Infinitives I shall split for you.

Apostrophes I shall omit for you.

The mistakes I make are just for you,

Each greased-up grammar slip.

Let me feel the hardness of your edit,

Your disapproving nib.

Participles will be dangled,

Accents wrongly angled.

So lay me like a transitive verb.

Drip your ink upon my blotter.

Bore me rigid with your rules.

Fix me good and proper.

The erotic dreams have returned.

I had misused a semi-colon. Liz kept me behind for corrective therapy. I was to go through a set of uncorrected proofs for a new book in the Fifty Shades of Grey series and for every mistake I found, she’d remove an item of clothing, and for each one I missed she’d put on an item of clothing. I woke up just as she was putting on a third cardigan over her blouse, tank top and pullover.

Wednesday May 2nd

In my lunch hour, I quickly whizzed over to the bookshop to get my copy of Martin Amis’s Money for this month’s book group. I left, two hours later, having stocked up on a few other books that might come in handy one day: Oxford Modern English Grammar; The Penguin Guide to Punctuation; Kingsley Amis’ The King’s English; Lynn Truss’ Eats, Shoots and Leaves; the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language; and Copyediting & Proofreading for Dummies.

Thursday May 3rd

It feels less like a reorganisation here than a Stalinist purge. A leaving card circulates on average every thirty minutes. It takes me forty-five minutes to write a message in one; by the afternoon, my in-tray was creaking under the strain. The comments within are accompanied by such a curious vocabulary, one far more suited to a book of remembrance: ‘You will never be forgotten’, ‘No longer by my side but always in my heart’, ‘You go to a better place’.

It seemed fitting that I should return home to find an invitation to a tarot reading next Thursday from Mrs McNulty. I can already guess what card she has lined up for me.

Friday May 4th

Star Wars Love Poem

Compared to you, the Diathim,*

beautiful winged sentients of Millius Prime,†

are worth not a druggat‡ or dime.

I would climb

the Gallo Mountains of Naboo§

without crampons to be with you.

If only there were

a Mon Calamari cruiser¶ at my service.

I would explore your surface,

gliding over

your two moons of Tattooine**

before plateauing

to lose myself

in the undergrowth of splendour

that is your Forest of Endor.††

I feel the throb of my lightsaber.

This poem is unlikely to be published

by Faber and Faber.

*    Had to look that up.

†    Had to look that up, too.

‡    A unit of currency that I looked up.

§    A place in one of the Star Wars films.

¶    I looked this up but still not sure what it means.

**    Metaphor for breasts.

††    Forest of Endor.