Struwwelpeter


I’ve always known I’m jagged –
my shoulders razor thin
Swiss army knives instead of hands
sandpaper for skin

and when I turn around
my strangly barbed-wire hair
lacerates the virtuous
or vicious standing near.

I shred my friends to tatters
by giving them a hug
while the few who go to bed with me
need surgery to shrug

off the painful memory
(it doesn’t happen twice) –
a night of giving everything
slice by salty slice.

It’s not easy to be living
at the cutting edge
though cautious neighbours hire me
to clip their garden hedge

but worst of all is feeling
each spiked thought in my head
scrape the inside of my skull
like a knife scrunching to spread

butter straight out of the fridge
on thin, dry breakfast toast,
or the rasp of chalk on blackboard,
or the creak of an old signpost

or the scratch on a moonlit window
of the nails of a ghost.


Tom Vaughan


If you have any thoughts on this poem,  Tom Vaughan would be pleased to hear them.