I recently found an old notebook down the back of my bedside cabinet drawers, from when my son was very young, of scrawlings I made in the middle of the night when I was exhausted from cuddling him to sleep. I wanted to exploit my tiredness by indulging in some automatic writing, and these are the snippets I wrote down (although it was in the dark and not every word was always legible so I made a best guess).

My technique was just to scribble what came into my head in these periods of extreme tiredness. I often couldn’t remember even doing it, which all added to the feeling that these words were coming from somewhere either deep inside, or far outside, of me.

I had tried automatic writing before a long time ago, with one phrase starting ‘In the valley of monsters’, which very nearly became the name of this blog, but in the end ‘cabinet’ was a better fit than ‘valley’.

Anyway, it probably all sounds pretty pretentious, but you know, my subconscious clearly has a lot to say. It’s just a shame that it doesn’t make all that much sense. I quite like how it all flows, even though each line or paragraph was from a separate attempt. It sort of all comes together like a poem that’s so clever no one will ever really understand it.

Anyway, maybe it’s not my subconscious, maybe I’m channelling some spiritual being or the ghost of a long dead poet. I’ll let you decide…

What waters are lapping? Are they colours?

See the tall spires of the ships on the black waters.

Slightly towards and then away away. This is the rain.

At the second night, when all that is left is the bleeding scotch of life’s misery.

The background scream is original sin. Time flows around, it moves like the sea.

A shrivelled nut – pathetic. No one can see it because it’s shameful. You just scratch at the door. Try to silence it.

Sitting by the fire an old man, his face burning off.

One eye closed.

Moon descends behind a woman’s shoulder, rises the next day from her thigh.

A hag sits in a black hole, looks up.

Slowly the man insane forbids the cold hour. Powerless in the dark. Cards of mottled everywhere. Found in an old place all the worrying of my youth, a collection of dank and dirty little feathers stuffed into a pixie skin. What else lurks among the reeds on the edge of reason.

Curtailed the snakeskin man sells his soul to the various carnivorous do gooders out there in the wilderness following their sacred orange ways.

Perhaps in the green glow of the wary night only the solitary person in their slip can slide between the sheets of the night. The song of Merry gods can be heard rolling through the hills and over the seas.