I wake up as a hair.  I wake up as a tree frog.  I wake up as a vintage postcard.  I wake up as underpants.

            My waistband is too tight for her—I dig into her hips.  I sit in the washing machine all day and all night.  I prefer being on than being off.

            I wake up as a bowling ball, I wake up as a tumour.  I eat the cells around me to make more space for me.  I eat it all up, I eat eat eat—it’s a space-stealing game.  I am the centre of a black hole.

            I wake up as calligraphy, I wake up as a beer.  A woman is drinking me from my bottle; I swirl and gurgle and work my magic inside.  I mix with the others and take the chute to the pool.

            I wake up as a man, I wake up as a woman.  There’s an aching inside me that even he can’t touch, not for all the tea in China.  Round and round the hours go, and what do I have to show?  I remember doing cartwheels in the garden, and the things my father said.  I wake up as a woman, I wake up as a man.  I live in a cage of my own construction, but I’ve lost the key.  There’s a woman out there—I’m trying to pull her through the bars, but her shoulder keeps popping out at the socket.

            I wake up in Berlin, I wake up in Seoul.  It’s a heady spring, and yellow dust swirls in the sky like the particles of dreams.  It gathers on the windscreen wipers and in the guttering of sliding doors.  Take my hand, I say to her, and we skip through the streets.  We are infinite, we are immortal, we are candy-covered twin-kiss strawberry centres, you wouldn’t believe the jokes we tell!  We ask such questions of each other, such silly questions, but, you know.  I wake up in Seoul, I wake up in Bangkok.  We used to live in that apartment complex, but these days it’s mostly frequented by cats.

            I wake up in my future, I wake up in my past.  I have a joke I tell to the adults, go on tell us your joke they say, and I do, I say what did the wallpaper say to the wall?  I don’t know, they say, what did the wallpaper say to the wall?  I’ve got you covered, and they give the obligatory laughs.  I have a cloth that is my favourite cloth, I squeeze it on car journeys.  I wake up in my future midway through an evening laze-in.  The single duvet doesn’t cover us both well, but we make do.  We are yet to implode.  Our foreheads touch.

            I wake up as a forehead, I wake up as a capillary.  My walls are one cell thick, and within a stripe of blood.  A nail could tear, a cough could rupture, and out it would come.  I am a miracle, really, when you think about me, although you never do.  I wake up as an ear.  You wouldn’t believe the things I hear. 

            I am kissed.  I am cold.  Hairs grow from me until they’re tweezered.  All I want is to be covered in winter, and stroked tenderly on the sofa.  That’s all I need to make me truly happy.  I’ll produce just the right amount of wax, I promise.  I’ll never tell of all the things I hear.  Never.  I’ll just store them quietly in brain, to be dredged up when necessary, or to appear in the fringes of dreams.  Every dreamscape needs a full well.

            I wake up as sexual lubricant, I wake up as toffee.  I wake up as a stream of coffee, on its way to the cup.  I find extraordinary comfort in the prospect of being drunk, and in the finite borders of cup.  I like being in cup, I like being in mouth.  I am made to be securely enclosed.  Enclose me, and I will make your heartbeat race.

            I wake up in Brighton.  I used to live here, a long time ago.  I construct a machine that allows me to see where all the women I’ve ever slept with are right now, and what they’re up to.  I include a function that allows me to see us before we met too, the moments when we were in the same shop or bar or cinema, completely oblivious of each other, or the times afterwards when we were just around the corner from each other, or when we’d been in bedrooms no more than a few streets away, schtupping some other person’s genitals, and if those people had been in the same shop or bar or cinema completely oblivious of each other.  It’s a hell of a machine.  I soak it all up, then destroy the machine and its blueprints.  No-one need know it ever existed.

            I wake up as underpants.  I can’t see what she’s doing, but I know I’m not on.  I prefer being on than being off.

            I wake up in Spain.  The open window bears the sun, and the scent of the lemon grove below.  Someone’s having a fiesta, and I’m invited!  I’ve heard my wife might be there, in the crowd.  Vamonos, guapito!  Live the life, no?  I quickly invent a machine that punishes reminiscence by administering a sizeable electric shock, win the nobel prize, and head out to the fiesta.  This new machine is going to make me a billionaire, I tell her.  She has a forehead, and ears, and eyes like pomegranate seeds.  Let me show you how to live, she doesn’t say.  No, she doesn’t say that.  We’re not looking for that.  What do you take me for?  This isn’t that kind of story.  She takes me to the seashore and I find my sense of purpose.  I’m not afraid to take charge, I tell her.  I remove the machine, and offer it to her.  She looks at it curiously.  I decide not to tell her what it does, but to let her see for herself. 

            I wake up as an incident, I wake up as a dream.  I am the path I follow.  Action is character.  I am defined by the choices I make under pressure.  I begin work on a machine to prevent this from being true.