The Tiger in the Bed


The madman sat up in his room
With books spread all around
Excepting the tiger in the bed
He thought his mind was sound

He turned to page one, two, three
“On Taming Tigers; Wild.”
The Tiger looked up hungrily
And broke into a smile.

“My boy,” it seemed to say to him.
“Why do you start with fear?
Ignore my gentle purring
And pretend that I’m not here.”

But tragic error – fatal mistake,
Calamity and woe!
While reading ‘Why Do Weasels Fuff*’
(A piece by Edgar Allan Poe)-

-The poor man was proven mad
And sealed in his fate
For ignoring a full grown Bengal Tiger
Which shortly fuffed,
pounced
and ate.

* Interestingly Weasels and Tigers are the only animals to ‘fuff’.
The error here is that a Tiger doesn’t purr – big cats growl and roar; but of course the madman knew no better.
Weasels don’t purr either.

The year 2009 was not a good one for The Author. Having worked night shift press cutting for a year, lived and worked with REDACTED the target of His unrequited love/lust (I am convinced He treats those two tyrants just the same) and found little of which to be professionally or personally satisfied, He had resolved to do away with Himself. A local mental health counselling service had been invoked – He is vague whether they met once a week, fortnight or month – but they did meet and that is out of character for The Author and may point to why, to my knowledge, He has not been since. In the spirit of devastating honesty He had spoken of His intention to do away with Himself and so it should have been of no surprise when the police and ambulance attended the last session before his deadline and ‘detained’ Him under the Mental Health Act.

The sectioning may be unravelled another time. To this poem: Along with Darling’s Dance and the White Hart, this was published (and maimed) by the REDACTED Arts group – a mental health focused community arts group he attended after his release from the secure ward. The Author will rage at Therapy Poems, and so much of the work at the time was reactive to sincerity and weak metaphor. It is therefore difficult to track exactly why He chose to write this, but He claims:

I was entertained by the notion that tigers do not roar, they fuff or chuff, apparently sharing the characteristic with weasels.

He even bothered to include a footnote as part of the poem and will insist (if ever invited to perform it) on reading that codicil to the poem. However even a cursory internetting reveals that tigers have a very definite roar so, like much of the year, what was the point?

First draft circa May 2009

Rough performance time - 0 minutes, 40