from ‘Inside David Lynch’s Hair’

~ And Other Poems

            Vik Shirley

Squall

There is a strong gale blowing in David Lynch’s hair. I am trying to make my way through his tresses, but it is near-on impossible and there is freezing cod sea spray blowing in my face. Up ahead I see a lighthouse and its keeper beckoning me from its balcony. When I eventually get there, I need a password to get in. I try BOB but that isn’t right and then LOG and that isn’t right either, so I try DIANE, COOPER and ONE-EYED JACKS, but still no joy. At that point the keeper pops out a side entrance and says, “Look, you need to think beyond the TV series otherwise we’re going to be here all day”. The penny drops, I enter DICK LAURENT IS DEAD into the keypad and get right in. Inside is the Luna Lounge and the lighthouse keeper is giving a poetic lecture. As an aside he reveals that he had been born a fish from the waist down, hence him needing to be close to water. The many fish in the audience start clapping with their fins and we are now in a silent movie. The caption tells us the show has been cancelled due to bad weather and the whole scene gets drawn with the tide back into the sea.

Vik Shirley is a poet from Bristol living in Edinburgh. Her publications include Some Deer (Broken Sleep, 2024), Strangers Wave (zimZalla, 2023) and Corpses (Sublunary Editions, 2020). In 2025, her pamphlet, Persona Digitalia, was selected for the inaugural Photoworks P5 photo poetry series. She has a PhD in Dark Humour and the Surreal in Poetry.