created by hand
overflowing with colour
— this child’s picture book
tells of how a prostitute
advertised sex and found love
Actually, although the picture book in my dream did show a prostitute on one particular page (and I was hunting for that page) — there was nothing to indicate it was a child’s picture book other than my waking prejudice — that a story told entirely in pictures must be a child’s book. But once the incongruence between ‘prostitute’ and ‘child’s story book’ had occurred to me, it became the subject of the poem. Two things to be clear about. Firstly the pictures themselves had a compelling quality of self-exploration, which I suspect probably derives from my familiarity with the work of Charlotte Salomon. Secondly, in the dream I saw myself both as customer and lover for the prostitute, and this fusion of roles derives from real life, when I spent twelve months or so in the late eighties wooing (unsuccessfully) a stripper whom I knew only on stage, because I was a regular member of her audience. It’s an odd fact that, in all the many drafts of my autobiography and in all the many verbal testimonies I have delivered telling the story of my ‘mental illness’ — somehow this stripper/prostitute/sex worker whom I imagined I could love, has so far managed to stay out of the picture completely. Considering her huge impact on my life this is very curious. Maybe in some misguided way I am trying to shield my own audience as though they were children.
sciencegoodmagicbetter 