Friday 25 February 2011

Whores and Oars


After a Sunday service,

I, a man of no anchor and leftovers

Stood out on the bridge, looking at tide

And ships.

You, with a name that hears like a summer month,

Beer in hand, nicotined lips, dared me down

By another wet bar I got you first

And crushed shards of glass.

From the deck, you rang me so we could meet

The week I wasn’t whored up in paid hours.

I gave you a lemon pig and you kneecapped him

And snapped an ankle so his unwaxed belly

Hit the floor. The clove eyes got yanked and

Flicked at new misery.

Almost a full day had vanished

When my letter reached your door

And you, maybe ‘cause of fear, pouted

And put your foot against the letterbox

And slept there

Curled and blocking the sea.

Four days after. A decision was giving me

The plank. I walked out,

Got to the edge, saw the sharks

With blank stares and the scraps from another

And your phone was ring ring

RINGING

I jumped.

Tuesday 22 February 2011

Saudade

Left my home

Town now I’m

Back to a city

Where I work

It isn’t home

And where

I shower and sleep

Isn’t either

Here there

Is no family

Maison

Of comfort

Familiar spooks

Where I close

The door open

This world splitting

Time between

Here and where

Life started before

Drunks and girls

Before wheels

Fell off and my first

Spoonful of *saudade.


*Portuguese for a strong longing.

Sunday 20 February 2011

Free

Your Google homepage-

Search engine bar blank-

Easy instant

And free.

Tiny porn boxes,

Flashes of videoed panties on,

Off fingers tongue,

A new arrival,

Nude on again,

And the arrow glides over,

One suitable, by now,

Your ballbags tightened up,

Cock is pointing play,

You watch and tug, she’s

Rubbing her cunt, against a mirror,

There’s no music or magic,

Just the reverberation of a blue set,

Maybe it’s her house?

And her dildo?

A dildo appears in almost all these clips

Usually pink,

Metal, or see through,

And with one halfway in her butt,

She grimaces, and reminds you of a woman,

You dated but let get away.

So you try tidy up,

Both working,

Towards finishing the past ,

To come.

Friday 18 February 2011

Out Of The Question

Polished shoes in a puddle

Back street blowjob

All my art, my head disposal-

Headnotes


What’s out of the question

A negroni? Stable commitment?

A telephone call from G.O.D?


Nah, tinker talk, champagne and huitres

A dressage chick

With thick lips

And sore red knees

White bra, black panties

Bent over bet...

You asked for

This.

Wednesday 16 February 2011

Open and Shut


In typical fashion

Wondering around a gallery

‘Bout high society

I notice this hot one

Come out of a screening

Of a man playing cards

On acid

She stands next to me

Reading the information

For this room

And I follow her

Pretending to take the info in

As she leads her way to the exit

I’m footsteps behind

When I notice

This sign

‘Tell Us About Your Drug Experience’

I sit down and knock out a couple of

Paragraphs on my last trip

Then leave and she’s not there

Not in the gift shop or cafe

Not outside the main entrance

No, not even at the closest tube station


She’s gone

Like the others.

Monday 14 February 2011

The Easiest Prey

Dining on

Twice removed relationships

Metacognitive beheadings

I saunter out en hiver

Sit down for a Pastis

And feast on cris de coeur

In slivers

I drink from a narrow neck carafe

And a glass of water

With baking soda

Finished

All chambers cleared

I venture on to my prospective barmaid

Who puffs as she reigns ’em in

And snuffs it with a turned heel

Her hair goes curly

In the rain

As she taps her watch

To say I’m too early

I stand on this curb

Across from where she calls

Who’s waiting

To thirsty beggars

Across from where she stopped

To meet me on the stairs down

And worked a whole weekend

With my semen

Dried on a skirt

Bought to ensnare

The easiest prey.

A Year Older

It's Suitcase Poems anniversary today. 14/2/11

Did she choose tongues or chitterlings
To start

Braised rabbit for main

A half dozen madeleines
To finish?

My wild two handed gypsy
Knocks 'em back
So I hope you kept her
Well oiled

A bottle of Bollinger
La grande annee,
Les Mal Aimes
Minervois,
Sherry to end.

Did she wear her hair down
And that cocktail dress

My present for a birthday
When our hands were dovetailed
And we Soho slumbered

Was her hair down
And washed with the same
Shampoo

I only
Associate that
And her parfum

With dizziness.








Sunday 13 February 2011

Watch It Go


Rash time gaps

A vacant house gurgles

Before breakfast

Bulbs of gradual heat tell me

Ditch this

Sing restraint

Watch it go

No one notices

No one keeps score

Of the small changes

Pockets and souls

Lift it up

Kick it under the bed


Watch it

Watching


Through the nose

Out the mouth


Floored view

Dovetailed.




Friday 11 February 2011

2010

Last year, we'd all been robbed

Of our age and

We know there's no excuse in the book

For consistent punishing hangovers.


No excuse for ice cream breakfast

Or not having a wife.

No excuse for not having an excuse.


But we're out there

In replay.

Is this limbo?

Bad dogs

Sniffing trails in a toilet stalls

Denial on billboards too grand to laugh at.

Lost in half rêve

Flem caught in our throat

We go to town

On women

Hunted by others

And sniff the air.

Is this limbo?

Wednesday 9 February 2011

Tails

They blast bass and synth, some Italiano rhymes

While like a lost child my fucking head floods

Tears of fatherless school years

Tears of crippling

Sickening missing

A complete parental education

Others were taken around in cars driven by mum and dad

They had dinner without the television on

One (if not both) at teachers meeting

Sports day plays

A ride home from birthday parties

Sleepovers church cinema

There was no figure in the hallway

Sex sounds in the bedroom

Sunday dinners

Visits to grandma

Work places

No

Dad checking homework

Mum folding clothes

Dad fixing punctures

Mum sowing buttons

Dad buying Coke

Mum buying Apple Juice

Dad tickling mum

Mum tying Dad’s tie

Dad drinking beers

Mum on G and T

Dad watching news

Mum watching soap operas

Dad reading papers

Mum reading books

Dad in the shower

Mum in the bath

Dad walking naked

Mum wearing a nightgown

Dad eating bacon and eggs

Mum just eggs

On weekends I got up early and ate breakfast crisps

Drank milk and cartoons

Sat in pyjamas with curtains closed

Stale stink from ashtrays and smudged glasses

It could have been pissing down or

Hot as hangover hell and I’d be inside

Blocked from kicking balls at walls

Throwing pebbles at street cats

Falling from trees

There was no falls or spills

No getting lost or taking money from my

Mother’s purse

Schoolkids’d call and I’d ignore the doorbell

Cartoon voices teeth unbrushed my mum

Damned in a weekend lie in

Homework would remain in my thin

Bag by the door ‘till Sunday bedtime

When I’d panic and start sums

Reading art

My weekend bath

Clean behind the ears

There ‘till the water got cold and murky

‘till the bubbles disappeared

‘till mum’s soap drama finished

Maybe once a blue month I’d get a call

From Da and he’d ask how I was

And about school and friends but when

Was fathering done over the phone?

When was fathering long distance

And through correspondence?

Kids aren’t meant to be forced into chatting

About what they’ve been up to and how they’ve missed

A parent like an arm or hand

Kids are meant to be free of emotional

Distressing upsetting situations

Such as divorce

Such as moving country

Such as longing

Such as living above a halal butchers

Such as arguments heard through bedroom walls

Such as sexual television

Such as sleeping in pubs

And I try and picture in the earliest pictures

If I could’ve known I’d be here 30 years later

In a room with curtains closed smoke infested

Clothes smudged highballs with deteriorating

Ice cubes and frozen water dripping down

My face as divorce takes its toll.

Sunday 6 February 2011

Table For....

Table for two?
No.
One.

One more
Hit wonder

One liners
Born every minute

Une nuit

Yeah, one piece
Suit for sharing

One eyed jacks
And up
In a million

One on one

One off
For all

An eye or shoe
Pair of pearls

Where's my shoe?

One pound
Of prickly pears

One egg missing
A room

One way
Cul de sac cunt

No return
1 above
Above none

You
Not some
One else

Saturday 5 February 2011

Opportunity Knocks (But I Can't Hear)

Working my way
Down glass

There's boundless
Opportunities

Fruit dropping
And flies stuck
On jars of jam

That literary vineyard
Gets us
Tied and typed up

Does this spill
Stain others?

Wednesday 2 February 2011

Joining the dots

Think and drink

Pour, down, refill

Frozen water

Clink glass stained lung

Spit out

Bathroom sink

Crusted bowl

Rinse, gargle, pink

Veins in the whites

Of your eyes

Wait -

One other kink

You stopped popping gink o

Biloba and got smashed at the ice rink

She slid over

Our blades tinked

High C

Cutting the sleeve

Of her shrink mothers mink

Just a thin slice

Open on her arm

Weeping warm zinc

That's the link

In the ink