Bone Pullover

  Knitting with bones isn’t easy but the pullover is coming along.   As it gets bigger and bigger the husband
seems to shrink.   I can’t go out in that, he thinks.  It’s made of bones.   She’s sewing it together.  She suggests
he could wear it to the club.  A lot of the boys wear Christmas jumpers during the holidays and she’s proud of
hers.   I will look like a shepherd he thinks to himself and decides he’ll wear it to the Boxing Day game.   The
occasion is Past versus Present and as is often the case the old-timers show they’ve still got it in them.   The
pullover of bones seems to inspire everybody.  Mid-way through the second half the pullover is spotted by an
immense murmuration of starlings.   Past players defeat the Present thanks to the intervention of a storm of black
snow.

Pet Microphone

 Like pets microphones too eventually come to resemble those who use them.   Even snugly held in its carrying
pouch the microphone will mentally try its moves.    Whipping the cord,  rocking side to side,  leaping to the lights
like a trout to catch a fly.   Microphones also experience melancholy.   Consigned to the second hand shop, still in
good condition, upholstered in foam – a formerly dynamic mic would be happier if it were taken home and used
occasionally for a community quiz rather than waste among bucolic figurines and commemorative mugs. 

Creature Cracker

 There are moments when we want to spill our guts.  This isn’t pleasant but there’s often a surprise.  No one
likes being torn in half or torn in pieces.   We confess that which for many reasons needed to be
concealed.  Perhaps it wasn’t our fault that our long lost body in the party cracker was tortured and locked
away.   What’s in there?  A riddle, a toy, a crown.  Not that bad after all.  Put them together and they merge into
something that can walk, talk and breathe again.  The improbable fragile creature that refused to be destroyed
now lies ruined on the floor.  We do what we like with scraps and as we scrunch the wrapping it reminds us of the
family fireworks that often comes with popping the spine and standing up to Mother.

Bakelite Television

 How television has changed.  Images framed by Bakelite portrayed another world.  Where the flat, wall-
mounted, LED screen will, the cathode ray would not show women’s breasts – unless the films were
anthropological.   For some it’s the Bakelite that attracts.  Perhaps there something about
polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride that’s more arousing than materials today.  That which is not available,
such as woollen binoculars or a bicycle made of ivory,  is more appealing than that which is.  On-screen
beheadings can be seen on television in December 2016.  Would the values of Bakelite make them go
away?  There’s even a channel devoted to endless nuclear explosions with blossoms of blood in praise of Red
Redeemer.

Sea Tweezers

 Swimming with tweezers  the underwater world becomes something not to behold but to grip.   At sea, on land
and in the air there is a war and the war is moving into space.  Tweezers cruise like turtles, deployed to pick up
satellites and hurl them from space through Earth’s atmosphere burning into the sea where aquatic tweezers
gather them up.  These satellites, hissing and charred, are as delicate as cinders and often crumble as the
tweezers pluck and squeeze.   Tweezers turn in shoals, foraging for hulks, occasionally becoming frenzied when
legions of aircraft and spacecraft fall and scream in sparkling storms.