Fourteen Howls

First howl begin like this: Say I wasn't even tired, but louder like faraway, I wasn't even tired- howl- so skinny, gaunt, a ghost, yes, louder, first howl ends like that.

Second howl is an image: Starlight scarred across the glass. Girl flinches against the light.

Third howl on tenth floor: Miserable juveniles stealing from refrigerators, fucking on freezing floors, still scared of dogs. A howl echoes at that height. Sleet or frost on window. If you fall from the window you become an angel.

Forth howl is American woman howl: 'If it wasn't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all.'

Fifth howl responds: 'Huh?' The rabbit scratches his head, slumps against the kerb, slurps his milkshake and gives the ground a good thump. The rabbit tells someone his mother died. Listen: the silver crackles around Cassiopeia, the smog groans through the trees, and gradually all the light is exhausted.

Sixth howl is a separate howl, it concerns everywhere I have never been: Borges' house, Auschwitz, a school in a devastated district of Detroit, that abandoned room full of children's things in Bristol, Cemeterie Saint (I forget) in Paris, a television studio, various relations' graves and the woods. Where are the woods exactly? And I have never been to Kent. This list would go on forever.

Seventh howl- the halfway through howl: Two wolves have a conversation near a supermarket.

-Have you ever tried to kill yourself?

- Yes.

- How?

- I know it was tranquillisers but I do not remember so I guess really I do not know but the records say that and when I woke up there was this growling, grumbling low in my stomach that really hurt and the postman came, no, the doctor came, and said, That is because of the pills. I nodded, I did not want to speak, I was sick of words. I'm so anxious about words.

Interference: The wolves didn't say anything, they can't. Well, they can but we don't understand. I saw a wolf at a zoo once and she did not howl at all. Her eyes were pinned like they were marbles. She didn't produce a breath. Perhaps it was a model I stroked and not a wolf at all.

Eighth howl is from a starving body: Not- I don't, I didn't- I practised fasting because it's howling- it's holy. I was never, um, diagnosed an anorexic girl, and I never said anything- but I felt there was a hole there- a big, black hole, and I thought starvation would block it. Plug it. I didn't- it... and now the whole is bigger than it was, before.

Ninth howl tells a lie: Certain swans are richer than the entire Danish royal family because swans have their own economy based on things children forget in the park.

Tenth howl takes MDMA: Look at that light falling. I don't want it to stop. Oh, there's another wave. Yes, yes. Shhh....

Eleventh howl from a mother: Please, come home, come home, come home.

Twelfth howl is silent and allows for peace between the calls and lets us observe the inclination and the glittering of our stars.

Thirteenth howl is from Robert Wyatt, 1990: 'There's a lot of words that don't exist yet and I can't be bothered to wait for them to exist.'

Last howl end like this: Children always play angels. Are we anxious from them to die? So we pretend they're dead, or faraway, archived in the sky, at work in the huge black void, the great, cold night? All angels once were drowned girls, overdosing Ophelias- teenage suicides- miserable, brittle boys who faded out in cold bathrooms or stopped, asleep, and felt their voices disappearing in the dark, or exhausted their veins in flats, leapt from roofs, sick from paint, starved, collapsed, crashed, cracked... yes, last howls late at night. End like that.

Rabbit and Bear on a Rock by Paul McCarthy and frontispiece to Alice's Adventures In Wonderland by John Tenniel. No copyright infringement intended.