THE NIGHT ECONOMY

He sprays cologne on yesterday's clean shirt.
Another three squirts. Another can't hurt.
Downstairs the punters are bustling in.
The lads are oiled. It'll be packed by ten.
He fingers fibre through his hair and rubs
the scruffy clumps to peaks and tufts. He scrubs
up well, he does. Turning out the hall light,
he fantasizes the fanny tonight.

2 p.m. The bottle bin's crash echoes
in the deserted yard. The last drunk goes
singing out the back gate. He sparks a fag.
Spits at the wall. She looked like a right slag.
A cool breeze stirs. One more shift in the bank.
He imagines her tits spilled beer and wanks.

THE NIGHT WATCHMAN

I was talking about suicides and governments

and cities in foreign countries and listening

to Bruce Springsteen on vinyl. I was thinking

 

I'd been smoking for two weeks straight

and that was my run. There was nothing on the road

that night. Nothing on the other side.

I was worried for my friend

who was caught up in a friend 

they were worried about. There were no motorbikes.

The road was closed. The bins 

had not been emptied and my nephew was learning 

to stand. Some people were walking their dogs.

High police presence. Cat shit in the gravel.

A pile of books. Empty bottles. It happens.

IMMIGRANTS

The shores are overrun with immigrants, flooding in
on high tide with the boats. False widows
hiding out in banana consignments and crayfish,
bigger than the native species, invading streams
the length and breadth of England. In some counties,
catching non-natives is legal due to the threat
to the indigenous white claws. They hate our laws.

Off the motorway, bodies swing at regular junctures.
Flies dizzy the corpses and beyond, at the horizon,
a distant city glows like an explosion. You drive fast.
Your headlamps, worrying the country lane hedge-bottoms,
riddle hares into the road. You are coming Deep South 
to the white folk. Here, their blood-cross flag swears
something gonna happen. Somehow.

BONFIRE NIGHT

I'll turn Fawkes under rain slicked leather,
humping the explosive in a waterproof rucksack,
my dimmed torchlight making for the cellar.

My fingers thread the wires, red and black,
round the silver pins on the ignition device.
I've rigged the whole basement; front and back.

Tonight I'll exterminate the filching lice,
in their Armani and ermine supping their scotch.
The bastards above are parasites.

And when the fireworks blow I'll stand and watch
the bursts, the sparks that flame and ember
until Parliament is razed by white-hot scourge.

Every fifth of November I know they'll remember
that lions can bite when kicked from slumber.

JAUNDICED OUTLOOK

"His books often has spaceships in them. And those spaceships have extremely odd, poetic names. Like:"

i.m. IMB

I wonder if I will turn yellow
in space. I worry I will turn
yellow in space. I turn yellow
in space. The earth will turn
yellow in space. Turn yellow
in space. The kidney will turn
yellow in space. Gall bladder turn yellow
in space. My sadness will turn
yellow in space. A mouth turn yellow
in space. No-one can hear if you will turn
yellow in space. My bruise turn yellow
in space. My pancreas will turn
yellow in space. They say I'll turn yellow
in space. They say I will turn.

GOLDFINGER REDUX

Gert Fröbe. Fingers walking up her thigh
leave silver prints of perspiration, paws
that track his intention. With a hot sigh
her vulva opens for his gilded claw's
inspection. A knuckle duster of rings.
From the gramophone Shirley Bassey sings.

He has the midas touch. Shirley Eaton,
stretched and painted on virgin hotel sheets,
glisters in his afterglow. Half-eaten
plates of oysters, caviar and cold meats
glitter on the nightstand. His vapour clings.
A sparkling cloud of bourbon burns and stings.

From the gramophone Shirley Bassey sings.
From the gramophone Shirley Bassey sings.

ROMANCE

for H B–W

The problem was math. There was one
and another one. There were a dozen
red carnations, but the math
was six candles plus a rose petal bath
and italian food. Two drank champagne

with fifteen oysters in a station bar.
Work out the cost of brief encounters.
If Jack loves Jenny and the obtuse
angle is ninety-seven degrees,
what is the chance of disaster?

Love is the answer. If Heather loves
Chris, then sixteen hands of gloves
and a couple of rings, eighteen doves
and a kiss, or vows are enough.



This poem was created on commission. Commission your own poem here:
http://www.justgiving.com/Gavin-Hudson1

LOVE POEM (TO THE ONE I LOVE)

I wish that your eyes would fall out
and all your teeth blacken and your hair
would grow greasy and thin or come off
in clumps in the shower, where red swirls
the water from the blood that would puther
from your burnt, peeling scalp and your face
would turn jaundice and bloat like a corpse.
I hope you get cankers and lesions, pustules 
in your armpits and kneepits and groin.
I want you to pant, knocked sick with pain,
fall bent like a coat hanger in arthritic agony,
go bunion, go bone, a death marionette.
Then will I come and rub oils on your flesh,
kiss life to skin, raise dead and you'll thank me.

HUDSON UP TREND

I knew the Paris lines before they melted

onto models on the catwalk; furs, feathers,

leathers, synthetics, moulded round the tit

and cock. Models walking to me like a cocked

pistol. I was doing sketches of the patterns,

looking for codes on the front row; Anna Wintour

knew the crack, VOGUE! Her Chihuahua 

was a bitch in Louis Vuitton, always biting!

Somewhere among the waiting staff, a spy,

a glass of champagne and cyanide.

I report back on the future of fashion;

buttoned to the left, trousers worn knee-high,

sartorial semaphore, scuffed shoes.

HUDSON GOES DARK

They gave me my orders over coffee or spritzers
in a cafe or nightclub in Skopje or Sitges.


I took off my shoes at the border of Mexico or Laos,
thought the Feds or the KGB had bugged my penis or mouth,


threw my credit cards or passports in the Po or the Nile,
hid my name or my age under floorboards or tiles


in a Motel or caravan in Skegness or Cape Town,
dyed my hair or my skin scarlet or fox brown.


I was Jones. I was Stetson. I wore pistols or poesies,
meeting women or misters in dark raincoats or false noses.


I shrugged off my past like an accusation or shawl
and I faked every email or meant every call


to the bureau or cops or my wife or my rents,
and I fooled them or proved them as straight or bent.

ELIOT REFRACTED

At the violet hour other echoes

inhabit the garden; a voice that was broken

with sorrow — a tedious argument of insidious intent.

After the event he wept, forgot

the cry of gulls and the deep sea swell

and, clawing at the pillow slip,

Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith,

by sea-girls wreathed converse with spirits

and find themselves disgraced. The vacant

interstellar places between desire

and the spasm held the housemaid

on his knees. The undertaker wiped his feet.

When the police dog returned to his beat

there wasn't a single one left in the street

Q

Quivering indifferent object to a difficult sentence —
Silent plosives — Full Stops hiccupped
from a mouth — A period extending —
Piercing silent O — An exclamation of pain
in parenthesis — An O ripped open — Verbs
blistering on skin — A hyphen — A hot spit —
Q — Subject too awful to name  — Three Full
Stops — A row — Formless babble — Freedom —


Q — A sentence — A repeated sentence —
Full Stops all over — An O Quivering — Q —
Pain — A Blister — Pain — Pain — An exclamation —
O — Difficult sentence with indifferent object —
Verbs blistered in parentheses — Q — Quiver —
Subject too awful — A Period — Freedom — A Comma

BITCHES

for MJ


Bitches don't know what Crystal Carrington brings,

throwing fierce, diamond sharp nails and rings

packed with sapphire and ruby. Don't know Alexis

swings slaps like Liz Taylor drops affadavits

in cuckolded laps, demanding divorce on the grounds

of fabulousness. Bette Davis wore smiles and gowns
as she kicked clumps of hair from Joan Crawford's
crown. Bitch is a trick of the voice. It is heard
in the glittering lilts of drag queens and fags
that spit feather boas and pearls. We aint WAGs.
We aint fascinated by Gucci bags or footballers' packs.
We love Joan Rivers dissing Ellen Degeneres' slacks.
We were whelped in the forties from Judy's cunt
and, since, Liza and I have been feasting on runts.