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.

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.

JAMES DRAPER EUROPEAN CINEMA CLUB

for JD

None of the boys in these movies 
are under eighteen in compliance
with European law, and none
of the boys in these movies are over
nineteen, and no-one speaks English,
only Icelandic or Dutch. Everyone
takes all of their clothes off almost
all of the time in these movies, and
nobody gets shy round the thermals
and geysers on those volcanic shores.
Sometimes two of the boys go off
on their own for a talk-scene indoors,
say a beach house or sauna, either
they are clothed, or unclothed, or
unclothing each other as they talk.
None of the boys in these movies
has a bad word to say about the boys
in these movies, and none of the boys
says anything dumb or clever in these
movies, and everyone is always cut
and clean shaven, and no-one is fat,
and no-one is ugly. All of the boys
in these movies do it for pleasure,
nobody gets paid more than the other,
and none have a beautiful wife
back home, or a child to provide for.
Everyone is single and happy and alone.