Thick and fast they came

It's really quite astounding, how an idea can run away with you. I carry a notebook everywhere I go (well, almost everywhere) just in case something pops into my head. Pinning down ideas is like catching falling leaves in autumn. They can flutter around and are so elusive, but if you can catch them in a book before they join the mess of fallen fragments on the floor, you stand a chance of doing something with them.

Ideas of what it would be like to live with a handle protruding from my head were popping into being like falling leaves on a windy day in autumn. So much so I decided I wanted to make them into something permanent.

For some time I've been an admirer of Tim Burton's poetry, particularly 'The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy' - a collection of tales of bizarre and startling characters. He has the ability to make the absurd acceptable and his delivery in verse makes it all the more intriguing.
So, to follow his lead, I decided I would write a poem about how it would be to live with an axe in the head.
Fairly quickly I came to the conclusion that to write the poem about a bear wouldn't be as interesting to read because bears just don't get involved in similar circumstances to us humans. I settled on a boy because I was one, a long time ago, so I could perhaps trawl my memories for situations I might have encountered. I did briefly consider having a girl go through the experience, but somehow, a boy seemed logical. I mean, whoever heard of a girl with an axe in her head? Anyway, axes are just so 'blokey' aren't they?

So I started writing and writing and writing......