Tweed's junk need was about to totally overwhelm him so he didn’t bother boiling the works. Then a thought flashed into his squirming brain: "I’ll mix the Djinn Oil with the Blue Messiah’s junk."

Black magic, extortion, sorcery, blackmail, trickery, seducing rich men and women in order to obtain money or favors were all areas in which Aicha displayed certain talents and natural-born abilities. But cooking and the preparation of food remained incomprehensible mysteries to her.

There in the darkness, sitting on the tomb of Sir Reginald Lister, was Paul Bowles, in the form of yet another spiritual entity, puffing on a black and gold cigarette holder from which protruded a Benson & Hedges cigarette in which the tobacco had been replaced by some high-grade kif.

Zodelia tipped the basket of potatoes into the sink to start washing and peeling them for the evening dinner. Out of the bottom of the basket there tumbled a slithering knot of huge black centipedes, spilling out of the sink and dropping onto the floor.

“So, Aicha,” Burroughs said, sighting along the tiny barrel of the pearl-handled derringer. “I assume you’re familiar with the story of William Tell?”

He unwrapped the parcel and Burroughs and Dean and Brunhilde saw the papier-mâché replicas of Dean’s two-piece tombstone. “What the fuck?” Burroughs said as the three of them watched.

In the blue-aired seaman’s mission/ the TV is hotwired and pulsing./ In the blaze of the marquee outside/ her fist opens slowly/ like a fleshy pink flower

Language/ is not only made of words, it requires/ further presence or one of a white-/ blooming winter-head of snow.

At ten someone calls and // talks about death, and you make a / joke about the film projectionist with cancer / who’s been with the company for 25 / years, and whoever else is in the room // laughs as well. Who goes through the rooms, / unfamiliar, and remembers the lines / from the song: Green leaves, how are / you alone? What sort of damned lonely // business letters are being written.