"Looking back at my poem, Heads on Poles, I realized I hadn’t worked out the main reason for the heads being there. At the time, I thought the zing-zing drinkers were malicious beings that killed for the sake of it before displaying the heads as a warning to others. But although they make blood sacrifices, it’s simply an expedient measure to regenerate Jade’s life force. I don’t think they kill for fun.

On reflection, I believe the zing-zing drinkers are very neat creatures with a passion for uniformity. That means they sometimes have to reduce the size of other creatures in order to render them identical in height or length, according to whether they walk upright or move horizontally. They do this by removing their heads. The left-over heads have to go somewhere, and the neatest way to dispose of them is to stick them on poles in the sunk in the sand. In straight rows, of course!"

Jade’s creatures are varied and come in all sizes,
All shapes, sorts and species all colors and guises.
Whatever their measure, there’s only one height
The zing-zing imbibers imagine is right.
They can’t abide oddness and only engage
With regular creatures that fit in their gauge.
Equipped with their calipers, tape measures, rules,
And rending the air with their sharp slashing tools,
They hack, slice and sever and deftly adjust
All disparate things to the size that they must.
There’s breaking and ripping and cracking and tearing:
Their victims feel pain; still they’re coldly uncaring.
And whether those creatures die quickly or linger
Depends on a cut just the breadth of my finger.