PAUL

He is on the phone to Paul,
keeping his conversation all quiet like.
There is a lot he don't know,
that he mumbles.
He wants him to get his ears pierced,
these little lobes.
He wants him to go holes in his ears
and go down to Hull.

He is so young and beautiful
I want to have sex with him.
I want to be all over his bones
and nibble
them small lobes.
I want to go all holes with him
and go down to Hull with him.
To hell with Paul
whoever Paul is.

MASTURBATING AT THE GRAVE OF SYLVIA PLATH

It's something to fill the hours
this poetry stuff
at the grave of Sylvia Plath -
notebook in one hand,
a bottle of fizz in the other
or is that Jim Morrison?
or was that a can of Tennent's Super?

Eventually it gets hard
in your lap. It is damp.
Soon you will have to unbutton
and get it done.
No-one looking.
It is Keith Moon on that gravestone.
You are a teenager again,
a right proud arse on you,
red as a baboon.

WEIGHT

A heaviness has sunk into me
like an old armchair. This austerity
has been gaining pounds
since the crash in the Middle East.
Now, if I try to lift myself,
it is like I am coming from a deep floor,
up through an ocean of my thought
and it is dark and I am changing.

Now it is time to decide
who to be. The closet is open
and the monsters are knives out
in the night at my throat.
I have a wasp wing. A lion claw.
Pressure rings in me
like a bullet in an oil drum.
I can feel my evil thrum.

It is hard to love. Love is hard.
Love is a fossil inside a rock
and the rock is hard
Love is hammer now. Love is anger.
Love is a broken tool. A split shaft.
Love is a stone. Love is dust.
Now it's a breeze. Now it's blown
Everything is broke.

ANTHONY MARTINEZ BY PHILIP-LORCA DICORCIA

Anthony Martinez
23 years old
Auburn CA
$30

Met at Pink's
Blew him in the restroom
Fucked me

he said he was going to go
get a hot-dog
with extra mustard
and some blow

Had been with women
Get checked November
Call Nov. 13th

MIKE MILLER BY PHILIP-LORCA DICORCIA

Mike Miller, 24 years old
ALLENTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA, $25

One of my games -
two telephones
in an abandoned diner
and he picks
the left receiver.

I whisper
him undressed -
his shirt, his jeans, his socks.

From the hotel across the street
I watch him work
his soft cock hard
through Eschenbachs.
I talk him off.

And he hangs up on me.

He'll find 25 bucks in the coin return slot.

SAVING THE LANGUAGE

Cunt. A word that's under threat
from overuse.
I'd like to save it for the Cunt
that thumped his door
through at sunrise on Friday morning,
and the Cunt that flashed the warrant.
The Cunt that held the gun
to his head
as he knelt,
fingers interlaced behind his head.

The Cunts that put him up
at Her Majesty's Pleasure <Cunt>
without her medication.
That Cunt doctor that prescribed it
and kept his gob shut.

What about the pilot? Cunt.
That warmed the engine
while fifty shivering fuckers
shivered - frightened
in the terminal at Heathrow.
No Cunt asked to see their passport,
they just waved them through,
the Cunts.

But funnily enough, I wondered
did some daft Cunt stand
and wave his arms in English,
Cunting on
about the exit doors,
life jackets, the seatbelt light,
not smoking
as if they were all Cunts.

The Home Secretary
and all her junior ministers are Cunts.
Shuffling and signing papers,
not even reading them
or thinking of the names as lives
that live among us -
"Saving the English."

Let's us save us for ourselves
and not them Cunts.
Let's us save us
From them Cunts.

RUMPLESTILTSKIN

Everyday he'd turn up
and sweep
the turnings on the factory
floor to piles
and no-one new his name.

They'd call him Jud,
or little Jud.
They thought he were Jud's
son, but he weren't.
He didn't even know a Jud.

One day, he comes in
all quiet
and gets about his sweeping.
The missus no-one knew he had
had lost the bairn.

Afterwards they called him nowt.
Cut a wide berth
round the machines to avoid
conversation.
Nothing awkward like. Just work.

At the Christmas do he didn't show.
Sent a photograph
two days later from Magaluf
and a bottle of champagne,
offering his resignation.

A bottle of champagne
for thirteen men?
We barely got a thimble each
the spawny get.
Jud. Ungrateful sod.