NICK POP’S BRAIN

by Penny Goring

NICK POP LIVES in Moody Mansions with his super-muddle wife called Susie Bitch who wears shoes I could never walk in. They are trendier than thou – arty swankers – they breathe rarefied air, thin and heady – stuck up on the hill, where I am never invited.

NICK POP STRIDES his steep street, chunky heels clipping the paving stones, black coat flapping its wings, on his way to somewhere fast, always ignoring me.

If I were an operatic aria I’d lift his lanky body from his Moody rooms, fly him way up high, giddy on my agitata, whisk him in giggling laps around that seaside moon, land him and his little wriggling legs safe on my bulging belly, and – O, the declarations I’d demand, and – O, the saucy ditties he’d surrender – under the threat of certain death by suffocation from my monstrous breasts. His words would go: ”Squeak! Squeak! PROMISCUITY! I like this game, it’s got PROMISE, SKEW and ITTY”.

Tip-toe past his shaggy topiary, pussyfoot his glossy tulips, skulk his twisty path – loiter for a while outside his windows, this is what you’ll see:

NICK POP IN HIS PANTRY.

Buffing his nails, sipping a brew, knitting a golden balaclava.

NICK POP IN HIS ANTECHAMBERS.

Starring in an arthouse movie – it was listed for the Turner Prize – rehearsing the role of a ruined man, fluffing his lines in the dark – oops – sound of a muffled fart.

NICK POP IN HIS PARLOUR.

Grumpy with a grovelling journalist: ”Words endure. Flesh does not”.

NICK POP IN HIS BROODY BOUDOIR.

Hunching over his upright in a storm of scribbled sheets – the ceiling descends, his face turns red – wrestling a reluctant chorus.

Across the grinding party years I mirrored his yearning journey – dissolved under his sedated tongue, towered beside him on stage, clucked in morbid alcoves, blasted desperate fanfares, trembled on his wasted flesh, fell off bar stools, stroked dead hair, pulled sweat blankets closer.

In the Unnatural Mystery Museum, hidden by the bones of the dinosaur, I witnessed the floating of Susie’s feet as he waltzed her around the mosaic floors to meet the approaching night, where they shimmered in the dust of a glamorised light, far away from me.

One special one. There’s always one special one – she’ll dance until he’s written her song.

If I were a PJ Harpy, if I were a Wily Minogue, if I were a Potty Borland, if I were that much in vogue, he’d get down on all fours for me and I’d ride on his back, yelling: ”TALLY-HO!” and ”BAD PIPS!” – spurring him on, all the way.

Tucked in my bra, there’s a rhyme I scrawled on a shopping list, reminding him about me:

I am the hallucinating kitten climbing your red flocked walls

Let me in. There’s a place for me in your velvet smalls

I am the hysteria rising in your empty halls

Let me in. There’s a space for me between your silken balls

God is GRAVY GRANULES

God is in the SOAP

I move with the slowest dirge throbbing in your belly

Let me in. I’ll reveal myself on the screen of your burning telly

God has left the RAZORS

I fished it out and lobbed it in his Moody window, aiming for his red right hand. As he read my words he felt such despair his little finger broke in three places.

NICK POP’S BRAIN caught my drift. I seep from his pores.

If I were an irritating jingle I’d lodge myself in his mountain range of enormous special features. I’d abseil from his receding hairline to the tip of his roaming nose, and with my stinky feet wedged firmly, one up each of his nostrils, I’d perch my pert bum on his wide flapping lips and bounce with his words as they boomed, trying to shoot me down: ”Bang! Bang! PECULIAR! I’ll PECK YOU, pesky LIAR”.

WHAT DOES NICK POP DO with his money?

It flows through his fingers that lifted my lid, only to slam it shut.

WHAT DOES NICK POP DO with his fingers?

Those ten soft digits got caught in the sharpened teeth of Susie’s slitty mouth and her slitty slit. Slit her throat. Slit my wrists. Don’t you want me, baby?

Look out your big window, Nick – I’m the terrible beautiful outsider being raced past your Mansions in an ambulance. I am the emergency and I need intensive care.

Terrible things happen and there is nothing he can do.

WHAT DOES NICK POP DO?

Terrible things happen and he does nothing.

HE TOLLS THE CRAZY BELL.

Nick Pop climbs three hundred steps to the top of his tallest spire and he tolls the crazy bell, for the

dark-eyed – green-eyed – boss-eyed – blue-eyed

long-haired – black-haired

girl

who began in his bed

on scattered blossom

in his arms – in his hand – in his head

only to end

inside – outside

bumped off – stranded

six feet under – on the roof

in the gutter – bucket – open grave

going somewhere – anywhere – nowhere fast

in his gorgeously overgrown garden.

NICK POP WROTE MY SONG. Now he’s manacled to the song. It never rests, it lives and breathes – bold and bristling menace shapes between his lolly legs. Here at Moody Mansions, no-one shuts the front door, it lets in the solid night and Nick Pop howls his guts out.