A USED COT ON EBAY

Barely used wooden cot
in teak effect colour
originally from IKEA.

Disassembles
and assembles easily.
Instructions included.

Buyer collect
or prearranged freight
costs.

Dimensions:
137 x 66 x 100 cm.
Weight: 33kg

THE NIGHT ECONOMY

3 a.m. The striplight winks
a saucy eye at the chef turning hot dogs
on the hot plate. He shuffles onions
with a spatula. It's just me
and two other guys drifted in
from drinking. A television in the corner tells
in hushed voices, gunfights overseas.
The world never sleeps. Coffee. Teeth
filled with grease and ketchup,
bread and onions spilling down his chin.
He is three sheets. From here streets
take a taxi over the river
Flights are rising out of the water 
coming down.
A lump of mucky sugar plops. A barge horn
blows the door ajar. A bell rings.
The lads are getting bolshy with each other.
I fix my face
in a teaspoon the wrong way round.
Nothing doing. The lads leave off.
It's just me and the chef. He is frying eggs.

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.