HOTEL

It was a family room with four made beds
and three light bulbs that didn't light, a fuse
that had blown in a silent hairdryer.

It was home for the night. The choice of beds
whispered hints of sex. I'd never refuse
boys on the phone, hot–breathed as hairdryers.

It was a family room with four made beds
and three light bulbs that didn't light, a fuse
that had blown in a silent hairdryer.

LOOKING AT BEDROOMS

for AA

When I was very small,
small enough to have a teddy,
a teddy made by my uncle,
my uncle who went to prison,
I remember the white prison bars 
of my cot, and beyond them 
the orange billowing curtains 
in a very small room
in a very small chalet
in a very small seaside town.

When I was up and walking,
say I was three or four, maybe older, 
I was a very late walker,
I remember I slept in a room
between a bathroom and attic stair
on a bottom bunk beneath my sister,
and the room was so small
that all I remember
was the bathroom was avocado.

When we moved house,
when I was five or six or seven,
I got my own room.
It was a small room
that housed tank engines
and robots and Millenium Falcons.
One day we took the chimney out
and made it a square foot bigger.
Then I moved out.

My bedrooms at university
grew progressively bigger
until I inhabited an entire extension
with its own sink and coffee machine
and a wide blue carpet.

The curve continued 
from doubles to king sized beds,
first, second and third floor attics,
to skylights that stare out over the rooftops
and let the breezes in over the pillows,
cooling the red linen
and all the time getting larger
until it will become a loft conversion apartment.

But when I am older I expect
to open a white door onto a single bed
under a re-inforced glass window.
I expect I'll be helped
the three short shuffled steps
over the beige berber to the bar
that the nurse will lower
before tipping me in.
In the night, I expect I will wake
and feel the high walls closing in
and see the moon cast it's ocean shadows.

*The image is not a bedroom I have ever lived in, but it did inspire the poem. Thanks to Amy Audebert for allowing its use.

IT'S THE WONDERFUL LIFE

for JB

They were throwing snow off the rooftops all down Chippinghouse Road
when you turned the corner in you faux cat fur hat and muff, the one with the ears
stitched into the left hand side, and you were walking with a sunflower umbrella
held high and just a little bit behind your head so that your face caught the flakes
and it made it shine. It was 36 hours until Christmas and here came all the ghosts at once,
stepping along the pavement in foxtrots and quicksteps. Angels were singing
all of my dreams from the chimney stacks and attic windows. Every door on the street stood open 
and people stood in the doorways singing Hosannahs at your coming. At your every step
down the ice polished pavement, I noticed your faux camel skin boots as the streetlights
bent in and formed a halo around us. A crescendo of tin thumped with sticks by children
rolled down the road and one by next but one the houses exploded. Tinsel lit the air.

BEETENSON & GIBBON ACCIDENT CLAIMS CENTRE

for SF

The accident occurred at 9:38 a.m. 
on 19th October 2012,
outside Beetenson & Gibbon
Accident Claims Center.

Whiplash was caused to the driver
of the aqua green Nissan Micra.

A Ford Focus, that sped
from the scene, left a scratch
on the rear left bumper and left
side of the Nissan Micra, flecked
with vermillion clearcoat paint.

The car was later traced
to a teacher from Broughton
who had took the corner too fast,
being late for her next class
after attending a hospital appointment.
She had failed to stop.

She was charged with failure to stop
and fined £200, plus damages
and court costs, but avoided a ban.

A later civil suit, managed by
Beetenson & Gibbon
Accident Claims Centre,
found in favour of the driver
of the aqua green Nissan Micra
and ordered payments for whiplash,
trauma and damage to property

Everything was reduced on appeal.
There were extenuating circumstances.

A man in a white t-shirt,
who witnessed the accident
on his way to Beetenson & Gibbon
Accident Claim Centre,
told the police of another witness,
"behind that bench, over there," who ran.



Now with sound and Jo Whiley spitty mic technique: https://soundcloud.com/gavin-hudson-1/beetenson-and-gibbon-accident

BURRS: A DISAMBIGUATION

for RB

Stuck in its fur,

the cat was covered

in burrs. Chandler

Burr, who said queer

was like being born

left handed. Burrs

in the throat; R's

flipped and turned

in the Nurth–

East or the Norse

Borr, who fathered

Odin, war monger

and chief of Asgard.

Raymond Burr,

Ironside's wheelchair,

Perry Mason, lawyer.

Gore Vidal's Burr

from his Empire

Narratives. Burr,

the village in Nebraska.

Richard Burr, the senator

from North Carolina,

staunch Republicurn

and son of a minister.

Or maybe burrs,

tungsten carbide cutters

used in dentistry that turn

so fast a touching finger's

skin will flex away unhurt.

And lastly Burr,

a relatively young crater

on Callisto, moon of Jupiter.

Disambiguated in its fur

like meteors

bound for fertilizing earth.

POSITIONS

Do not assume the positions 

of tops and bottoms 

based on their physique and age.

You are not the magazine editor.

Don't think twinks are all the same,

that a lithe body naturally bends 

to the pressure and weight

of muscle hammering down.

These are non-tessellating shapes.

Not all bears aggress their otters

in the wood that masks with leaf 

and twig their transformations.

The Muscle Marys can receive

from tall or short or give it raw 

like tenderised steak on a chopping board.

Some men flip-flop. And some,

who once thundered like showers of gold

onto submissive TS's, now retreat

to murky, watery holes in the guise

of lobsters who have lost their claws.

ECHOLOCATION

for SM

This was our way of keeping in touch.
Touching base with the time.
The time I had woken before sunrise.
Sunrise today is at 07.33.
At 07.33 you were frying eggs.
Eggs were eaten at 08.10.
08.10 in two separate counties.
Counties that yawned the country open.
Open the curtains, 08.22.
08.22, clocking off.
Off into the day like a train.
Trains of thought that spirograph back.
Back out and back into the dusk.
Dusk, 16.14, and a prayer to home.
Home, where it is just gone sunset.
Sunset today is 16.36.
16.36 and I go outside and watch bats.
Bats echolocate here and in Yorkshire.
In Yorkshire are you hearing this?

ASH

The nursery was plagued
with white and black flecks
on the tender skins.
They had not hardened to bark.
The fingers had shed their leaves
and the limbs had shrunk.
Stumped to obscure shapes.

They tried burning the bodies,
but the disease spread flies
through the forest
of sparks and smoke.
Everywhere foxes and rabbits
squealed from the spiral.
The charred witness of the trees.

IMAGINE THE MOON

Imagine being up there.
Imagine picking up handfuls of it.
The trip of a lifetime. 
Imagine the white cold sands
on the shore of the sea of tranquility.
Imagine losing fifteen stone
to weightless drifting. Imagine your ship
anchored to a meteorite cut crater.
Imagine the dark side.
Imagine the silence out there.
Imagine a telephone that never rings.

Think of a porch at midnight
in the country
without crickets or fireflies
and your muttering and clenching
and unclenching your fists.
Imagine the moon.
Imagine yourself imagining it.

IN CLAY WOOD

24/11/2012

Masonry tumbles like trees

at the halt of the treeline

that darkens the crumbling

stone into leaf mould.

Ivy choked stumps reach up

from the thorned net

of brambling snares that catch

rabbits and leverets and walkers.

The city is nowhere to here,

it's another turn and stile

that goes deep into sludge piles,

another puddle to drown in.

ROCKETS

In Jerusalem they could see the flashes

of the fireworks they volleyed

at Palestine. They were Roman

Candles, Catherine Wheels and Air Bombs.

I counted four traffic light flares that returned

over the border towards the Knesset;

red — amber — green — amber.

The upturned faces burned in the afterglow.

WEEKEND

These are just blokes drinking on a Friday afternoon

after getting off work early after working like pigs

at something they’re pig sick of. This is where they let

rockets off to the moon, where the moon glows

in fruit machine flashes and flashes of tempers burst

like fireworks bursting, obliterating the stars.

The stars are all over the pavement. The pavement

is strewn with celestial beings and extra-terrestrials.

Angels and extra-terrestrials are singing, singing

alleluias from every street corner. A busker is singing

in excelcis deo on every street corner in town.

The shout goes up and is hoisted aloft and carried

through town like a varsity rugby captain 

hoisted atop his teammate’s shoulders and shouted

round bars like a saucy joke. Their shoulders are round

where they’re worn like a threadworn blazer or jeans

in the knees and crotch. They’ve been on their knees

all week and year, a decade of prayer. Praying the work

keeps on coming after the weekend. Until then their crotch

itches at denim and nylon skirts. Stiff nylon electricity.

AMIS SHRUGGED

for JB

New York was flickering out like a faulty light,
and the skyline was tapering out like the fuse
fizzles on the opening credits to Mission Impossible.

Should you choose to accept it, even the Statue
of Liberty crooked her right arm and dropped
her torch in ocean, where it splashed and sizzled.

Simmering. The great beast in shutdown heaved
it haunches up under itself to winter it out.
The cash registers were done with singing.

On television in a bar where the neon still burned,
the English Professor was sighing his opinion
to the anchor in London who asked one more question.

Amis shrugged. And the world began to run
like peas on the deck of The Titanic. It tilted, 
gaining momentum as it broke and buried them.

LATER LIFE

for MH

Her fingers are fussing the big, green

button that holds her cardigan.

Taking pills to remember her stockings.

Getting dressed each morning

to sit in her chair. Her velvet mauve

slippers. A white crocheted shawl.

The television is silent as a wall.

Two raised stripes show she has worn

two bras, but no other underwear.

The clock fingers race and whirr,

eager to have the day done. The world

spins an axis about that chair.

The old–style bulbs fizz and stir.
It seems one is about to burst,
threatening with lengthening flickers.

Dark. Light. Dark. Light. Dark. Light. Dark.

LANCASHRING

for BC

Riding out of the ice crevassed rock.

Horwich, Buckshaw, Lostock Parkway

Every station stop is business.

Buckshaw, Lostock, Horwich Parkway

Midnight misting across like hail.

Lostock, Horwich, Buckshaw Parkway

My hands were lost in a mobile's light.

Horwich, Lostock, Buckshaw Parkway

Headlit motels at a taxi's halt.

Buckshaw, Horwich, Lostock Parkway

Fox eyes stared from a terrace window.

Lostock, Buckshaw, Howich Parkway

Railways unspooling from under wheels

Edale, Chinley, Grindleford, Hope

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.

PLAGUES

It was the machines that went rust
and collapsed into lakes and ran red
among the boat oil and chemical spill.

Sumped in the marshlands, the mayflies
were swarming with sex and the frogs
multiplied like oleaginous oligarchs.

They struck up the dust with the drill,
but it was their fingers that itched
at the bites in the sand grained heat.

Whether it was oxen or mosquitoes
or tsetse or goats or wasps,
we flinched some at hooves and wings.

It came from the lab and killed horses,
dogs, livestock and pigs.
The pyres released virals into the crops.

What we have burned. What is ash.
It is fallout. A snowfall of radium
that dusts our skin with boils and rash.

Strange weather that coats
the Statue of Liberty in ice and snow.
Hurricanes belching from cooling towers.

Stripped cornfields. Grasslands stripped.
The factories stripped of their guts.
The workers stripped. Stripped bodies gassed.

They shone so many lights there were shadows
in every direction. So much light
it was impossible to see through. Dark truth.

If you painted lamb's blood on your door,
a lamb died in vain. Man made the future
and it swept them aside like a scourge.

Listen to the poem here: http://soundcloud.com/gavin-hudson-1/plagues

ALL HALLOWS YEAR

I saw her peering from a black cab circling Seven Dials;
a paper-thin, powdery leer, a skeleton's smile

in a blue velvet cowl. I swear she held a scythe
and carried a burning torch that blazed

and blackened windows where it passed. Her ladies
in waiting were succubi, a swarm of flies

who stalked behind the carriage, stone-locusts
wearing the brick of the buildings to dust,

swept smoke blown, people going bone, gone ghost
after the funeral march. The taxi turned hearse.

Danse Macabre. Dogs and children thinned, scourged,
emaciated in the flow. Meanwhile the corpse, gorged,

fattens and bloats until it reaches the Thames edge
where it emerges and floats. The river runs black sludge.

Storm drains. Red and blue ministers drown in the bilge
pumped water. The streets are rinsed with blood.

AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM

It is evident that Christ and his cult
of veneration, that held sway
over everything from coronations
to making cups of tea is on the wane.
Just as superstitious as these Egyptian
tools for removing the brain
through the nose, or these crude Greek
figurines of Eros riding wolves and Aphrodite
spawned from shell. In the Japanese room
the tour guide talks them through
a miniature cabinet of lucky gods
and a fat, gold–plated grotesque that promised
wealth. It puts one in one's place to know
this earthenware bowl once carried water
for religious rites two–thousand years ago.
The thumbs can't have been no different
as they wet the infant's forehead.
I can smell the incense on his soft,
priestly fingers. And his voice, murmuring 
the sacred prayers over burnt sacrifices,
echoes through the museum 
like a drop of oil in a deep vase.

FOUR ADVERTS FROM A SOCIALIST STATE*

with Danny Broderick

*NB This poem is the result of very deliberate discussion into the future of advertising under a socialist system. It represents a pure distillation of theoretical formulations of future production. It is very serious.

Baked Beans. Yes.
Bread. No.
Eggs. Tuesday.
Milk. Yes.

MENIERES

for SM


I was helicoptering over the Gambia,
the blades whirling around my head, thundering
the dust up in windmills and eddies.
My ears were spitting white hot sparks,
the air cleaved open by the chopping rotor
and I was violently sick. I was looking
for something that didn't move. Something static.
The world was a tumble drier. Churned blankets
and clothes. A pile of rags caught up
in the agitator, turned. I was falling out of the sky.
Spiralling down. Corkscrewing pavements
and smack I was under. Diving bell deaf.
At these pressures you're listening through wool.
Movement is slower. You're floating
among the fish with hook teeth and marble eyes.


*update! Thanks to Spangle McQueen now with sound: Click Here for Soundcloud

This poem was comissioned for charity by Spangle McQueen. It is about the condition Meniere's Disease and the funds raised by the poem will go towards the Meniere's Society. I would like to thank Chris Packham and the forum members of Meniere's Disease UK.

BONES

for LA

I'm not sure if I love Booth

or Hodgins or Sweets the most,

but I think it's Sweets.

But I think it's Hodgins

when he id's beetle excreta.

But I think it's Booth

as he shoots bad guys
and looks hot with guns.

But I think it's Sweets

who reads minds with lips

like a pursed heart.

But it's Hodgins, if only

for Angelina who is amazing

and his baby. Sweets

for his eyes and piano

charm. Booth when his tough

hide sheds with a bourbon

and Bones comes through.

THE SILENT MAJORITY

I went for them in working class towns,

where I'd heard their curtains twitched

at the sight of an asian or black man

bicycling through the main street.

Were they a whisper? Because I couldn't

hear their complaints in the kebab

shop or curry house, the drunks

were more focused on Bhuna and rice

and the police were untroubled

by women (whose husbands were out

at the rugby club dinner) in fear

of their vaginas being penetrated

forcibly by Polish migrants with vodka

laced breath. Their lights went out

at 10 and 11 pm and they went to bed.

Silence descended on the town like a shawl

on the shoulders of a sleep-dead aunt

and the majority snored.

GIRLS I KISSED AT CAMM'S SCHOOL (A KISS AND TELL)

for JB

Kathryn Walker was my first in nursery
and again in reception, and once
in year three under a table on maths
rotation and three times in Lincoln.

I kissed Joanne Bainbridge at the same
time my sister and Andrew Bainbridge
were marrying each other via
a shoebox of plastic rings and letters.

Jessica Baines, Gemma Dodd, were both
girls I tongued under the weeping
willow in year five and Jessica Baines
invited me to her 10th birthday party.

Finally, Jenny, I think, at least once,
and Katrina Cooper and Rebecca Wright
and Sarah Bailey twice.

INSANE DOWNHILL BIKE RACE IN CHILE

It's aluminium in freefall
where the front wheel
bites on the corners at angles
that skirt the whizzing pedals
dangerously close to the rails
and it's all downhill
and down steps that tilt
under thuddering suspension felt
in the elbows, and built
down through the helter-skelter
of houses that somersault
along dirt tracks, a town off kilter
where dust clouds melt
into air and the rider is held
for a second in sky cleaved
from the mountainside
before the handlebars dive
terrifying coaster-high slides
thundering on through sighs
where the bike climbs the sides
of the huts, trembling at heights
before it veers off and decides
to drop down breakneck miles,
of rattling adrenaline,
sidewinding between tight files
of squealing applause, whines
from the brakes, skids, turns
and arrives at a finishing line.

FOR ALL OF THE BOYS IN YOUR YEAR

For all of the boys in your year,
who you dated or kissed with your
girlfriends at discos or on our
front step before our mother
or father swung open the door
to shower your tipsy selves where 
you stood in hall light, I loved their
expressions of surprise and hairs
downing their lips and chins with beards
that were adolescent, yet far
from the boys in my year who were
still in that acned, awkward, weird
moment, when the pubescent herd
turns to a million hundred
points of the compass and the birds
flock out of the sterile pastures
to search new nests in older hearts
by thudding, vigorous wing beats.

HONEYMOONERS

for S

We were Spongebob Squarepants in Love,
living in pineapple sized soap dishes
by bath tubs of bath salt infested water.

We were Blue Lagooned on a seashell ship,
adrift in the atolls of a glittering Pacific
moored to nothing but our sun-bronzed selves.

When we surfaced we were twined in kelp,
your legs knotted in my arms and our lips,
crusted with barnacles, locked in a kiss.



This poem was commissioned for charity. You too can commission one here for just £2. Follow the instructions:
http://www.justgiving.com/Gavin-Hudson1

THE FREE MARKET

Here everything has a price. See the snaking lines of men

queuing around the echoing hall of barking butchers

to cut out their eyes. £10 for your sight!

To cut off their hands in the slicing machines.

£10 for a touch! This is the desk in the entrance foyer

where you can humiliate yourself for strips of bacon fat.

£10 for your dignity! Kiss goodbye to that dress madame,

those plastic pearls about your throat. Here you are no-one.

Sit over there and answer that telephone.

These are the children with cough candy for teeth

and liquorice fingers, biting each other in piles 

like starved pups eating their mother. £10 for your bubs 

if full for my starving daughter. Smoked sausage, kippers, finny haddock! 

The ladies and gents leer from the stalls in the fish parlour.

They lick their teeth with oil slick tongues. £10 for a leg!

£10 for a touch of the flesh. Nothing is free, but money

is not the only currency here. £10 for your boy for the night!

£10 for your kidney! Here is small beer for your refreshment.

Vicks for the smell. Opiates for pain for as little as a finger.

Everything for sale. Come buy. Everyone has a price.

THE FALSE DICHOTOMIES

I drink my coffee with tea 
that is sweetened
without sugar or Sweetex 
and take it black
with milk, UHT and cream.

And I love with my heart
and my mind
the young and the old,
those eccentric scientists 
who blow me away with poetry.

We are physical, spiritual
existential bodies,
born in the celestial spheres
of blood and dung, 
and you 
are an open field.

IT WAS

for H B–W

It was failing at maths, sweating outside
exam halls, aching for sex, a faceful
of acne that wrecked my fumbling attempts
at boys. Some idiot said, your school days
are the best of your life. It was blind fear
in corridors and changing rooms, hunted
by richer, fitter, prettier kids, who
had the right brand of shoe and designer
jackets. It was the friendships I fostered
among those shadows I hid inside. It was
playing it straight for the gallery, while
dancing another life under lasers
and spotlights. It was Cossack and Freedom,
a lie that I told. It was my first kiss,
the first time I shaved and wore cologne.

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

FRUIT LIFE

for J M–G

I was an ugli fruit. I was a miracle berry.
I was a banana. I became a watermelon.
If the gooseberries are bitching, I become
a grape, a satsuma or an orange, a pear.

When my mother asks why, I reply plum
and kumquat. A punnet of strawberries,
blackberries bursting from thorns.
These are my fruit lies, my pineapples

on the window sill, shouldered by Lemon
Zest Morning Fresh and scouring pads.
I am a mango, a kiwi, a papaya, tomatoes
and you will not juice me until I am ripe. 



This poem was commissioned for charity. You too can commission here
http://www.justgiving.com/Gavin-Hudson1

HAPPY ENDING

for AG

The prince and princess were married,
or not married, or married but only by
common-law, and the frog was involved.

They were married by the turkey who lived
on the hill with a ring on his nose at noon,
or midnight. There were stars, or sunshine,

or rainclouds, a hurricane of weather systems
applauding the marriage. They were blanketed
in snow, or swirled in dandelion seeds,

or eidered in down. The frog turned into
a handsome priest when they kissed his frock,
and the dish sloped off with the laughing dog.




This poem was commissioned for charity. You too can commission here http://www.justgiving.com/Gavin-Hudson1

PHOTOS OF MOLLY ROSE JONES

for SJ

My boss posts photos
of Molly Rose Jones
in a rocker or on a mat

My boss posts photos
of Molly Rose Jones
in a striped onesy and hat

In a rocker or on a mat
Molly Rose Jones
in a striped onesy and hat
Molly Rose Jones

My boss posts photos
of Molly Rose Jones
She smiles she is amazed

My boss posts photos
of Molly Rose Jones
surprised eyebrows raised

She smiles she is amazed
Molly Rose Jones
surprised eyebrows raised
Molly Rose Jones

My boss posts photos
of Molly Rose Jones
in his hands in his lap

My boss posts photos
of Molly Rose Jones
see her laugh and clap

In his hands in his lap
Molly Rose Jones
see her laugh and clap
Molly Rose Jones

See her laugh and clap
in his hands in his lap
Molly Rose Jones
Molly Rose Jones

MEAT JOY

for JM–G

Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls
— James Joyce

The gizzards of chickens
are suckled with frenzied
slurps and the bones
are marrowed by tongues
that probe the insides
for gelatinous globs of fat.

Teeth that bit femurs
and ribs and tibias
are gnawing on ulnas
and clavicles, stripping
the flesh from the scraps
to be tossed to the pigs.

Chewing on claws
for the knuckle-meat,
an ecstasy of gristle
and skin that sticks
in teeth like gum
and spills down chins.

AUTOMATIC LOCK IN

for JB

Ten. You are trying to figure out if
you can spell the word crystal with nine
interchangeable tiles without stepping
on the floor. Eight bells need to be rung
to release the crystal. Can you see it?
Can you get it? No! Seven bolts need to be
shot through a portcullis at six moving shields.
Come out! Five strangers are shouting
through sackcloth flaps. Cut the green
wire and get out. Come out! Only four
lives are allowed. Do not drive the car
into the mines or electric fences. Three
crystals and Jonti, a com systems
administrator from Dulwich, is sat in a cell
in Industrial Zone. Time to move on.
Follow me: To the Crystal Dome! 
Two silver. Whistle. Come out. One gold.

MUSCLE

for AM

These are the smoked streaky back bacon men,
flesh pressed against oily cellophane skin,

sausages cooked to burst. Extra lean meat,
joints of beef, sweat on a low oven's heat,

tendons tightening then softening tender
under the striplights. Sheep hearts and liver,

all of the offal that fills out the back
and thighs. Cured, hung for months in a smoke-stack

or salted on hooks in a meat cellar.
Some say the swelling is saline, water

injected under the rinds, ninety-six
percent nothing but oatmeal and sawdust.