s

We were friends I’d thought

had become such through work

without effort or demand and only 

time to fuel it

I’d hoped for the benefits

they talk about in the friendships of today

banter giving rise to the other

to sex acts performed casually

friends with benefits

though I ever fell foul of the

bureaucracy of benefit applications

and garnered nothing of the sort

from your abjectly plain face

and thin lips

we were friends though

and in the absence of benefits

or the conventional markers of attraction

the wish for straightforward coupling

one nighters in the daytime

occasional laughs

was soon replaced

and awkwardly

by what felt like love

as it would be whenever

I opened myself to the possibility

of feeling really anything at all

we were friends

though you know how I felt

the conflict of many loves

confessed in emails

we were friends

the compulsion was

became

to have you want to have me

or to know I could

and I recall the day after I had told you

that you were in the small list of only

three in the office who

I could desire in at least

an intellectual sense –

I could scarcely differentiate between

feeling something or

feeling as though I feel something –

you wore a near see-through dress

deliberately I thought I hoped

and through it I saw

the shape of your black underwear

the pant shape

the shape of the bra on your tits

so clearly it felt like observing

total nudity

a gesture I couldn’t help but

interpret as seductive

but we were friends then

had been

friends I’d thought

though now you’ve left me

without a word or explanation

and all of the honesty

the way I opened up

the trust

we were friends I’d thought

so I did open up and

trust too

all of it felt shameful

of a sudden

myself let myself down

but we had been

friends I mean

we had been

not now.

"_fat mark_"

Fat Mark’s such a dishevelled trunk – always looks like he’s fallen into his clothes at the end of a slip. His printed name in emboldened sans serif font on his office door always looks like a stone cold threat. Makes me shit myself when I’m covering the lates. Just shut your beard and let it go slag. Fat Mark’s Home for Shirts for Large Children and Men. He should’ve fired up the camping grill, got some sausage patties a-sizzling. It’s a bleat a minute back there. I keep hearing what sounds like a woman laughing, then realise it’s Fat Mark. Mrs Fat Mark must've fingered him last night. In an office full of ladies with his cheap instant coffee in hand looking like a retarded teenager trapped in a hen-do and forced to tearfully strip before the baying mockery of a sloshed troupe. Fat Mark’s all double thumbs up, a peddler of meaty brekkies, terrine pallor, tired eyes, blokes projects. Lazy eye always slips in photographs. The things I’ve seen. Mopping his brow with a tissue on the Jet garage forecourt. Wife pens self-help stuff with a Christian bent. Fat Mark does a few church groups. Church groups for underrepresented lads – his boy’s X-Box, crisps and Swizzels, tepid Tizer, muted footie tapes, the season highlights he’d collected when you still did that, low-level chatting in supermarket garb, checked shirts, massive t-shirts of licensed cartoon characters. Sorry clutch of saps even god can’t be fucked with. Wife was a looker, still is really. Fat Mark never could believe his luck. Was the uniform as did it. He’s former Forces. Even a patty-faced lump out of the Riding gets them creaming when fastened into twill. He’d made a scale model Landy for her, 1:10, painted it Air Force Blue and etched Mark ‘n’ Jane on the windscreen in minute hand, so small he had to tell her it was there after he’d popped the question, which he’d framed like a joke so when she rejected him he could pretend he’d never meant it anyway. Near shat himself when she agreed. First time she held his balls he blew his sauce all over her within seconds. Her wrists dripped with the foul stuff. Took months to get things going in the bedroom. He tried to quip his way around his failings but she was losing interest quick. He really had to concentrate to get there, to keep it in long enough, to get it in. Was fucking shattered by the end, like a special needs kids at the end of a school day. All the trying. They’d gone the distance though, Jane and he, where so many of his pals hadn’t. Put it down to separate interests. And separate bedrooms. He had a phone shaped like Garfield in his. A giant coke bottle for coins. A shelf full of the old children’s books his mother had insisted he finally take away when his father died, or else that she’d take to the charity shop. He couldn’t bear to open them, always made him cry to see the illustrations. She was gone too now, of course. Had a suitcase full of her clothes on the top shelf of his wardrobe. His daughter was grown up, quite something, got her mother’s looks thank fuck. He hardly spoke to her – had found himself accidentally lusting after her when she was about fifteen, peering at her for that bit too long when she strode around in just a towel or in little short shorts, found himself outside her room at night just wondering what would happen if. Never did anything, of course not, she’s his daughter, but the thought was there. Are we culpable for our thoughts? Should we be held to account for the workings of our minds if those workings don’t translate to terrible action? Fat Mark had no idea, thought it best to shut it down, to become the distant father he’d always wanted not to be. He didn’t think much about younger ladies. No point. He’d still be him. His mid-life crisis had consisted of some Converse and a vat of ill-advised hair gel. Scrunched his thatch into a limp peak once or twice then couldn’t be bothered again. The smell of it gave him a headache. Maybe his three-quarter life crisis would yield a Honda Goldwing. He and Jane might tour the byways. Who was he kidding. Savings were long since pumped into the kids’ education. Nothing left for us. Jane did monies separate – she had the eye for it. Besides, what did he want for? In truth he’d been terrified of motorcycles since his 30s when he came off a 600cc at speed and sheared the skin off his back at a family day at Silverstone. Was supposed to be fun. He was an inpatient for a week while they grafted from both buttocks. Arse like a pizza. Skid-Mark, sniggered all. Kids didn’t visit. Boring for the kids, a hospital. Jane neither. Boring, a hospital. He read Len Deighton and felt teary and looked forward to the attention of the nurse emptying his bedpan. But you put a face on don’t you, for the world. That’s all any of us can do, is put a face on. Put a face on and pretend a bit.

r

It has been widely known,

my erotic predilection for the cemeteries

and the other places of death,

how in cemeteries I always yearn to copulate

the smell of earth, elder, pine

what greater honour than to copulate

on their graves

what greater ode to life than

our varying sauces expelled

and oozed into the loam

where they lay for eternity

how in the Denne Road Cemetery

in Horsham, West Sussex,

during a lunch hour nearly

twenty years ago I had

knelt in front of a strangers

grave and masturbated at the

foot of the headstone

after purchasing 69 Love Songs

in Our Price.

pedestrian route

like, 
 fucking,
  tbf it's not that bad

SUN_ARISE!!

A moment of explosion accompanies the sunrise cresting above the treeline, a blast of catastrophe, the still morning. The mouthwateringly brief cognizance of fundamental beauty that immediately precedes the end. In the office I smell the seat of your chair. I touch the soft cashmere cable knit half-balled on your desk. I read the congratulations card from your thoughtful loved one. I suspend myself for a second in your life. 

q

A friend reported the homos

cooing like wood pigeons

as they spurt their wad

to refrain from arousing suspicion

of their public eroticism

I got talking to a young mother

while our kids played

who said that since the area

had switched to Universal Credit

and her income taken quite a hit

she had resorted to selective

escort work

a full professional service

she said

doing only the things she was into

dinners, movies, attractions,

oral, vaginal, some anal

she staggered the price points

at £80 a half hour

£45 for a quarter hour quickie

she had, she said,

to be very strict on timekeeping

people expected handouts

would pay their dues

and expect a chunk more

such was the culture

the service culture

customer always right

she sneered

particularly when wrong

and often wrong

how does the mathematics function that

when added together

all the zero hours contracts

make a sixty hour week

organic commodification strategies

long endorsed by policy.

p

what would the note read?

I am sorry

I am gone

what would form the body of the note?

I was not made

to be made

what would form the text of the note?

forgive me my weakness

I love you so dearly

what would form the sentiment of the note?

our children too

they will grow to be happy

what would form the theme of the note?

I am so tired

of being

what would form the structure of the note?

there can be no excuse

there can be none

what would

I am sorry for the strain of existence

too great to bear

I am sorry

Our beautiful children

I am

You

I

I love you so

I am sorry for

I am sorry

I am gone

the coming of the great gods

The great gods came, stood silent sentry across the landscape. Brought great energy with them. Initiate your telescreens, they instructed with gentle telepathy. We did as bade, and from the murk came shapes, beautiful colours, together shifting in narrative synchrony. They hummed, the great gods, a throb amongst themselves, indecipherable tongues of power. Our attempts to decode the sounds, to find pattern in the silence around them, to impose on them the earthen drudgery of our painfully limited experience, were failures. A tongue of such nuance was not for us to grasp.

It was almost certain that the reach of the great gods extended far across the Anglerealme, but as is known we in this eastern quarter had long ceased to commune with the dastards west of the Isle of Ely, which had for centuries been home to the great gods that were and not the great gods that now are and are now come.

Twas not for the mans or for the womans to comprehend the great gods. They posed a danger within their latticed steel bellies. They had long mastered our feeble language and provided warning markers upon their persons, and pictographs for the illiterate many. Proximity to the great gods could engender full death. Miles of telepathic cabling bore tremendous lethal force. From safe distances we would encircle the brutes in humble genuflection and offer our thanks for the comfort of the shapes that our telescreens displayed.

o

I confessed to being

of swine and to these illicit tendencies

to the juvenile robin in the

dead rhododendron

its feet skittering on the

brittle branches

its still dark eyes

it watched me mute

immaculate, waited

for food I supposed

the confession spewed

as clarion.

01-10__[phs]

POLITE NOTICE: when disposing of regency ladies in this convenience please ensure you use the PHS Regency Lady disposal bags provided.

n

My friend Jo Pilgrim understands

that this copulation

this imagining of it

this willing it into being

whether on paper alone or on bedsheets

on the fabric of reality

no more constitutes adultery committed

against loved ones and promises

than defecation, or indeed any of the

biological inevitabilities,

the work that our bodies must do to be

and by which we might mark

the passage of time.

m

I glimpsed the cup of the bra

of “the Hainford one”

through the gap between fastened buttons

of her patterned blouse

and was beset with desire

older, local, heavy, habitual

and prior to which I had scarcely noted

but since the cup and its contents

half full if not overflowing

I could think of little else

the cycle path beside the flyover

could be the site of our doings

she as bushy as a brute

and incapable of silence

chattering pleasantries even as

we went for anal

hot sun on our patches

her oleaginous rectal discharge

the tears of the soon to be shredded

wrung like the mucal exudate

from a raw welt

knotted like mammals behind buddleia

inches from pedestrians

cock pushed out with

every glottal stop

I’d hold the shape right

guide it through the territory

the angle of incidence

weak from the grip

render myself vertical

with a hold on the mighty tit

that bobs like a buoy

marking the limits of the channels of our will

with each of my deep sea drills

my excavations

rancid pubes marinated in anal run off

balls drenched in the sauce of her cunt

slapped into unfilled void

like swift applause

for my fanatic approach.

21-03__[BCNSTHRP]__0001

/ for many months the crows had been gathering, the place chosen in cawed consensus /

l

It’s typical presumably

to be drawn to our children’s teachers

their caregivers

their devotion to our young

renders them spouses, of a type

extensions of the spousal relationship

their professional concern

for the safeguarding of under sixes

who bear our genome

to be easily confused

– for the atypical narcissist –

with love or a considered attempt

at seduction

particularly when the caregiver

is tan and exquisite

and gentle of manner

though certain of the ways of pleasure

all bets off beyond

the caregiving environment

heaps of sublimated reprimand

finally vocalised in sexual violence

and at the parent day

I wait for the breeze to lift her

dress, for knicker fabric over pudenda

the buttocks of the caregiver

the smell of the cunt of the caregiver

in the attendant centigrade

the breeze truculent

the breeze disobliging

are dresses designed to preclude their

own ascent

at the whims of meteorology

I’ve waited years in increments

and for naught

the dresses they rightly scoff.

k

Would, I wonder,

it be permissible

to fuck a woman,

do forgive me, who

was pregnant with the child

of another man

in thrall to the altered states

of the external cunt

during a growing pregnancy

Malbec red and aflame with promise

I would hold the huge bump

from behind

it would be tight up to her dress

which I would lift

and lower too the pants

yards of them

a whole hand up her

like a handshake

different somehow

and from behind then I’d

grip my dick till it smarts

get it in carefully

couple of long strokes

then sink it to the cervix

hard and lunatic

and not give a shit

because the child’s not mine

probably stick my thumb up her arse

and finish quick before the guilt

dried her up and

wilted me down like a scorched

bloom.

26-09__[IFR {dis.}]

the abandoned paddling pools left syrupy with larvae on the peripheries of the disused industrial complex in grasses and brambles where grey bodies would be found

j

I follow the flesh like leaves

blown along the wind trap the

broadland makes of the common

the shadows of dead mills

superseded by pump assemblies

it is for the truly ugly

to so vehemently ratify

the severance of sex

from the bounds of attraction

to couple it instead with

the fundaments of biology

with physical release only

that grim judder

to beg of them, silently,

all of them

to beg that if they for even a moment

manifest the urge to

tenderly brawl

to acclimatize to fresh meat

then to do so with I

I with a passable degree of erotic competence

I with a bent for great guilt shouldered solo

I who will judge not

or will judge

but only by way

of a constructed prose work

written years later

that I can assure you

will not be read

will never be.

i

I want to come across every face

I come across

apologetic jets to eyebrows,

lashes, nostrils,

to hairlines even

a shared moment of utter separateness 

the jaundiced tincture of

the dribbled seed against a

catalogue of skin tones

my burnished glans rested on

cheeks like a dermal polyp

caress the fluid in like unguent

hawthorn stench

the fungoid scent of bared bits sucked

digits delved

eked vestibules

the bitter tang of anus

sweltering rim

relaxing around the rhythmic waves

the slithered contractions

of a probing tongue

some unbound gastropod!  

such wealth of anatomical diversity

don’t limit us to the familiarity

of a fastidiously mapped

topography

instead lose us

in brave new voyages

across oceans of skin

through the boundless lumen of

your southern passages

we needn’t converse –

what sense in doing so

there’s nil to say not said by our betters

such ritual is for the old

or else the young

for anyone but we –

nor even look

should we wish not to

such trysts belong to the body

and not to the mind

as long as our bodies function as

conduits of copulation

we are obliged to use them

to fuck.

___[w_w_t_dr_b_]__//

the very tree I lay

beneath for lunch

h

I was privy to meticulous premonitions of self-harm

an arsenal of safety pins stuck into forearms

fingertips scalded to blistering on a three-cup Bialetti

drawing pin to the gums

disposable razor blade

lid of a tuna can

grind teeth until tasting blood

and worse – of my death by suicide

letters of terrible sadness composed to the children,

the wife, the realization, then,

that there was no one else to write

hanged from the very tree I lay

beneath for lunch

leaves against the blue sky

the grey sky

every lunch I’d see my hanged body

and the leaves

the sky

face swollen

we’re crushed by this world and by each other.