The Horses
a pocket of bile rests at the back of a toilet in the nearby town
a new animal has wandered out onto the motorway
waiting to grunt at the heart of my happening
there’s a certain type of mouth
only understood by the index and middle fingers
and not in waspish lyrics, in-jokes and prefect badges
a Mall of America jutting out of historical Worcestershire
I searched out a pensive noun on the indoor rollercoaster
found instead a shard of decorative china bearing a tiger
kissed a stranger in that pale blue heartless light called rage
I am fifteen, a family friend has just asked if he can eat me; O
love is only real when it’s someone who scares you
history is so limply sluttish, worrying at his girlish cardigan
a version of oneself no more grasped at than an aria
crawling from a squat built-to-rent
who knew a string of strangled notes could sing like that
of puke, of rolling out of bed any time after eleven
the way a dilapidated pigsty sings of thought
smoke from far away a person, horses; dead horses; syntax
a glint of angel face down in a sump of midland bog water
between the wheezes of a Chiltern sixty-eight
I love you, stranger
my muted thrill outside the food court
you credential me with your mutability
your work any idiot could do
keep me far away
from whatever dork last said
‘I hate it here.’
the vampires
last time I saw you
we watched a movie
about a tired vampire
I’d consumed almost
nothing solid that day
a couple tramadol
you appeared with
a bottle of vodka
nothing else
the years between us were excruciating
a colour less stark
the longer I stared
a cum stain on black jeans
a distant galaxy
I laughed a lot, in a cold way
said I needed the bathroom
three times, when I didn’t
because time is a creature
some wallpaper
pulled down every few years
in lieu of wailing
and I’ll be
a slim cut of winter, mid-spring
you’ve yet to know
Reflections on the Gay Communist Style
What is a system? another beautiful boy
lying dead at the foot of a Judas Tree
A cliché in need of a little unpicking
rather than write anything
I ate thirteen slices of bread
I ate peanut butter
straight from the jar
got cranked
on schlubby fucktitude
invented poetry
& later got drunk it’s
better than the quotidian dread
of taking oneself to town
to do the numbers, to chase
that minute dopamine rush
of shitting on company time
or whatever it is you people do
& yes, I knew him
spread galaxies of cheap speed
over his peachy ass
did to him whatever
it is you want me to have done
fictioned every part of him, darling
it was so awful
the blunt needle
of my own company
douching with room temperature
strawberry la croix
a brutal gnosticism of
trying to get at something
between tv static and song
beyond the odyssey
of pretending the sex wasn’t aimless
that freedom wasn’t a dribbling catatonic murmur
that I’d leave him sleeping wherever he fell
go watch dawn tumble over an average English town
