Undefeated

Undefeated

He likes quality porn and
his Mum’s roast dinner.
Action films and Top Gear.

He likes pork scratchings
and Thursday quiz nights.
The pool league
and the darts team.
(Undefeated.)

He’s a proud regular,
got his own barstool.
(No one would dare.)
Knows everyone:
who they are, who they do.
(Barmaids are all called “love”.)
Lager appears, with winks,
continuous. He leers a chaser
of cleavage with every pint.

Used to be a local legend:
a hero in the Sunday league.
Doesn’t play these days.
It’s a knee thing.
Still, people don’t forget.

He doesn’t smile in photos:
blank-face Ross Kemp stare.
Moody eyebrow frown.
Birds love it.

He conceals his receding:
keeping clipper-cut close.
Though he knows it’s a sign
of virility. He proves it
most weekends,
out the back, by the bins.
Brewer’s droop? Not him.

Then Sunday night, it’s family night.
Arm-locking the wife at the bar.
(“Her indoors”, “the ball and chain.”)
Her grin creaks veneers of happiness.
He buys her a vodka, spoiling
his (Sunday only) “Princess”.
The kids at home with their Nan.
He’s The Man.
(Undefeated.)

Technicolour

Technicolour

I muse in turquoise, fractured blues.
Backstroke, swiping through my
swimming pool composure.
Silver knives to bubbles.

Some nights I whine in red,
grape-trodden, foot-bled.
Sometimes white, acid-tongued
virginity reflux. Heartburn.
Screw-top, easy open.
Amber is spiritual.
Heavy glass thump down
and clouding out
to morning grey coughs.

Purple is prose. Indelibly bad.
Cringe-missives. Biro-stained
and shifty-fingered.
Cigarettes and snotty-nostrils.
Blotting and clotted
with wrong-fed hope.

Pink is a high whooshing, a rush,
for not thinking: a push from the wall.
Gnawed lips and raw feet
from skipping on bubblegum.
Coldsores and carnations.
Prawns on the turn.
Bite marks and Ribena sick.

Green for turning. Go.
New leaves and lush grasses
lying (new-mown) on some other side.
Recurring phlegm: infection inspected
in blown-out tissues spilling
into palms. We can’t resist
a gawp. A spit.

Yellow for maybe.
Custard and baby poo.
Black for November
and No.

Violet

Violet

Vodka hits with vixen’s kick,
spreads warm through guts
like a new bruise blooming

violet. Vitriol’s angry acidity,
chemical reaction raising veins.
Something gone wrong, curdling

a deviant tongue. Antidote vials
a soiled daydream away. Cold
bathroom tiles. Velour turned

to razorblades. Ovation of one,
she sways virgin-toed to cracked
mirrors. She’d vote for death’s

sticky veil for her head. Spiteful
valuation and found out. She is
the vilest things. Inevitable vomit:

force it all back, back, back.
Back down, back off, back out.
Sour evergreen, never varies.

 

Ice Cream And Bite Cream

Ice Cream And Bite Cream

Ice cream. Bite cream.
Doped on anti-histamine.
Sunscreen basted,
slapped and slathered:

finger-smearing
our trashy magazines
our smutty beach reads.
50 shades of naughty
girls being led astray…
(Illicit literary shame!)

Water slugged and sluicing
to chill. Straw-slurpy pink drinks:
cherry-popped parasols skewer.
Crushed ice and additives.
Slush spills sticky dribbles
on our towels,
on our thighs.
We giggle,
mopping ourselves off.

Later, lurching to dusk
on dusty soles and
bleary terraces.
Tan-lines compared.
White wine glugged,
gulped and guzzled.
Evening fuzzying to
doze-tinged mellow.
Mosquitoes nibble
their aperitif
of Ambre Solaire
and sweat glaze.
We order another bottle
and some olives,
don’t yet feel the suck.

Sunburn peeling
past aloe’s healing.
Swollen feet and flip flopped
toes rubbed to red trotters.
We stagger and totter to stuffy
temporary falling-places.
And sleep, dazed dreaming
of ice cubes scraping our spines.

Break

Break

Don’t understand it.
You slate it. Life not
coming easy. Blame
her, him, them: get

a scapegoat to hate.
Stalk about placing
shame. Think you’re
an animal untamed?

Sneering and snarling,
your jaws grinding. All
seeing eyes, lost control
of the steering. Searing

bile inside, rising, rising.
The Man Taking Names?
Cold avenger, misplaced
pride. Want. Not-so-great

pretender. If you can’t
have it, you smash it in.
God forgives, so commit
every sin. You feel like

screaming, so bawl and
shout. Tear at your skin.
Get some attention. Get
fucked up. Get wasted.

Give him a good pasting.
(He’s looking at you…)
Stop thinking. Just suck
it right down. Feel like

tasting someone’s blood
in your mouth. Smashed
glass cracks under your
feet. Heat in your fists:

they’re only meat. Red
in your eyes, chest full
of rocks. Tongue swelled
with hate, hate, hate. Break.

Take The Words

Take The Words

He paces the room,
screams into the page,
scorching the paper
with secret, silent, explosions
of words he’s been swallowing
down with whiskey all night
and all day since Saturday.
Well, since forever,

if he’s honest.
(“But when am I honest, right?”)
Words he’s been hearing all his life.
Words he’s known by heart since
before he could talk.
Words he’s been hating and saving
up for a good soul who will know him.
Words he’s been craving

to get rid of. He thought she could
melt them. Dissolve them, smother
them with a kiss or a pillow.
Strangle him ‘til they choked
dead in his dirty mouth.
Make them gone.

He paces the room,
trapped and prowling.
He could go outside but outside
the sky is a chemical wash,
blue like toilet cleaner, wide
like a hungry laugh. Neon
to press him down to fall
between the paving stones.
He is not tough or hardy.
He has no roots to dig in and grow
here like a city weed.

She couldn’t take the words.

Swallowed

Swallowed

I am your new-turned leaf.
I am your blank canvas.
I am your good intention:
your virgin earth, unplanted,
untouched by the hands you
just washed of yourself.

I am your clean sheet
on your empty bed.
I am your frustration,
the soil crumbling through
your shaking fingers. I am
your inevitable hangover.

I am your corkscrew and lust,
temptation, lack of hope.
I am your pouring glug.
I am your first slug down,
deception of redemption.
I am your glass half full,
swallowed to nothing.

All He Wants…

All He Wants…

Whiskey-numb and muzzy, the room begins
to swing and sway in time with the lull of the
music, but “the boys in the NYPD choir” can’t
help him now: he could drown in Galway Bay

and no one would care. Or he could down one
more double and try not to stare, keep his eyes
from straying, pretend she’s not there – glowing
pink-cheeked with vodka and holding hands with

some bloke. Nothing bold or indecent, just sweet.
He could spew. She’s far too old to deck herself
in cheap pound shop tinsel, like a giggly teenage
girl – his cruel ear still picks out her soft-curling

laugh through the crowds, a sick homing device
that he can’t seem to tune out. With the back of
his head, he sees her wriggle and flirt the tinsel
round her hot, snappable neck, wound and looped

all jolly: shiny festive rope to choke down more of his
drink. To not have to think, not remember, not even
feel. She ought to know better: big, brash, baubled
earrings and that best little black dress? (He knows

how much it cost too and the way the zip snicks if
you try to run it too quick.) Next it would be reindeer
woolly jumpers, santa hats, antlers. A “naughty elf”
outfit from Ann Summers. Just a few small steps

from matching leisure wear. The bloke, this new one,
looks quite content. As well he might. Looks like he’s
taking home the treetop fairy tonight. They look good,
they look happy, they look drunk and fuzzy-edged. He

downs another double, wonder’s why he’s still there.
Her frill-suspendered stockings are filled for someone
else this year. He should leave, get a bottle, go home,
get wrecked. Talk to his dead pot plant, his unringing

phone. But he can’t, he can’t move. He’s in for the night.
Him and the NYPD and the bells on repeat. Kirsty and
Shane understand him. Santa won’t bring him comfort
or joy. Perhaps he wasn’t a good enough boy this year…

Ok, so this is for anyone drunken from the sight of a former love with a new love, which is always going to feel worse at this time of enforced jollity… Some of the references taken from this, my favourite Christmas pop song of all time. Ah yeah, and Merry Christmas to all and any who read this! xxx

Flood

Flood

Early morning and he is slurring to me,
drowsy with want, whisky. Last chances
blurring and merging. Every lost girl, every
surging rush of red. Every sorry angel’s cut

wing and crushed halo. All the empty, all
the strung out no-strings, all the hurt, flirt
and razored urges. Every wrong he ever did
cried into my neck for me to absolve. I can’t

make it better, dissolve it. I clasp myself to
his rasping breaths, arms and legs tightly
grasping to hold him still and steady, keep
him in, keep him safe in my bed, his fuddled

head cuddled against me. Shuddering to
quietness. Sponging up his bad thoughts,
plunged under the duvet ‘til it all goes away.
Flooded and diving for a brick, gulping air
before we drown.

Drink Up

Drink Up

Drink up – your round.
Thumping head. Dry mouth.
Going south, selling out.
Muscling crowds. Crap music.
Vein-rattling bass (in-yer-face!).

Ugly men in bad shirts leering at girls
smeary round the edges, with
weary chewed lips and aching gums
and a few squibs of remaining brain
breaststroking madly in the vodka
jacuzzis between their ears.

Oh yeah, we’re educated, clever.
We’d never be caught dead
binge drinking – it’s a killer
(no filler – Daily Mail or insert inky of choice here)
say the voice of this generation.
We’re not going to end up
screwed up, head-fucked
just because we’re

bored.
You said what? More?
Sure.
Laughing loud. Hurts to stop.
Stop to hurt? Breathe? Don’t.
Spinning. Grinning teeth,
furry tongue. Whose? Numb.
Cracked face, bloody lip.
Drink more. Want. Get. Glug. Another.
Yes, oh dear God, yes, don’t stop, don’t

stop now please. Please.
Old sweat. Fetid, ill. Sickness.
Knees buckle. Grazed knuckles.
Keening shrill ears ringing,
eyes stinging. Someone singing,
“Love Me Tender…” They’re quite good.
Wretched retching.
Gritty palms.
Concrete cool.
Vomit and drool.
Time’s up.
Chucked up.
Fuck-up.