I built a creature out of scraps / inner tubes, kitchen taps / a bucket for a head / (I mean, sure – I had a corpse I could have used instead / with slick black hair & moustache / but I thought it’d make it way too flash / so fuck it / I went with the bucket) / for the brain I scavenged some window cleaner’s spongies / hemispherically linked by courier bungees / marinated overnight / by the light / of a box set of Walking Dead / (I wore headphones and read instead) / it didn’t really need a heart / I mean, for a start / there wasn’t any blood as such / just a weeny sump / in his trunks / that didn’t need pumping all that much / so to enliven / the mediastinum / and give some zhuzh to the void inside him / I hung my dad’s old pocket watch / a watch he never used that much / but kept it hidden away because / he thought it was worth much more than it was / but I think even he would agree / it twirled and chimed in the cavity / beautifully

at last it was time for the creature’s innervation / the moment of truth for my monstrous creation / so chuckling in a manner I thought befitting / for the cliche horror I was committing / I snapped two crocodile clips on his bolts / and shot him through with a thousand volts / he juddered, he woke / he opened his eyes and spoke / what the fuck, he said / smacking his bucket head / with a terrible clanging / my sponge is banging / what the fuck did I DO last night? / and then flexing his grabbers left and right / he swung his plunger feet off the trolley / and came to a sitting position slowly / and suddenly saw me standing there / in my goggles and gauntlets and frazzled hair / jesus christ he said you’re worse than me / any chance of a cuppa tea? /

we were together two years / before the cracks appeared / I suppose I was introverted, happiest in the laboratory / he was extroverted, sexually exploratory / polyamory / HE suggested / even though I protested / I didn’t think I could share / he didn’t care / slicking back his wire brush hair / welding spats on his suckers / striding out for a sordid tryst with his truckers / I have to admit, I fell to pieces / while he indulged his sexual caprices / he lost the watch in a casino / as far as we know / my dad’s half-hunter / gracing the waistcoat of some sleazeball punter / I mean – is that what my Dad deserved? / the treasure he’d so lovingly preserved? / and in the end it was the watch that did for us / calling time on the hurt and mistrust / and after a lot of hard words and crashing about / he finally moved out / a single, oily rag / trailing from his overnight bag / a slam of the door, a fling of a wrench / and me, sobbing on the laboratory bench

five years later /

I’ve built myself a different kind of appliance / we sit on the sofa in comfortable silence / plug in hand in regulatory compliance / it’s a cosy little domestic scene / and I’m happier now than I’ve ever been / and the creature? / he’s a star presenter / on a reality show about mad inventors / the contestants get a box of junk / and have to make a sexy lunk / while the creature hams it up and leers / fondling all the cogs and gears / (and y’know? I’d be the first to admit / he was always good at that flirty shit) / and I’ll sometimes binge-watch back to back / and wonder how we drifted off track / how he lost his heart / and mine was diminished / and our love affair was fatally finished / despite all the levers and lightning shocks / the plutonium grains in a lead-lined box / the scribbled plans, the body maps / the rapturous rise, the thunderous collapse / and for WHAT? / some bucket-headed creature, lumbering home at dawn / monstrously drunk on the castle lawn?

I mean – fuck that