasonable bloke,
I do work in the community,
I like craftwork and knitting.
Maybe if the world wasn’t always
barging in on me, making demands,
I’d feel comfortable in my own skin.
Freddy Krueger – A Nightmare on Elm Street
If you’d just let me out for a month
I promise I’ll put to work the nightmares
you’ve been waiting for.
I’ll chase down George Bush as a
suicide-bombing pretzel made of oil.
I’ll shapeshift into a chunk of ear cartilage
and sexually molest Mike Tyson.
I’ll crash into Newscorp headquarters
in a plane with only left wings.
I’ll rip the skin off racists
and feed it to the greedy.
I’ll tie down Mark Zuckerberg
and ‘like’ him into oblivion.
Just please, let me out to play again
I promise I’m nice now.
Pinhead - Hellraiser
The Lament Configuration
is rubbed and I rise
plucking my punctured pillow
at the perforations.
Walls widen when I squint,
reluctant as I am
to be beckoned by a thumbed button.
Not yet seen in a century,
still very much hell’s brat -
still made to sit with the Freddies
and Michaels and Jasons
in the canteen. Still waiting
for that big account before Leviathan
allows me into the executive lounge
with Vlad, Jekyll, the Ripper;
real closers.
Am I arrogant to expect promotion?
When was Leatherface fast-tracked?
He didn’t even go to university.
I am getting chatty in my adolescence,
I am formulated but I do not sprawl
like the inane knife-wielding doll.
Sat struggling for small-talk
beside a teen in a Scream-mask
at the Christmas party I wonder
- oh lots of things.
You wouldn’t understand.
Phil Brown
Poetry Editor
