YAN DAUDU

I did not want to watch pornography or boxing.
I wanted to sew or knit.
I can knit pornography for you very nicely
if you like.

I did not want to be doctors or construction workers.
I wanted to be nurses and secretaries.
I can construct secretaries for you very nicely
if you like.

I did not want to be self-confident and aggressive.
I wanted to be passive and submissive.
I can be passive aggressive for you very nicely
if you like.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

A female girlie club entertainer in Weimar Berlin

A newly engaged couple have a breakdown

Four fascist libertines round up 9 teenage boys and girls

A homosexual man is forced to hide his sexuality

An ambitious Asian Briton and his white lover

Two best friends living on the streets of Portland as hustlers

He hires a homophobic small time lawyer

Eddy and Stuart share two-thirds of a dormitory suite

A genius 16-year-old 19th century poet

His neighbour is beaten by his father and comes to stay

He tries to deny he's gay and gets a yellow label

Brendan Behan is befriended as a teenager

A 15 year old Long Island boy loses everything

A teenage hustler and young man obsessed with alien abductions

The owner of a beauty clinic and a transsexual

A group of New Yorkers caught up in their sexual milieu

The story of Harvey Milk

His typical days in 1960s Los Angeles

His most famous poem is illustrated in animation

Russell heads out to a gay club

RENT

£4.75 on the taxi meter
River Phoenix only got blown the once
Joseph Gordon Levitt never feared AIDS
Nobody loved you more than I did
Keep coming back bring your friends
Count the twenties into my hand before
This place costs £300 a month each
Outcalls need to cover expenses
He'll get me jobs for a 10% cut
Where do you think I got the money for this
River Phoenix paid the bills
Do you want me to wash after football
The ibroprufen are in the bathroom cabinet
The paracetamol are in the bathroom cabinet
I always keep a knife in this third drawer down
I never leave the meter running
I'll fuck you like they do in the movies
I can earn a week's rent in 45 minutes
Paying for sex isn't tax deductible
If you like we could get a hotel room
The best trick I had fed me coke and Champagne
Two is OK but five can get heavy
Anything kinky is extra
Joseph Gordon Levitt pretended to get fucked
The razors are in the bathroom cabinet
Not all of this happens under cover of nightfall
I keep my money in the locked top drawer
There are some things even I won't do
River Phoenix never got rimmed
Pick some porn from the pile in the corner
I always keep a knife in this third drawer down

CRUISING

for SM

The two of us, here, playing thugs.

Let's get roughed up behind the bank.

We'll bruise ourselves with shame and lust.

You can leave your wedding ring on

and I'll play pussy. Drop these masks

like trousers. Now we are real men.

Afterwards, you'll tuck your shirt in

to your still damp crotch, wipe your hand

on the brick. I'll rub the bite mark

on my cheek and worry what I'll...

We never exchange names, just shrugs.

We melt to life, anonymous.

Image taken from this excellent blog: here

BLOODLINES

What r u into? Do you

do bb? 

Only with guys I know.

Not on the first time.

Only with guys who will.

The flesh in the flesh

in the blood

and the blood.

We must not judge.

BUNNY, DARLING!

for BC

Bunny, darling! You simply can't
tell me it's a prima facie
observation of domestic violence.
The man was loops; it's a grotesque.
And nobody will tell me what I can
or cannot laugh at in a theatre.

Bunny, darling! I don't care
if Hugh Jackman sings delightful
and the lyric's magical.
It isn't canon. It's not the repertoire.
It's not the repertoire, sweety.

Bunny, darling! Don't you dare
pretend you didn't squeal
when the "ugly brothers" licked
their hands and stuck them
down their shorts. Bunny,
Bunny! Don't you dare pretend!

Bunny, darling! If you need a shoulder,
mine will be in the third row
of the matinee performance.
Look for the purple salwar kameez,
the scent of Chloe in the dust,
and I will hold you Bunny,
darling, I'll bring tissues.


Now with soundcloud here: Soundcloud

ROCK

You did pillow talk,

keeping your voices low

so the kids couldn't hear

the sex. There was none.

No breaking of your vows

of silence. Doris Day,

marvelling at your straightened pinkie,

was in on the joke.

Nobody heard the sex.

In the darkness and the silvered hush

hands, fumbling under shirts

and projections, find a gasp.

Denim, forced tight, springs open

like a man trap. I have never felt

such excitement. The man in front

says keep it down, but we've come

and it is all over the screen.

THE FAMOUS JOKE

after QC

I don't like peas
and I'm glad I don't like peas
because if I liked them I'd eat them
and I hate peas.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I WAS A GARETH GATES FAN

for JD

I was just like my grandmother,
phoning for both in case either

would lose. She'd told me she'd rung up
eight times, and each time a flip-flop

decision as who was her Pop 
Idol. I plumped for the young pup

who stammered and looked like cute sex,
and voted the once more. My ex

was indifferent and said both my
Nanna and I were insane. Say

what you will about phone votes,
my nan is officially nuts.

She'd gone for Will Young and for Steve
Brookstein on X-Factor. Believe

me, she's crazy but loves choirs
of stutterers as much as queers.

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.

THE JOYS

1.

I was waking
from dreams of the angels
to the ecstasy
of your breath on my brow.
Last night we wrestled
like Jacob and the angel
and today we will leave each other 
with the postman.

2.

The clouds were alive
with the ringing of church bells.
The entire street came out
to stare up at the window.
Our shadows were caught
in the net-curtain.
Our voices were echoed
across the estate 
until they were whispers.

3.

Bacchus chose olives and wine
over lover's breasts.
He loved the taste of salt.
It reminded him of nipples.

4.

The instant you broke
into sweat and gasped
through the steam and smiled
and exhaled, I heard angels
sing Gloria in Excelsis Deo.
Holy. Holy. Holy.

5.

Twilight, the Romans
are off playing dice 
and the moon
over our bodies draws limbs
at all angles and unangles.
Faith transcends
the corporeal flesh.
The soul is seen in the shade.

HOMOSEXUALITY

It is the law of my own voice I shall investigate.

We have taken our masks off, or so we are told.

It is known that we habit dinner parties in Chelsea

and the Tory party conference. This is acceptance?

The reds too will tolerate the odd fag indoors

providing she doesn't raise the prospect of enemas.

Douching is clean! Put on your masks and put fingers

in arseholes and the creme–freche, double dip nachos

and do filthy on the hors–dourvres. Here comes the thrill.

Welcome to the long slide into alcoholism and mortgages

and children.We can get one in Africa for pittance

and raise it as white and straight. God forbid we promoted

our own sexuality on impressionable youths!

As long as we rip out our souls to capitalise

on our lack of family commitments, the Kingdom

of heteronormity is ours. Welcome to Straightsville!

Get pensioned off with an affable partner who received

the Victoria Cross in Iraq. Live your heroic life with a hero

and may your marriage be showered with white feathers.

— Or we could creep off to the shadows, where slime

encourages lichen and silverfish. A single bare bulb

is removed with a rag by a hand that is fresh

from holding a slashing cock and is eager to be illegal.

ON POPPERS

Inhaling molecules of ecstacising death

begins the necrotization of the flesh.

An oxygen thief that paints tell tale signs;

the lips thinned to two navy blue lines,

and the crescents of ash at the base of each nail

where once was white and healthy. All

for a rush of blood from the heart to the head,

thumping in the neck. A cock, soft, lolled

and bouncing in time to each thrust. An arse

that opened easy as a tub of meat paste.

Orgasms that bump up against one another

like fantasies mixing with acts in the ether

of dreams that smoke from these brown bottles.

The final tautening muscle. The screams. The wobbles

that tumble us from sheets onto floors

where we gaze into a gasping air pierced with stars.

FRUITS

When I talk about fruits, I'm not talking about fruits, I mean fruits

in the literal sense as opposed to the metaphoric, fruits such as apples

and oranges and pears. Straight up fruits, not those, innuendo zested,

non-literal fruits. When I peel a banana, I peel a banana, 
taking the skin in my fingers and pulling it back to reveal a moist tip

and shaft. I mean to peel a banana and eat it. The long, white flesh taken

in portions and swallowed in lumps down my throat. Although, some fruits resist

being eaten with tough, hairy exteriors, though kiwis give in

if you open them up with a spoon first and eat out their soft parts.

In my experience, lychees need to be stoned and similarly cherries, 

if they're to be taken with ease and red wine at parties. Do you see 

what I mean? Sometimes this business of fruits is confused 

by those melons who can't find their honeydews among their cantaloupes. 

I mean fruits, are not that difficult to spot on the whole, only tomatoes

upset the vegetable cart with their impostering as french-dressed salad and not fruit.

THE LONG NIGHT JOURNEY OUT OF THE FOREST

1.

It was easy going in, 
an assassin's hands
opened the bodies like lovers. 
Decked out in black, 
only the owls and night 
creatures saw me
descend the wet path
from the moor to the forest.
Night ego. As in dreams,
they were mine, but not mine,
that twisted the rope,
snapped it tight in a crack
of rainwater and lightning.
God, I felt so powerful
breaking and smashing the bones
with my fists. I was free,
a howl at the moon that echoed
to morning. A crescent
of blood still crusted
at each finger's tip
like an unopened eyelid.

2.

When they dug me up
I told them nothing, denied
I had been there, never seen
those boys in the photographs
nor heard their names whispered
along the bar, caught their breath
in my ear and promised them
paradise. I improvised, lied,
gave alibi after alibi 
for each night they described.
I rang true as a dented bell
then fessed up to stop
their questions and accusations.
I pled not guilty on account of 
my diminished responsibilities.
My father had hammered
the sense from me. They weren't mine,
but his, yanked the cable ties
tight round their wrists. I was mad
at the time, mad now. Crackers
on account of being given over
to the state in my youth.
Violence and survival were all I knew.

3.

I go to the forest each night
to watch the man hurt the other men
among the trees. Night sounds,
rainfall on leaf dropped to sludge,
the insects bickering over fungus.
He is no different to me,
but powerful, a horse-high, at least,
a barn door broad. He cooed
them like lovebirds to his forest,
his hide beneath the bracken,
a trap he'd primed with knives
and axes. But he loved most
to use his fists, manual work,
a thumb to bust an eyeball,
fingers to choke a scream.
I cannot escape their visits,
these fascinating ghosts that shiver
under his control excite me.
His muscle, his tower of flesh,
trembles in moonlight.

4.

The long night journey out of the forest begins
with an interlacing of hands, a kissing of palms,
a step away from the dead. We will walk until dawn
up to the moor, to the lay-by where we parked the van.
We will not look back at the forest, its secrets,
but keep eyes front. The engine will stutter to life
and drive towards sunrise. All things are waking
before us on the road, blinking and not looking back.