Mr Punch Dreams, my 13-part junk poem with illustrations by Maxim Peter Griffin, is nearly ready for publication.

To give you a little flavour of the book, here’s part two.

2. A glass eye, with a thin crack running across the pupil

It’s raining inside Mr Punch’s head.
His bedroom curtains are red rags.
Judy is somewhere out at sea,
on a ship with hand-shaped sails.

Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside!

There’s one wife for you! What a precious darling creature! She go to fetch our child.

Mr Punch fears Jack Ketch’s gibbet.
It casts long shadows across his dreams.
The noose is the law’s reptilian eye.

There, there, there! How you like that? Nasty child. I thought I stop your squalling.

The hangman’s eyes roll madly like marbles,
like dead moons in headlong orbit.

– Where is the child?
– Gone. Gone to sleep.
– What have you done with the child, I say?
– Gone to sleep, I say.
– What have you done with it?
– What have I done with it?
– Ay, done with it! I heard it crying just now. Where is it?
– I dropped it out at window.