Lost beginnings 2, the middle

I am seven-sixteenths Cherokee.
None of these sixteenths is inside my body.

I don't have the time to be as obsessive as I would like to be.

It is only by not being able to do anything right
that I have ever got anything done.

I am a Time Peasant (if only I could remember
the past or indeed the future in any detail).

I am relieved to know I am not a Golem.
Nor, apparently, am I the King of the Echo People.
(Though this may go to tribunal.)

The great thing about nowadays is that you can talk to yourself
in public and everyone thinks you're on the phone.

I've got a fever and the only prescription is COWBELL.

I used to shave elephants.
Elements. I used to shave elements.

My favourite was fire, because
the red hot stubble was immediately ash.

With water I only got that brown foam
that washes up on non-Blue Flag beaches.

Air didn't care, but I only took
its oxygen molecules.

If you shave earth you get chocolate.

I'm totally mired
in that portion of the soundscape occupied
by non-human creatures.

The long-maned stumpy horses eating grass
between the yellow mini-pylons
arranged in a grid before runways.

An old schoolfriend with a moustache
where his teeth should be (that's right,
growing from the otherwise empty ridge of his gum).

Men who buy the model aeroplanes
of the planes they are sitting on
in the hope of completing their collection
(of model aeroplanes of the planes they have sat upon).

Jelly Ibrahim! Hands of Shine!
Babies that double up as cameras and MP3 players!
Thomas Jones: a great painter of Mediterranean walls!
Captain Crinkle: imitation without an original!