Month: April 2011

I get a beer and lean on the bar
I can smell the pheromones
He’s been sweating into that t-shirt all afternoon
I want to touch
but he doesn’t even smile
I think he’d be intense in bed
A really good hard fuck
But he’s so serious
He doesn’t flirt
And I don’t know where to start

We’re too scared to say what we want to say
to the person we want to say it to
because what if they don’t like it
They might laugh at us
or never speak to us again
and we’d feel foolish
and that would (it seems) be worse
than our unrequited desire

So we write it instead
Publish it
Perform it
Trying timidly to deliver our message
in the ridiculous hope that our target
who we suspect likes us too
although maybe that’s just a mirage
will be emboldened
to touch us
somewhere more intimate than
the shoulder
Somewhere like the waist
That’s always nice
Or ask us to dance
or buy us a drink
or invite us to a movie or
just you know back to their place to uh look at their books

First published in Creatrix

no words: my head
your s*cket: want
my
words in your
p*cket: want
my
hand in your
p*cket? oh
f*ck it — let’s just
dance

I’d like to write a poem.
I’d like to write a poem.
I’d like to write a poem.

I think of ignoring my
aesthetic
and just fucking someone,
anyone
with a flat stomach
and a half-nice face…
but I feel sick.
I’m not selling my soul again
for my cunt,
using someone
I
don’t want
just to shut her up

Oh look. Sex again. You silly girl.
What about, oh, capitalism? Terrorism? Child abuse? War?
What about wankers in BMWs What about inhumane cities Concrete
fag-can vases What about levelled playgrounds What about divided-up
sold-off fucked-over parklands What about
my arms not reaching What about
all those chick-lit girls
and all that
liposuction
and Madonna’s volumised face
and Facebook with its face-off bad-party one-liner non-
conversation, with its
unmerciful yells

Everyone has a pen
Everyone has a pen
Everyone has a pen

(First published in Cottonmouth)

I’m fucking James Bond —
the Roger Moore James, not the Sean Connery —
the straightedge James, not the curved —
and it’s nice to be fucking James
for once

But there’s not just me
in my dream: there’s another me,
ten years younger,
five inches shorter,
six semitones higher,
with flick-shoulder curl-tipped platinum hair
and narrow
little lips

She’s as pretty as death, but she doesn’t
want to play; she comes at me
with a knife. We fight. James stares
at the ceiling. He doesn’t care
who fucks him, two women, one,
me, her. I’d be happy to enjoy him
together, but she
wants to own the unownable —
so she slashes and spoils
our dream