Wednesday, December 05, 2012

kettle-mouth*



of all the things i thought i’d miss
i didn’t think i’d miss the snow
or you bounding down the road
toward me panting like a hungry dog

honey snow – yellow – bound
for melting & morning-piss cloudy
mouth-gas coffee tinted & desire
off the leash of normal loving

you’re like a day off school, lung-acher
spine-icer, night-muffler, & my life
is softer for your bundling in the middle
of the park in the middle of still living then



*A brand new poem written from my current residency at The New School House Gallery in York, responding to Helen Chadwick's Piss Flowers


Thursday, August 23, 2012

I WANNA BE UR MAYAKOVSKY


If I don’t see you tonight I might die
on Old Street, on New Change
at the old dyke bar in Centrepoint
or knee-deep in the marshes
shivering in the lidos the ponds
high on the heath or banging my head
off the brutal concrete at Southbank.

I wanna be your Mayakovsky
Bolshevik beatbox coming  
drumming at your chest your
dick made of stars pulls me in a
strapon galaxy we rotate around
on the DL on the underground
at the stadia the palaces we see
across a city filled with tourists
whose cash lights up the night
in which we dream with the window
wide & flies in to suckle
at our blood sweet & salt from
the ferric cup from which
we sip & come day we sit
to scratch & seep from each bite

& like an open window
I’ve kept myself ajar tonight
& like a wound that keeps refilling
I got buckets of love for you so come over.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

the way she bends


the way she bends:
like a sailor,
as luck would have
it. & i am
lucky.

on television
the starship troops
are marching up
to beat us to
a pulp, for being
found wanting
too much: a place
to live, to not be
sick in, a fair
go at it all
or at it all
again.

when i say us
i mean them -- i
am not there i
am with you, &
thinking we cling
to love in lieu
of anything just.

love,
one step down from
god.

dragged out beatings,
wreck of love's
temporary
dwelling, calling:
what threat is posed
by those who stand
for everyone
by kneeling in
copper nests
to feel the cold
smack of cash they
don't have? we have
cash, a little,
& are not
buying it.

being ‘personal’,
i’d say for sure
your love for me
is equal to
half of my love
for you [currency]

makes sense – i mean:
you wouldn't buy
yourself a present.
you wouldn't write
yourself a poem.
you can’t arrest
yourself in the
dead night or keep
yourself a secret.

& besides: if
i loved you like
i love my country –
if I loved you like
i love me you'd
be sorry. if i
loved you like i
love me you'd be
dead –
& what good would
you be to me
then.

Tuesday, January 03, 2012

Sonnet 101

why is everybody always writing
about fucking like me the more writing
to be done the less time to do the
necessary fucking for poetry

which is just as well when “at a bar” or
side by side alone & almost having
sex but in the end we change our minds ‘cos
work is early/harsh work makes you nervous

lines up the days & besides you don’t love
each other so much today as yesterday
& that dwindle’s dampened the itch to do
anything but write some stupid sonnet

frigid at the kitchen table no damp
itch to speak of no great love to leap off