Check Your Bathrobe

I am filth in a striped jumper.

I am Eros in polyester; Cupid with a keyboard.

A wettening, a fattening, a rush of blood
nether, a twist of a nipple, a feather
tracing insouciance.

I am your ignored urges; thoughts entertained, stripped and fucked.

A stinging slap, hot wax, a lingering
grope, raw ankles scored ragged by rope,
ball-gagged and bound.

I am Russian pornography, pixelated, plotless; sweat with a thousand-dollar budget.

I’m a maiden taken, a ballgown torn, a husband
seduced, three lipstick lesbians reduced
to two stabbing planes of motion.

I am your second spouse; that first finger.

I’m a glance, a laugh, a come-hither static
touch, a playful spark sucking your soul
from the end of your finger.

I am your favourite loss of control.

I’m the best friend you never had.

Some Whimsy

2.
Dreams
come in dozens
and sixes
and singles.

They bulge at the bottom
and taper at the top
and dance everything imaginable in between.

If you hold them right to the light,
you can catch a rainbow
in your hand.

They’re black, and white,
and filled to bursting
with shattering vibrant colour and
phosphorescence.

They sparkle
darkly
with velveteen brilliance
and pink-brittle promises.

They make beauty
brighter,
until your head fills with nonsense
and flitting amazement you wouldn’t swap for
the world.

Then, with a yawn, they’re gone,
lost in the calm before the
dawn.

4.
Moths batter my window, blind-trying for
the great white light.
What I would swap for wings
and such simple ambition.

Bl__ckout

There is a foot on my throat. And hands
holding my arm (the arm that isn’t thras
hing pretty wildly looking for somethin
g to grab, the arm that is held at the wri
st, the elbow). The hands and the foot a
re working in concert, pulling and push
ing neatly slowly gently so that my hea
d is squashed meatly lowly ment’lly ag
ainst my shoulder and squeeeeezing bo
th my carotids sht. The arm, my arm th
at isnot held fined find finds somethinn
nng nnngh to grab to pinch to to to clari
ty. The pinch, the roll, the fulcrum. The
se are the basics, I know so I stop strug
gling and squeeze my hand and my han
d is pnching the sqeeze away justf ast e
nough ntil I am able to roll my head for
wards and find relief and a way in. He i
s bigger than I amd but not as fast or lit
he or dazed so it takes him longer longe
r to realise I am no longer choking and I
have rolled away, around, and kept hold
of the leg and he is like a flipped beetle
as I make my feet and his other leg kick
s at me so I let it fly and slip around the
m both and he has realised now what is
going on but it is rather too late for him
I am astride him looking to drop elbows
on his unguarded scone so he rolls to his
side and I let him and then push him for
ce him further with my knee and I insin
uate myself an arm around his neck and
under his arm we roll to my back, him a
ll arms scrabbling and me thinking legs
and tightening mine around his body ho
oking heels inside his thighs and he gets
an arm in his ham-hands and pulls it aw
ay but this gives me the opening I desire
and the other arm snakes around his lov
ely lumpen throat and I shake away his
hands and calmly place my hand atop h
is shaven head and my other hand meets
my elbow and now, now it is my turn to
squeeze.

Clumsy

I sit with my bambinos and my
tea and my Radiohead and I chew
and swill and listen to the whine
and clatter of the wind in the roof.

I plant my feet and my head and
try to make myself
right.
write.

I want the puns of old, my jaunt
-y tossing wordplay and my will
-ingness to try things and to may
-be write something not so-so stilt
-ed and cold.

I wish to be emptied
of synthetic
Vitamin A and the backlog of words
which bounce rogue-fireworklike
through the tight tunnels of my brain but
fizzle when they reach my fingers and leave
me – hands stuck-paused inches from keys –
spitting damp paper and sulphur.

I am all words these days
they are just the wrong
ones.

Parabol

See that boy.
See him through this
particular
lens.

Look along the sinuous
length
of his
arm.
Follow the line of his shoulder until it is
broken
by the small nub
of a nipple
which peeks
from behind.

Leave the boy now,
move back to the model.

See the swell
of breast
sweep to the smooth
ridge of collarbones
brushed by the tips
of the frame for the face.

A nymph with a
PhD in Coquette
(Sm.Rk, LuS.Te, 1st Class).
Slyly stealing the gaze,
she is the stuff of
silk
and oils
on canvas.

Fitting then,
that behind her the
painter holds her tightly at
the waist,
her straddling her straddling him.

They are versions
of
perfection
inversions
of
one
an
other.

See that boy.
A clumsy perversion
an intrusion
filling the corner of the
frame.
He would be ignored
or just not
noticed
if they were not
holding him in.

Pillow-Faced Introductions

Disaffected. Sounds like a six-year-old trying to get their tongue around household cleaning products.
Sounds like tinny strains of second-hand iPod angst on the bus.
Sounds like your midweek binge.
Sounds like your shitty band and the sigh of your teacher when you've just failed Modern World History through nonattendance.
Sounds kinda like being thirty-eight and jaded when you're seventeen and stupid.
Unhappy and snappy at your pore ol' parents.

And we are, aren't we? Wallowing in our self-pity and carelessness at the bottom of the vast caldera left by the last fifty years. Hell, sixty years.
Sixty-odd years ago the youth were running across battlefields with carbines and hand-grenades to kill for King and Country.
Fifty years ago things were boring, admittedly. They were getting over the war, though. And they had a proper depression. They had an excuse.
Forty years? Shit, you might have taken a pill back then and you still wouldn't have woken up by now. You could grow a beard and fuck your best friend's sister. Catch-22 came out.
The seventies? You could watch bands who were fucked-up on real drugs. You could build a house wherever you wanted. You could blame everything on the sixties.
Admittedly, the eighties weren't so great in retrospect, but at the time, you had a licence to kill with your hair. Nothing was off limits. They took the mullet and permed it. Then they wore headbands and lycra and vinyl. Bright Lights, Big City, man. Lead in petrol was still a great idea. The keytar was fair game. Sonic Youth presciently saw a Teen Age Riot.
The nineties. Nevermind. American Psycho. Oil wars. Flannelette. Fallout. The playstation. Damn, it was the last decade in the millenium. Mobile phones were a luxury.

When you look at it like that, what have we got? Terrorism. iPods. Crazy frog. Postmodernism. Widespread stupidity and ignorance. Crystal Meth. Myspace. Global warming.

Small wonder the youth spend their time drinking premixed vomit and fucking each other stupid and pirating music and reading Cosmopolitan (Yeah, girls, read this and you'll fit in anywhere. Just so long as whoever you're trying to fit in with is a slave to Cosmo as well).

We live in Heller's Rome, without the war. We've got no excuse, with the possible exception of "Whatever.", which won't really cut much ice when the Germans arrive.
I guess we can fall back on the Products-Of-Our-Society line.
Or we can just blame it on being young.


I was bored, what can I say.


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