I keep my leatherhead oiled and well-fed.
If you listen carefully you can hear it
muttering and singing to itself
in the little pouch I keep at my belt,
nibbling at fish-heads and bits of old bone,
reclining in the rib-cage of an otter
it thinks is a throne.
My leatherhead sometimes keeps me awake at night,
grumbling and mourning the succulent young heads
it knew in its youth: blonde, brunette
and red-haired heads still attached to bodies
and given to walking the banks of rivers,
visiting theatres and fun-fairs,
climbing stairs and chattering gaily of this and that
without need or recourse to being carried hither and thither
by an amnesiac giant in the ghastly Land of Shadows.
Sometimes when I look in a mirror
I see my leatherhead grining back at me
and I wonder how it escaped from its sack.
quickly I put it back before anybody sees it,
all the while pretending not to hear
the curses and groans of my fellow giant's
leatherheads swinging from their belted hips,
pouting, poking out shrunken ineffectual tongues,
screaming from their thin and fleshless lips...
Baring our teeth at each other
I greet my fellow amnesiac brethren
as we search the arid stones and boulders
of dry water-courses for their last remaining
drops of water to secretly annoint
our leatherheads in the moonlight.
Oh what a dreadful sight it would surely be
if we were still even half alive enough to see it
- but we follow our ancient practices and rituals by instinct:
our eyes and other senses having long since atrophied
beneath the too-bright glare of the sun
and the scouring wind that screams our names.
Even to ourselves we deny the existence of our leatherheads
but it is, of course, a lie we tell ourselves in vain.
In truth, it is our leatherheads who are
the true inheritors of the once green world,
a world now quite as barren and dessicated
as our seperate souls, the mummified heads that own us.
If you listen carefully you can hear it
muttering and singing to itself
in the little pouch I keep at my belt,
nibbling at fish-heads and bits of old bone,
reclining in the rib-cage of an otter
it thinks is a throne.
My leatherhead sometimes keeps me awake at night,
grumbling and mourning the succulent young heads
it knew in its youth: blonde, brunette
and red-haired heads still attached to bodies
and given to walking the banks of rivers,
visiting theatres and fun-fairs,
climbing stairs and chattering gaily of this and that
without need or recourse to being carried hither and thither
by an amnesiac giant in the ghastly Land of Shadows.
Sometimes when I look in a mirror
I see my leatherhead grining back at me
and I wonder how it escaped from its sack.
quickly I put it back before anybody sees it,
all the while pretending not to hear
the curses and groans of my fellow giant's
leatherheads swinging from their belted hips,
pouting, poking out shrunken ineffectual tongues,
screaming from their thin and fleshless lips...
Baring our teeth at each other
I greet my fellow amnesiac brethren
as we search the arid stones and boulders
of dry water-courses for their last remaining
drops of water to secretly annoint
our leatherheads in the moonlight.
Oh what a dreadful sight it would surely be
if we were still even half alive enough to see it
- but we follow our ancient practices and rituals by instinct:
our eyes and other senses having long since atrophied
beneath the too-bright glare of the sun
and the scouring wind that screams our names.
Even to ourselves we deny the existence of our leatherheads
but it is, of course, a lie we tell ourselves in vain.
In truth, it is our leatherheads who are
the true inheritors of the once green world,
a world now quite as barren and dessicated
as our seperate souls, the mummified heads that own us.
