Field

They find the skull of a sheep buried very shallow.
Scrabbling in the frost hard earth with blue fingers, like the fingers of lepers (the imagined fingers of lepers) These delicate fingernails could peel away unnoticed, embed themselves in the earth and lie, like the fossils of baby oysters. Like this field or wasteland is still the ocean bed.

Gloves might help.

"It's a goat?"

They don't know much.
One of them chews the red clay from beneath those fingernails, still attached. Little fingers, remnants of varnish, an organic green. A growth of lichen across some minute pane of glass.

If they hold it up there - the last grey yellow streaks of sunlight catch at it briefly. Then the sun dips out of sight behind some low earth mound, bare trees, the far corner of PC World.

Gone.

"It's a fucking sheep"

One of them sucks icy air over their teeth. Like the skeletal distance between a sheep and a goat is infinite, and the tentative mis-identification disgusts beyond words. Drinks something from a plastic bottle, passes it on.

"Probably a wolf got it"

- the smallest one says, cramming the skull into an overly full backpack.

"Yeah, probably" the others snort.

They clamber up the bank and over the fence to the road. They hope the bus comes before the moon.

Weather Owl

    There’s this thing; this owl, this very ugly owl. Like a cartoon owl – roughly the size of a smallish eight year olds closed fist. The owl holds some magical property. The glitter that forms a random crust over some parts of it changes colour – from a candyfloss pink to a bleach blue – ostensibly to indicate climatic conditions – but undoubtedly signalling something else way more esoteric and unknowable.

    Here’s me clutching at its abrasive surface, and here’s me breathing hot breath over it as I cradle it in cupped palms. I’m using it as some kind of oracle. I don’t know what I’m asking it - something dumb probably.

    After some time it turns this kind of sludgy purple and I lose interest.

Snow Angels

You say: "Be quiet"
Your hand hovers here, 3 centimetres above my mouth
and I kick you deftly, the glass angle of your jaw.
Something ecstatic,
your wings flutter.
"Are we having sex?"
"Right now?"
"Yes, right now"
"No -"

Work

In the morning, there's futile work.

"Work isn't noble by default" my babka says.

She spits on the pan to see if it's hot, or hot enough. I watch her saliva as it splutters, cooks, vanishes.

"Most work is shit"

We move this pile of rocks from one place to another. Both places seem arbitrary.

"It's a rockery" says the probation worker.

Nobody responds.

" - For the children?" her voice rising, exasperated.

The children are dying. Would I want to die here? Does the presence, now, of a begrudgingly assembled rockery make this prospect seem more, or less appealing?

Yesterday we pulled stuff from the river, a section of the river earmarked as a future nature reserve. The boy next to me talks too much. He's worried about prison. (I don't remember his name) He's worried about prison because you can't update your Facebook page from there. Other people might take advantage of your absence.

"I don't really use it" I say, checking inside a decomposing leather glove for the remains of a hand. He pulls some face at me.

"Cunt" I say, quite loudly, stuffing the glove into the pocket of my waterproof trousers.

"Tourette's - sorry"

I smile at him, weakly.

Bored

The forest floor is littered with hundreds of these bright, unreal looking Fly Agaric. It's really beautiful - like some fucked up fairy tea-party. I kick one over, pick it up and sniff it speculatively.

"Put that down" he says, frowning.

"Shouldn't we like - eat some?" I'm saying. I'm trying to sound seductive and enticing. My nose is running - a lot. I wipe it on my glove.

"No, we shouldn't" he says.

(There are no rabbits to dance for here, the hunters shot them all)

I follow him up the bank. My legs are getting fucked up - the brambles are tearing at them through my trousers and the trees keep pushing me over. I'm still holding the mushroom. When we get to the top I stand really close to him. Too close.

"We could just nibble the edge, it probably wouldn't have any effect?"

He's sighing now, says: "Just put it down".

Walks briskly there, towards the sun, maybe the car.

I watch his back until the trees close in, lick the surface of the mushroom tentatively - once, twice, three times. It tastes of something old - forests, ancestors, decay - something.

(Hush)

The sound of my breath - through my mouth and a sharp crack of gunfire.

I run unsteady in the direction of his disappearance, clutching where the wire wrapped tight three times around my waist cuts into my flesh a little with each movement.

Locks

This is a very small part of the novel I'm writing. It's 1872, I think.



 "What are you doing?"

"I'm writing"

He laughs:

"You can write?"

I curl my arm protectively around the notebook. It's a very beautiful thing. I took it from the chest made of dark wood in the hallway. The chest was locked, but I'm pretty good at unlocking things.

He leaves the room, he doesn't want any kind of answer.


When I first met Duke he said:

"Show me your hands"

I hold them out in front of me like dead things.  He sucks air through his teeth. A slight tremor passes through my right hand.

"Nice" he says, still looking, and I look at them too for quite some time.


When he wants to open something, a lock without a key, he bends down with his mouth very close to it. He whispers there, very soft and low, like it's a girl he's trying to fuck. When he's said enough he slides the blade out slowly from behind his ear.

We take a breath, we hold it.

He slips it then in the keyhole, eyes closed whispering still. It is a very small movement, fleet and modest, searching for -

Oh

and something gives.

My belly jumps, a quick, silver fish in a stream and we smile, exhale

Ah

only silent.

Green #2

Green

 Cold in here beneath the canopy, like underwater. A cavern in the depths - this viridian ocean overhead. Only the smell; vegetable bitter sweet and metal of fear or anticipation, something else, gives it away.

Two figures: one looks over his shoulder, like Lot, only it's his car, not his wife. It's his car for a while, then the place where the car was before it got eaten by the vegetation. Salt beneath moss. The other one tugs at his arm like a bell rope. Tendrils lick at his wrists, a vine beginning roots seductive and shallow already nibbling at the elbow. Or just here - the emerald ropes of vein , the delicate underside. Shivers.

"I don't think ..."

The first one is afraid. It's like an inverted Daphne and Apollo - an unlikely god , lust blind with these leaves in his eyes. The other one thinks he's some nymph, not lost in the forest.

(It isn't a forest)

"It's just here - look"

The first one squints at his watch, the dial now obscured by lichen.

This was once a building, now reclaimed. The walls breathe, secret names of trees carved there by fingernails, now bark. The other one flicks the seed of the stupid god against this wall, stands back gleeful as shoots sprout and engulf.

Or  hears him curse as brambles clutch at his shins as he clambers back to the car park  - late for something, chlorophyll stains on his knees.

Yellow

It's a sharp thing, sweet and sharp though - like the brittle lemon sunlight as it pierces your chest and and acid rinses your eyes. You try and walk across the room as if someone hadn't seen your cavities as a reasonable place to store their cache of broken glass and snapped off blades.

Somewhere private to catalogue your trophies.

When your stomach decides to show you what it was hiding it's an unexpected revelation. Slumped on the toilet like this, you make some feeble attempt to snap open your thighs and direct this sulphur stream between them. Mostly it just splatters across your knees, hot and bright. or drips thickly from your hair - luminous, golden, the yolk of some immense egg. Scorches and scrapes the back of your throat - like swallowing lit matches.

Shake your hand and there's a vibrant arc across the wall.

Then you're coughing - scratch and ugh - try to stifle it because something threatens to give. Whatever maintains the difference between inside and out seems feeble and compromised. A delicate blind of parchment or preserved human skin drawn tight over a bright window and the light fizzes out - like a cigarette on the slick, wet skin of your belly.

You retch again. Something insignificant splashes on the floor. Resting your cheek there you notice a few strands of radiant yellow hair caught beneath your fingernails.

Spilt

In the dream we are making tea

We are trying to make tea, I mean, but the pots are all inadequate. They melt, or move,or crumple or something. You're covering your face with your hands and I have a lot of tea pooling in the t-shirt hammock between my thighs. I am kneeling like a Geisha .

You've given up, I think.

I wake myself up because I'm worried the spilt tea means I've pissed in your bed and I don't know you that well.

Lying face down between you and your lover, the bed beneath me seems dry enough. This is pretty good.

05.03

Something we did last night prised open the insect-leg stitches that walk from behind your ear to your adam's apple, smeared blood on your pillow and stained your hair. I lift your lover's hand and place it carefully on my ass.

Regent Square

About 25 minutes to 12 I was in Regents Park last night and I saw the prisoner and a young lad standing up against the railings of the square. I stood looking at them for about 5 minutes, about 18 yards off. A female (?) and they moved away. They came back to the same place again where they stood before and I got within 10 yards off. The prisoner had a black leather bag in his hand and he put that down and unbuttoned his trousers and I saw his person (?) He caught hold of the lad and he got the (?) him. I went ?across? but I could not get quite close to them, they went away. I caught the boy afterwards. I took the prisoner. I told him it was for indecent behaviour in the square. He said nothing then on the way to the station "I am sorry for it". He was there with his person exposed quite 5 minutes and during that time he was (?) the young man. There was light enough to see what I have stated.

Prisoner got hold of me last night down (?) St and asked me if I would take a note into Regent's Square for him. He showed me the note and asked if I would take it for him. I said "no" but he took me by the arm and took me to Regent's Square against the railings.. He undid his coat then he undid his trousers and asked me if I would do it for him. I said "no". He asked me to put my hand on his cock penis. I did not do so. He wanted to undo my trousers. He tried to undo them but I would not let him. He did not say that he wanted to undo them. He tried to put his hand inside my trousers behind. he did not say why. I asked him what he wanted to do but he would not tell me. He (?) me twice and put his arm 'round me and would not let go of me. The Constable caught me and I told him what had happened. I never saw the prisoner before. It was against my wish that he tried to undo my trousers.



"What are you doing?"

"Wha - oh  I'm - uh - pizza? My friend is - [flaps right hand at something, appears confused]
Can I have a cigarette?"

"I don't smoke"

"Oh - wh- ?[frowns]"

"So - I'm looking for business, that hotel there.[points] How much?"

"I don ... [asks passing woman for a cigarette, smiles]

"How old are you?"

"18 [frowns] 19? ... 15? you want? - uh - I'm waiting for something like - give me 10 minutes OK - then I could - uh ?"

"I'm taking you in [grasps hold of left elbow]"

"You can't - I'm - uh - allowed to be here, my friend is (?) - shit. I'm not on your fucking list you know"

Shells

there's a noise from the books - rasp rasp
sweep everything from the desk
and it clatters or thuds or whatever to the floor
rasp - these claws of rodents blunted from too much
too - something - running circles on the roughened surface
sit on the desk, lie on it, or the other way round

you think you're fucking invincible
look, i fell for you. splinters

whispers something in my ear during dancing
or not dancing and not the words
but the movement, the act - moving the hair from the neck
this insertion of hand, the ear, the breath against the ear
rasp rasp - my ear on your crotch

I can hear the sea

Shave

M_ finds that if he tilts his head back like this - a further 90° or so - and moves some stray piece of hair out of his right eye, like this  - he can see through the narrow gap beneath the blind in the bottom left-hand corner of the window. A bright wedge of light  coalescing into something like form if he squints determinedly at it for long enough . His brow folds in on itself, these little creases of concentration. Look: a hard edge, something dark and solid, a splash of red, a blur of movement.

A game - like a mental exercise or something - forgetting everything he already knows about what lies immediately outside that window, then piecing together a new view based entirely on this very limited information now available.

The corner of a balcony wall, a flower - don't know - bright - a geranium maybe. A cat? No - shit - wait. That's what he knows it is - he's trying to clear his stored memories again but it's too difficult and pointless.So he close his eyes and focuses on some scratch of small pain - the metal spike of an earring as it presses into this tender place behind here, where the jawbone attaches to the rest of the skull. When he tries to imagine what this place looks like, without the flesh and skin and hair that it's buried beneath, it fades out into this crude, cartoon approximation of a skull.  It doesn't even have a jawbone - just a row of kind of goofy front teeth. He knocks his own skull gently, three times against the windowsill, to dislodge the image.

This movement reverberates through the rest of the body. The razor skitters a little, carves out this miniature pocket of skin. The man exhales sharp through his nose - like a horse - M_ thinks looking intently at a patch of exposed scalp on the top of the man's head. A beam of light from the lamp directly illuminates the place, it's like a pool of spotlight on some tiny stage - any moment now some scaled-down singer might step out into it and start performing. M_ smirks and shifts his hips some, the movement causes the man to make his horse-snort again.

"Keep still - damn - "

and the blade slices out another insignificant chunk of flesh - the man rubs at it brusquely, with his thumb. A smear of blood in a streak of foam - like some kind of Masai-ish blood and milk supper. Ugh thinks M_, mildly.

"Sorry" he whispers.

The man returns to his task. He's frowning intently at this small patch just to the right of M_'s pubic bone. The tip of his tongue protrudes just there, from the corner of his mouth, very pink. The blade itches, it makes a noise similar to this scratch of pen across paper. That other noise is a second man positioned a little behind the first, masturbating.

M_ falls asleep, sort of.

Island

This boat here
asleep or a close quiet thing
scoured or scourged
the imprint of hands or of branches
of a night spent in the forest
again

We set discreet fires
they follow us tight but invisible
and damp them all
with heavy boots
(our feet are bare)

"Why do you let him touch you?"
your finger traces
the words in your brother's phrase book
as I look over your shoulder
and smoke your cigarette

Mostly we say nothing
you wash me fastidiously in seawater
warm from the sun
both before and after you fuck me
a red rag stiff with salt

You pull the spikes of urchins from the soles of my feet
with strong white teeth
spit them here
in the bottom of your boat
you laugh in another language

Fall

We lean this far out of the window, smoking at some precarious angle.

Because of the babies:

"You can smoke roll-ups or spliff in the kitchen, but not filter cigarettes" says Aisha, with some accompanying authoritative gesture. Her brother narrows his eyes.

It's hot and the room is this thick soup of scent: babyshit and hairspray, milk sugar, dust and alcohol. Outside is still and heavy, this sick orange urban night. It's high, you'd think it would smell better. It doesn't. The smoke from the cigarettes seems like air-freshener, or something.

I breathe through my mouth.

Aisha's brother spits slowly thickly drips from his bottom lip; we watch it fall silent and eerie

Alex says:

"Would you survive  - I mean, if you jumped now - would you die, or just smash stuff up really bad?"

Aisha's flat is on the eleventh floor.

We lean out even further, look down speculatively.

(Our cigarettes are from Pakistan, we inhale and they crackle and fizz like a bonfire of Autumn leaves)

Aisha's brother looks up from the ground below.

"Try it" he says, seductively.

I like Alex, but for some fleeting moment I like the idea of him plummeting eleven floors onto a fucked up concrete courtyard a whole lot more.

Pit

They interview these children
It doesn't mean very much:

It's hotter than anything here in this mine
Dark too

Like hell?

[ laughs]

No, not like hell. It's just very hot.

The getters that I work for are naked except their caps; they pull off all their clothes. I see them at work when I go up. 

Fourteen in Çatal Höyük

There's this bench, near a museum.
Regency squares and office workers, old- school homeless guys drinking, or sleeping, or both.

CC says "What?"

I hadn't said anything

Three crows and these stupidly overwrought clouds trying to be ominous.

We have a bottle of shop-brand vodka and a carton of grapefruit juice. We take a swig of vodka, then a swig of juice and mix them in our mouths, like this.

At fourteen this is how it goes:

You wake up somewhere and check your pockets and also your face. Someone hands you a joint maybe - sometimes there's food, like toast, that you try to eat because your stomach is raw and sour.

Call somebody

There's places where they say: "Just piss out of the window, it's OK" (You don't live in these places yet)

You meet up with someone, if they're not already there to sit (or lay) someplace else and drink vodka and juice, or just vodka, or any fucking thing at all.

CC tilts his head to one side doing these complicated calculations of alcohol percentages, cost and volume. He can think in numbers, or something, but it takes long enough still, to make the shopkeeper nervous. Not so nervous that this won't sell it to us though - whatever the answer to these sums turns out to be. Like the maximum level of intoxication that our modest funds can render up. Something really fucking gross, usually.

These piles of change on the counter

Occasionally we are unimaginably wealthy with handfuls of damp and crushed notes. Makes us edgy and uncomfortable almost - like when you're very young and you find some money, a wallet on the street, or you take some from your house. There's this weight of anxiety and guilt that dictates the way you have to use it - as if your enjoyment of the spoils must always be fleeting and result in some kind of karmic kickback.

So at seven, you buy this ridiculous quantity of chocolate biscuits and you all squat behind some wall stuffing them three at a time into your mouths. Then you throw up all night, feeling like someone is crochet-hooking your bloated little stomach out through your throat and all is right with the world again. At fourteen it's pretty much the same.

"We could buy some shoes?" he says doubtfully.

Or three litres of Polish Cherry Vodka, one-hundred cigarettes and a bag of grass big enough to use as a pillow. We could take two separate taxis to the park and sit, with our feet in the river, getting unbelievably blasted.

This day is just a regular vodka and juice kind of day.
We sit on the bench clutching our ankles and watch the crows under the camp horror-film clouds.

CC is speaking, he does this thing where he hooks the ring at the edge of his lip with his tongue - kind of pulls it into his mouth and bites it and the flesh that's around it. It makes that part of his mouth a red, sore-ish blur - it's pretty hot.  He's explaining how you can tell what kind of crow it is from the way they interact, or don't interact with the others - it's more precise and informative than this, but you're not listening so hard.

This daydream - kind of mostly about being tied up in a trunk in the hold of a ship, but a little about some ancient city.

All the people live in these little boxes of stone all piled on top of one another. When someone in your house dies you lay them out on the floor and build some piece of stone furniture above and around them - then you can sit, eat or sleep or whatever on this new piece of furniture and maybe your dead relations can whisper important things to you through the little cracks.

A boy is walking past.
CC interrupts his narrative with this urgent squeak and an elbow in your ribs, draws your attention to this event.

It's kind of momentous because this boy is your current obsession. You spend a lot of time watching him at work. He works in this café - a kind of recreation of what someone imagined a café would be if it was - like eighteen forty-two - only they hadn't imagined that long or thoroughly, or some more realistic and evolved idea had just dissolved in the face of practicality. He worked there anyway, pouring tea and handing out buns and stuff and you watch him do this. He doesn't seem to exist outside of this space - you've never seen him anywhere else. It was like they might have shipped the staff in from the nineteenth century, fed them gruel and made them sleep piled up in the attic under sacks.

So it's momentous, but also unsettling to see him out of context like this - walking about like he was a real person or something.

You're kind of mashed at this point, so you throw something at him - the empty juice carton probably.

Later he takes his tongue out of CC's mouth for long enough to turn to you and slur

"I'm not gay - "

Neither is CC, you reassure him.
It feels sort of warm.

The clouds are still there - no longer ominous, just kind of over-acting, it doesn't even rain.
The crows have gone.

You close your teeth on his bottom lip, this familiar taste of vodka, CC, and cigarettes in his mouth, now your mouth.

you are not here

you are not here

five or six you fold yourself between the sink and the toilet.
you can't reach the bolt but you're a resourceful child
wedging the tipped back of a chair beneath the handle
this wad of paper - or whatever
in some improbable fist
(the small ghost of that hand flickers briefly
beneath the surface of this hand)

how much does it hurt?

less than when; riding by the canal
the front wheel of your red bicycle hits a stone
and you are thrown about ten feet forward over the handlebars
landing face first and skid on that face over the rough ground
a further two feet or so
passing out in a clump of nettles
and an imaginary round of applause

or:

this post in the yard made of small chips of flint embedded in concrete.
you climb with your legs pressed tight to the post
inching upwards with your bare feet like it's a palm tree or a mast.
from the top you can see into all of the surrounding yards
(they are the same as yours)
climbing down your foot slips and you slide to the ground
shredding the flesh of your inner thighs.

a reliable measure of significance, some chart or map
etched into the hollow under your left arm?
(painstakingly elaborated upon or furiously scribbled out)
lists or discreet badges pinned directly into
the delicate skin of your chest
somewhere (but not here) a child vomits, this clot of meaning
stuck in it's throat

Looking

He looks at me like something and I back myself into this corner and he laughs
I move my hand like he does
Slide down the wall like this; legs splayed at some awkward angle, not because I have to but because I think he might like it
he leaves the room

I am lying on his floor strewn with some kind of rubble and other things, smoking a cigarette.
I look at him with this extensive list of desires or maybe needs.
I am trying to burn them into the back of his neck.
"Fuck off" he says, without turning towards me.
"I'm painting"
he is removing the caps from various tubes of paint, sniffing them tentatively and/or squeezing them onto the back of then -based on some mysterious assessment of the results - he throws them either into a green shoebox or somewhere over there towards a dark corner.
I smoke my cigarette
only it isn't a cigarette
I smoke and feel this overwhelming sadness for the discarded paint lost to that corner.
later, when he's gone out, I gather them and I place them with some care in a box of their own.

His chest is bare and the tattoo of a feather curls across it from near the centre
just here, the place you touch to signify your self
To the right, this delicate arc above the nipple.

Something like dancing
an intense, damp heat and a bass that reverberates exhilarating in my ribcage, my heart and I sway against some arch blond boy wearing mostly white
He pulls at my arm, pulls me outside and the air is cold on my hot, damp skin. I breathe for the first time. People are smoking and there's that smell and there's others - like rotting yeast and sugar, drain and city rain. Around a shallow corner he forces me backwards, my feet disturb bottles.

Now he is looking at me the way I want him to. Like this arrangement of skin and flesh and bone speaks to him about something mysterious and valuable
I don't know
Pupils dilate, a star right there burns and then blur and when I am mesmerised then he falls on me.

Growls obscenities close into my ear until my knees buckle. This, and the bright pain of my arm forced upwards behind my back empties me sufficiently. I am a space, a cypher he can use in order to understand something about himself; blazing there inside me
I am still there resting in this empty space
"Don't -" I whisper, much too late and he makes a fist in my hair and slams my face into the wall. He looks intently at this work, but it's too dark.

At my home I sit on the table and he puts iodine on the cuts with a pale blue handkerchief. He turns the lights up very high because, he says:
he wants to see more

Gap

You said "we could live here probably" I knew we couldn't but I went along with it.

Right here in these fucked up bushes.

I don't care.

I could stay home and re-arrange the ornaments. Half a syringe, soiled paper (some of it dissolving) empty containers; polystyrene & polyurethane,condoms, some other shit,leaves.

Keep house

I drink a lot of water from a tap marked 'not drinking water'

and we eat some white sugar from paper sachets.

"maybe we should eat the brown sugar?" you say, like this is the healthy option.

Your tooth is missing - at the top next to the canine. I put my index finger in the hole and press the soft give of your gum. Something flutters, here in my belly.

You go inside to use the bathroom and hand me some more of the stuff from your pockets - for safekeeping. My own pockets are so full now that it looks like I have this weird deformity.

When you drop your trousers everything falls out of your pocket, you wouldn't think to pick it up.

I know I'm not the most reliable guardian of anything, but out of the two of us I'm clearly the best bet.

I watch you walk across the grass and then part of the car-park your arms outstretched like for balance, like it's not turf or a plain of concrete but a very thin wire. You disappear for a moment. I guess you fell over the little shin-height wall there but you're back in view pretty quickly, your hair this radiant halo in the setting sun. You look so tiny and unreal.

blink once and you're gone.

In my hands the latest cache of your things - it's pretty much like the contents of our new home plus this piece of hash, about the size of my thumb.

We plan to sell it , very slowly, to the people who stop here - buy food and soap and whatever, with the proceeds. It's wrapped in silver foil, like a small, misshapen bar of chocolate. I unwrap one edge kind of tentatively and take a small bite - it tastes of earth and some musky perfume - not so bad. I pull off the rest of the foil and stuff the whole thing in my mouth. It's kind of hard to swallow as it sucks all the moisture from in there and sticks to my teeth in little crumbs. Like I said, a mouthful of perfumed soil.

I go back to the tap marked 'not drinking water' and drink some more. Rub at my teeth with my finger.

Sit down again by our new home and think about my scrap-book of mining disasters.I'm sad to have left it behind:

A boy of 11 years of age, named Henry Sharp, was scalded to death on Saturday last. He was an inmate of Reddrie Reformatory, but had got leave of absence to visit his mother. He was playing about No 3 Coalpit, Newlands, belonging to Messrs Dunn Brothers, when he accidentally fell into a pond of water, which was at almost boiling heat. The alarm was raised by his playmates, and he was promptly rescued, but he was so dreadfully scalded all over the body that he only lived a few minutes.(22 March 1875)

I don't understand - I think dreamily, why the pond was so hot...

Then this overwhelming need to press my face into the soil.

You drag me into our house I think.

Screw up my eyes real tight and spend that night guiding you through a car-park littered with treacherous, boiling ponds and hidden mine shafts. It's quite difficult, you keep falling over and your medication is pretty much worn off by now.

You're complaining because I'm gripping your arm so tight. Your bandages are unravelling again.

But it's better than being scalded to death.

Probably

It's ten hours or so before I can speak.

"We should go back"

You look a little regretfully at our hollowed out bush, but you nod and we trudge together over the bridge to the other side.

Five Days

There are five days - I counted them:
(this part is very quiet & still)

There are: feathers falling behind my eyelids, again.
a small child in a blue coat
a hole approximately the size of a fist opening here, above the left eyebrow, and flesh, and bone reforming like molten metal, behind this fist.
a searing pain located about three inches above the top of my head
four small plastic bags, a bottle that once contained milk now contains petrol.
And I have no idea how to touch you, or how to not touch you.

At a party, you show me how to climb up the wall and wait there just below the ceiling, invisible. You tell me about a kind of spider that weaves a ball of web at the end of a thread and scents it with fake moth pheromones. It waits somewhere high up with it's lure dangling, until some amorous moth tries to get with it. The moth gets caught up in the sticky fibre and the spider reels it in.
"How long can you stay like this?" I ask.
"I dunno - " you reply,
"Days?"
Someone walks beneath us, they don't look up.

I find you in the garden stuffed into the tiny gap between the compost bin and the fence,plucking at your bandages. They're unravelling around you like sorry streamers or some disintegrating shroud. I'm trying to gather you up somehow but the confined space and your complete lack of co-operation make this impossible. I'm holding you at the wrists,still raw and shiny like skinned rabbits beneath the shreds of bandages. Your eyes are very bright and unfocused. You thrash about some and kick me a few times, in the jaw and somewhere else.There is soil in your hair and you give off this aroma like a sick animal. I keep hold of you until you give up and lay back limp and empty. You seem to fall asleep after a while, there's some subtle change in the nature of your breathing. I cover you with my coat and rest my head against your back.

In the car park, by the far side of a bottle bank, some man is fucking me.
"Take your coat off" he keeps saying, more or less insistently. He's trying to push his hand up the back of my clothes, looking for some skin I guess. I pull my hood over my head. You sit on the top of the metal box, moving your feet - sort of rhythmically. I try and work out what music you might be listening to from the pattern of your foot movements. I'm breathing close against the metal, and this breath smells of petrol

I watch you negotiate the hazardous journey from the door to the mattress, one hand vaguely sweeps away something in front of you, like mist or cobwebs maybe, scatters a little ash from the cigarette. The other clutches at the waistband of your trousers. There's a bluish and inconstant light from the TV.You weave a little, from side to side, as if these floorboards are the deck of a ship.It seems so epic that I feel like applauding when you finally arrive at this destination. I flutter my hands slightly, they're heavy and hot - that's enough. You pitch yourself onto the mattress and end up horizontal and face down across my middle - so from above we would make this cross of bodies. Large, transparent feathers fall softly from the ceiling and your hipbone is a dull ache in my liver. I'm sleeping or something pretty close and then I'm not. Your hand, with it's fresh bandages makes spirals across my stomach.
And I have no idea how to touch you, or how to not touch you.

Lyokha

The wolves would still like your children.
Leave them at the edge of forest - the ones you have broken.
It's OK, the wolves will fix them.
Beneath this rough maternal tongue broken tender skin parts to reveal a rough pelt
Tiny pointed teeth erupt from sore & purpled gums
He growls contentedly, sharpens nascent claws on the trunks of trees.
They make the coolest sound clicking down hospital corridors; listen -

tap tap tap

Let me in.

"He's clearly dangerous to other people" said a police spokesman yesterday.
this fearsome bite
that wicked scratch
(Psychological problems, but also a source of viruses and infections.)



It's really infectious, this wolfishness. The other children would love that fur, these strong yellow teeth, those atrocious claws; run on bent legs through the snow, oblivious to the bite of cold.

"We didn't even manage to complete the proper medical checks. We only succeeded in giving him a shower, cutting his nails and took some blood and other tests," said a doctor.

The wolves wait patiently outside the clinic. They make these soft throaty noises. The youngest one starts to howl - his aunt, or some other relative cuffs him sharply. "Be quiet" this means;
"or they'll get you too, cut off your claws and scrub away your fur."

The cub sees himself shivering naked & furless on the streets of Moscow, sucking vodka through filed down useless stumps of teeth. He shudders & flattens himself against the wall of the clinic, quiet & still. Shh

His aunt pulls her hat down low over her ears & sends telepathic wolf messages to her other nephew locked inside.

He sniffs the air & snarls at the doctors. Laughs this wolfish laugh as they scuttle backwards.
Nobody restrains him when he decides it's time to go.

They're afraid of infection.

"You'd better ditch that stupid red hat" growls his aunt as they run together, an invisible pack - looking for the forest.

He's out there still - busy regrowing claws and fur. You can hunt him if you want, 2000 Euros for 5 days - or you could, if we hadn't just made him up.

Our First Date

It's in the hallway and I am thinking of your place. Your place is some fucked up ghost train of a home. I turn your card in my fingers, a magic trick. I will not look at you, not ever - in this hallway or anywhere else.

A grease grey trail of fingertips across the wall there and this punch of memory tenderly, here.

I walk funny; my centre of balance is off - too far forward or something - so I'm on the balls of my feet but one foot is overly hesitant and drags a little. It's kind of like how zombies walked, before they learned how to run. I'm not wearing any shoes. I have no idea why I walk like this. It looks stupid.

Two fingers of my left hand - the third and the fourth - drag across the surface of the wall. This wall is an institutional yellowish - with a double track, smudge and dirt, where generations of third and fourth fingers repeat and emphasise the same gesture infinitely, carving an imaginary gully - some river-bottomed ravine. I am cooling my fingertips in this rushing water.

I turn your card in my fingers. You've written these precise instructions, tiny and intricate like the tracks of little birds across the snow.

I don't know what they signify.

"Couldn't we - like go somewhere else? A hotel maybe - I have money?"

I mumble into the wall

birds track smudge

My voice cracks.

"Because you're - you're scared of my house?" this semi amused sneer. You leave without closing the front door.

Some complicated potion gives me the power to decipher this code or something - grants me some protection from the terrors of your house - I convince myself it does anyhow - and follow those little bird tracks across town with a stupid zombie stagger.

I'm not so sure now.

Cold

He zones out pretty much with his head at this weird angle over the back of the leather chair. A sort of reverie - his teeth, the odd taste & the unaccustomed extra blood flow.

It's this story about ill prepared arctic explorers boiling up boots in melted snow, fading out into a tiny pinprick of nothing in some dreamy bed of ice and scurvy. The dogs might howl, if they hadn't all been eaten weeks ago.

Soon the explorers are all just so many little shards defrosting in the warm bellies of wolverine cubs, arctic foxes, or each other. It's night now and everything goes to sleep in caves or holes hollowed out of compacted snow. The paws of the mother fox twitch in her sleep as one of her babies hacks up some indigestible fragments of tweed and horn button, scratches and returns to sleep. Finished.

The story ends before whatever it is that's going on behind him does. One of the men says something derogatory about his feet. He's pretty sure that the soles of his feet have this covering - layers of dirt on dirt, compressed and shiny smooth like tar or really unsavoury lacquer or ... whatever.

Something tickles, something else stings.

A trickle of blood escapes from his nose & runs upwards, or downwards, towards his eye. He's about to wipe it away when he remembers that his hands are bound together behind his back. The knots are sort of loose and ineffectual but acknowledging this seems a particularly crass and discourteous thing.

Wearily he moves his head a little, as if to brush off the blood on the rough pelt of some sibling or other. Fragments of leather in his teeth & his paws twitch filthy in his sleep.

Finished.

Hot Dog Man

this child or those children
clutch something to it's/their chest(s)

a dog running scared and erratic a broken path across the street splatters piss as it runs.

a clapping game

low sulphurous glow bleeds out into darkness edges blur and refocus negotiate the treacherous outlines of this child or those children

a murderous clapping game

in a lift or maybe a stairwell laugh as limbs splay capricious and useless as a Disney fawn bleeds out into a darkness

his blood or my blood

drawn lazy and decorative across the glass and this mouth slurs sweetish breath of tainted sugar and acetone:

"I'm so hungry"

an overly complex and insurmountable obstacle almost - a ridiculous equation and a fraught expedition back and back again, a re-tracing, a burden

drop him awkward by the fountain, this untidy pool of malfunctioning shadow kicking his legs out of the sick puddles of orange light and he giggles politely an acceptance or whatever and mould your face into some expression - something vague and complicated like insouciant need maybe and present yourself trembling slightly.

"you want some bread?" held out like to a nervous but unpredictable creature all soft fur and sharp teeth

"here - eat it"

he makes some mime of biting and chewing like I have no language or the concept of eating is something alien and exotic to me although we've performed this routine together on several occasions

" I put some onions in - you like onions?"

a non-committal gesture and indicate vaguely in the direction of the fountain stretch out my hand

"my friend is hungry"

murderous children gather clapping somewhere just beyond the outer edges of vision brush them away a tear and a slow sensuous trickle of grease follows the vein pulsing here in the wrist

He follows this gesture with his eyes squints and shakes his head

"no - stay - eat it here"

he watches apparently rapt - this lacklustre performance of bite chew - thick cotton wool bread and slick stale onion sticks like sharp stones in the throat -and swallow, the empty space by the fountain a glimmering backdrop.

Recipe

you are in the kitchen making spaghetti head full of the most exquisite explosions some complete and cleansing annihilations say:

it's not a monster it's just a frightened child

head undeniably caved a concrete slab held 17 seconds dropped from a great height

when spaghetti is cooked it sticks to the wall

he is really hesitant at the threshold little radiant outlaw banned & barred now inside

a fine powder pollen or dust from the wings of moths you brush against him in the hope that some of it rubs off and you are over awed by this fine inventory; golden rum an erection a glow in the dark Swiss army knife a pocket full of rohypnol an empty reel of cotton

he shows you, more or less

tails you to the bathroom whispers from the door frame:

"my dad is waiting in the van"

and you piss this unsteady overlooked stream like you're in his custody and you like it a lot or too much or not at all

there's a van & you ride up front a sleeping dog in the foot well his sister her friend someone else with an ironic circus act you thought you saw one time his father drives with both hands stoned and over compensates with intense focus so you skin up for him with something smells acrid sweet summer and soft like the quality of the sunlight that precise moment

you don't know where you're going

he kneels up close behind your seat snakes a hand inside your shirt draws a nail scalpel sharp across your chest licks salt behind your ear laughs clouds you spill stuff it floats into your lap you look down for a while


your head rests on a tyre his knee jammed tight into your crotch he is wearing your shirt probably something in your hand you can't remember what it's for your head is full of blur and fog reshaping into a beautiful sentence about a hare or hares plural you open your mouth to tell him because it must be that significant but he mutes you with a handful of pills then regrets this generosity prises your lips open and reclaims maybe half melted from your tongue you smell music and hear woodsmoke

it's not a monster

you spend all afternoon peeling back the blasted concrete embedded with shards of metal your fingers bleed unlike in the story there is nothing underneath.

there is some moment of pure clarity amazed & grateful how competently this you gets along just fine without that you; something else (again) in your hand your feet wet in the sea splutters out into blankness and hum

throwing up some incessant stream of something so much and so long you get bored by this and muffled cramping somewhere there and the effort of positioning your cheek a little closer to the kerb he crawls nearby like tracking through the long grass or pavement and says he would like to fuck you but can't remember why or how and you might reply something about waiting until you finish throwing up although you know really you will never finish throwing up and there is a noise in your ears like a tiny helicopter

"should I put you into the recovery position?"

you laugh:

"yeah, try it"

and he laughs too which makes him retch and you both lay somewhere laughing and throwing up together companionably although he is very wet & cold

when it's morning sooner or later his sister says to the police:

"we're all minors"

you don't think it's necessary to contradict her and you don't visit him in the hospital you just go home somehow & peel spaghetti off the wall.

Meth

can't make him move away fast enough

stupid fucking gazelle

sobbing into convulsions
falling from whatever it is

"want some?"

blink; blink again
shrug

"you know - you can shoot it straight up your ass?"

I think about the needle
you can tell I am thinking about the needle and you snort:

"not like that, dumb fuck"

you scrabble through your bag
you throw stuff about

"like this"

you hold it up like some prize

although it's just kind of regular

"it's cool, you don't feel stuff so much - you know like - numb"
you say the word "numb" again because you like the way it feels in your mouth I guess

you start to say something else but it slides off before it gets anywhere:

"I - uh"

you glance at Early and another man (I don't know who he is)
nervous and scratch your leg
your legs are bare with these striated grey patterns like old dust and cobwebs

you notice I'm staring and rub at your knee, self-consciously
(what seemed uncanny is, in retrospect, mundane; the marks left by the large plaster that had previously wrapped your left knee)

you throw a cigarette packet vaguely in Early's direction

"stop filming him you shit, he's not even awake yet"

this is where I might fall in love

Type

I don't really have a type.
Sometimes it bothers me.
Mostly, I don't think about it at all.
I'm thinking about it right now - sort of.
Except I keep getting sidelined, investigating this mysterious noise.
It's a good one: a kind of scratching or scrabbling - like rats running between the ceiling and the floor. Their little claws scritch scratch over wood. Or - this is better - some Victorian kiddy ghost, a child fading out in a blocked up cupboard.

My favourite story when I was a kid was Edgar Allen Poe's The Cask of Amontillado, so I'm hardly likely to pass on the chance to investigate the potentially sinister origins of a mysterious noise.

I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation

is my favourite line; or maybe this other part that just says Ugh! fifteen times.

It's supposed to be a cough. It seems like it's gonna be this real significant part of the story, something that's the key to the meaning of the whole thing - only it isn't. It's just a guy with a cough.

Ugh! (x15)

It's kind of like the mystery noise in this story.

My friend said to me last week: "I'm not even your type"
Me: "I don't have a type"

I'm doing this really unattractive spitting thing with my finger and thumb in my mouth, trying to untangle my hair from my teeth. It's pretty wedged in. It feels like an unfeasibly large amount of hair, but that could be the mushrooms I ate several hours before.
It occurs to me that doing something so unappealing immediately after sex could be construed as really, really impolite - so I make a kind of demi- veil with my other hand. I'm hoping the uncovered part of my face looks sexy and engaged. It probably doesn't.

We end up fucking maybe four or five times a year. It's usually a result of some accident of convenience and proximity I guess.

(for him)

and I'm pretty obliging and not really - bothered?

This really pisses him off sometimes - like now:

"it doesn't mean anything to you, does it?"

kind of in disgust

" we could be - “he’s looking around the room, like for inspiration.

"eating toast, or watching TV"

he's looking at his girlfriend - she's pretty fast asleep though.

“I really like watching TV with you"

I say, quietly - I don't want to wake her up.
He looks very confused and aroused or something.

"I like the way you heckle all the time, under your breath"

this last is muffled by his cock in my mouth. I'm trying to give him this ultra-professional head as a kind of apology, but my hair keeps getting in my mouth and wrapping itself around my teeth and tongue.

Ugh! (x15)

My friend is very beautiful. I want to point out that I'm aware of this, in an abstract kind of way.

He's gathering my hair into some kind of clump and holding it there, more or less securely, with both hands.

That's better

Feeling much more streamlined and efficient

He makes this gentle noise; it’s like the kind of noise you’d make if someone simultaneously punched you in the stomach and put a really nice piece of cake in your mouth.

“mmm Ugh! (x1)

It’s nice

And I’m warm and present; although my left hand seems kind of spongy it’s very easy to classify this as a hallucinatory effect – it doesn’t really make me anxious at all.

“It’s like in your writing – “

“huh?”

It doesn’t seem the appropriate moment for literary criticism, plus I’m deflated some that whatever I’m doing isn’t involving enough to distract him from attempting it.

Should I stop; or what?

“ – you focus on sex – like – a lot – but then you’re determined to come across as – wow – uh completely detached and uninterested except in this abstract, analytical way – wait!”

He jerks my head back swift firm and I’m looking at his face as he speaks –

“why do you see yourself as this person who –? “

I scramble for his mouth

And cover it

“sh-shut the fuck up”

(it’s ok; we’ve been friends for at least 2 years)

and I’m glad my hand is over his mouth when he comes

no-one wakes up or anything

I’m walking off in search of water, careful, wavering baby steps. His come tastes all dark and organic, like peat maybe?

Ugh! (x abt 4)

I’m not sure if this taste is the tripping thing or not. I need to rinse either way.

My friend whispers; “don’t you want me to –?”

Trying to move away fast, but it’s challenging with all these people on the floor and the walk messages from my brain getting distracted before they reach my leg muscles.

It’s kind of funny.

“I’m not even your type”

Doesn’t concern me then

But it does now – sort of

Edgar Allen Poe had a type, I’m sure –

Scritch scratch

I’m inching along the corridor, lightly tapping the wall. When the nature of the sound seems to change I crouch down and scrabble with the tips of my fingers, a patch just above the skirting boards. Peel back the paper, the plasterboard –

There’s nothing here

I was pretty sure there wouldn’t be.

Just some quantity of dust – straw and plaster and old mortar, it makes me cough

Ugh! (x15)

- his type would’ve been a dead or dying adolescent, preferably with a vagina full of little white teeth.

Stay

"I'll make you then"

some intense stare right in close and I narrow my eyes, what should be a menacing squint
only it's not
and he exhales, smiles:

"it's so hot, I can actually see the blood as it flows to your mouth"

hands raised, poised
and I am lean but soft.
so slow and hazed where he is taut and engaged, energy fizzes through those discrete muscles swift information.

I will never make it although I am more familiar with strategy

(look one way, move the other)

eyes to the open door
spring for the open window.
But it's less of a spring, more of a stagger with these edges all blurred. No momentum, hardly takes me off the bed before I am caught.Right arm twisted here in the small of my back, a heel to my shin and knees down, cushioned some in these dusty pools of clothing. Barely hurts but all the same makes me catch my breath

flush and bite back that smile itches in the corners of my mouth, lips already filled with blood.
limp as he ties me arms outstretched, to the iron frame of the bed. one wrist; a blue bandanna, one wrist; a black t-shirt, slightly damp.

stands back beyond the reach of my feet.

"I hate you; touch me"

that's what i want my eyes to eyes to say only I don't know that look
try it - but it reads as something else.

"I have to go to Exeter, I'll be a while"

grins ands locks the door behind him.

electricity

full of electricity

I can see it, these crackling trails of blue white fluorescence across my hipbone where his finger traces some hypnotic and repetitive pattern

& smell it: my face crushed here beneath his arm tight, so when I breathe it must be somehow through him. this sodden fabric in my mouth and my nose full of his scent - chlorine and hot metal

electricity

this is how my heart beats: rushes and I'm sweating hot cold then pauses on the edge of some precipice
one - two - three
plunges irregular, breathtaking, bounces off the rocks
seems kind of resilient.

he puts his hand firm in the centre of my chest, like a prelude to CPR.
crescent moons of brown blood under his nails

(here I'm hoping it's mine)
(here I'm hoping it's blood)

he said once: "I don't want to have sex with you, it's too fucking obvious"

Skate

I’m crying, I think, it’s not very pretty

these strings of snot and blood

keep shaking my head, like a dog, trying to clear my vision.

It doesn’t work.

But I keep doing it anyway until it pitches me sideways, my fucked up face on the white painted floorboards. I can see these little misshapen bodies of dust beneath the bed; dust mice my grandmother called them.

I don’t know if this is the regular term.

I’m stretching out a tentative finger to stroke one but it doesn’t reach.

Blood from my nose pools in the back of my mouth, it tastes kind of gross so I cough and spit it out then – shit – I remember where I am

“sorry”

try and scoop it up kinda but then I’m just left with this palm full of – ugh
stuff I don’t know what to do with.

It’s not going very well

I look up at him and he’s put some kind of robe on, he says:

“I’ll get some ice” and I say “if it’s not too much trouble” only I don’t think it’s that intelligible, it’s more like:

“uhh fsshnuh ooumuh bluh” or something.

I think probably my nose is broken. It’s really embarrassing.

About fifteen minutes before and he’s trying to give me head. I told him:

“I don’t really do that?”

But he’s all “oh c’mon you’ll like it, I promise.”

I won’t

I can pretty much guarantee it, but whatever.

I’m roller skating downhill. I’m holding hands with my best friend, her name is Aisha. The surface of the road is made of gravel and the roller skates are the cheap metal kind that go over your regular shoes. I’m enjoying how this combination makes my soles buzz, then how that buzz spreads through all the bones in my feet and up my shins until my knees are buzzing too. Aisha is also enjoying it. I can tell. It’s evening in the late summer so the sunlight has this hazy and kind of melancholy quality. If it had a caption it would read:

NOSTALGIA

it would be written in a font particular to your own childhood. It would make you sigh softly and feel a little sad, but in a warm, sentimental way.

He stops whatever he’s doing.

“this isn’t really working”

His eyes have lost that intense but blurry look. He’s probably getting bored.

I wriggle my toes, my feet are still buzzing.

“hello – oh” he waves at my face.

bored and a little irritated.
not that much.

“I need you to be more – “and he’s frowning grasping for the right word or phrase.

“into it?”

I sit up and cross my legs.

“you could try being a bit – umm” I bite my lip, pretending to think for a moment. I hope it looks cute rather than retarded.

“rougher?”

“ok”

He doesn’t sound that sure.

“like this?”

He kind of pushes me backwards, quite slowly and slaps my cheek; only it’s not really a slap more like a regular touch only slightly – firmer.

It wasn’t really what I had in mind.

I’m smiling brightly, scramble up looking around for some – prop?

“no – more like this”

I can’t see anything suitable so I’m improvising –grasping my hair at the crown and – the mechanics of this sound implausible, but it works – sort of – I slam my head down hard face first into the corner of the glass topped bedside table.

Shit

something kind of – gives way - then fades out in orange and dark green and I hit the floorboards. I don’t think I pass out though and I’m pushing myself up on my arms.

I can hear him opening the freezer door through where the kitchen must be.
I’m wondering in an abstract kind of way whether it’s still appropriate to ask him for money, and if so then how much?

I notice a pile of CD’s stacked on the floor by the bed. Some of them are really fucking cool, for some reason this makes me feel about a million times worse.

What Katy Did at School

I am writing an essay about the Medieval Agricultural Revolution. I am quite bored/high.

About midway through I insert a paragraph describing – in fairly graphic and intense detail – how I have just castrated myself. I am inspired by a similar occurrence in Susan Coolidge’s novel of 1873 “What Katy Did at School”.

I presume nobody will notice.

This presumption is incorrect.

I am having a compulsory ‘chat’. I say: “it was a joke” I make a noise; it’s supposed to sound like a laugh

“Ha- ha”

It doesn’t sound right.

“It’s not very funny” he says. He is finding it very difficult to look at me.
“So it’s not a – uh – cry for help?”

He sounds kind of hopeful. I want to say “I didn’t know the university provided help with that sort of thing” But it seems unnecessarily glib.

He shoots a surreptitious and concerned glance at my crotch as I leave.

The mark I receive for this essay is slightly higher than usual.

Stair

this boy on the stairs, never seen him before.
that thin as to be barely there and way hazy, insubstantial.
but a definite presence and intimidating sort of.

there's no way I can pass

and stand very uncertain, first one leg, then the other.

close to tears for my third favourite t-shirt, maybe. it's a ball in my pocket, shredded and fouled. pat it for comfort.

sniff and swallow a ragged breath.

he senses the noise or the movement or something and looks up at me, he says:

"is K there?"

only he uses his proper name, it doesn't even begin with K. and I jump the railing and fall way down into the dark stairwell.
except I don't, I just shake my head

we ran out of water the beginning of the third week drink turtle blood salt water enemas lips crack, bleed, scab, crack again

he frowns, his hair some halo under the skylight bright and indescribably profound. I think he is speaking.
watch his mouth intently, it's very beautiful.

his brother, his school, some car, the police

something

I wait politely until i guess he's finished:

"we should go get a drink" I say

Guitar Hero

Emil is talking at some great length about how great his band is or how cute or how like something else i don't catch the name of I'm punching myself in the side of the head mentally so i don't zone out and can keep making little affirmative noises "mm hmm" and keep my eyes at least partially there. I find my broken tooth with my tongue push hard then kind of clamp down with my top teeth. it's hard to explain but it feels very intense and makes me jolt, like i just got cattle prodded.

I would really like to leave now but K is sending me this meaningful glance and tapping the place on his wrist where a watch would be if he ever wore a watch.

personally i can't see why the juxtaposition would be that great or interesting.

"he looks just like your guitar hero avatar" slurred in my ear ten minutes before.

"he DOES NOT" i reply, probably the most forceful thing i've ever said to him and shiver a little in sweet anticipation of some retribution that unfortunately doesn't happen. My guitar hero avatar is called KITTEN he has the same trousers as me but the resemblance pretty much ends there - physically i am about as close to being in love with him as i have ever been to anybody, psychically i realise this is a bit fucked up.

the steps between 'listening' to Emil here and getting him to come back to the hotel to play the role of KITTEN in whatever scenario K has planned for that afternoon seem over complicated and boring.

I yawn and swallow a little of the blood from my tooth.
I wonder half-heartedly if I win out in the end?

I Don't Know

"what are you wearing?"

my head hurts so I can only sneak glances at the screen

"I don't know"

type without looking

my left leg twitches or spasms or something. try to still it with my hand.

A went to buy drugs, he's taking: some ridiculously long time, or, about 11 minutes?

what kind of drugs?

"I don't know"

what I am wearing is stupid or meaningless, I could make something up but my heart isn't in it.

"a Rimbaud t-shirt and a huge smile?"
"cling-film and bunny ears?"

yawn & twitch

I don't know what people want any more.

"cam?"

Luck

Wrote 'LUCKY' on my chest in emerald green

"What's that, your pony boy name?" sniggers, sneers or whatever.

"It's your luck too"

and unsettled he pretends to be absorbed in the sticky patches of spilled beer on the surface of the table.

We kiss on the downs as some guy in an expensive hat blows him, hurried and incompetent. Screws his eyes tight closed, says: "I can still see the shape of the moon".

Entranced later by the tip of an infected scratch that snakes from the neck of K's youngest brother's t-shirt. He follows my eyes smiles enigmatically:

"Cats" he says,

"You can touch it if you want to".

How to Jump from a Moving Train

I met him like - maybe 2 years ago (2 years from then, not now) living in London,so messed right up and working all the time for my list of habits would've filled this notebook

anything/everything

stayed in a squat in Deptford, smelt like the past, or maybe I mean one of those museums that recreate the smell of the past - doesn't matter when or where, always the same scent of stale piss, alcohol and rickets.

José scrubs the deck on his hands & knees, barefoot & stripped to the waist - I know where this is going.

Early said he was taking care of me, taking care of me mainly involved pimping me to his dealer. He did take me to casualty one time when I broke my ankle.

"I fell from the rigging, I'll try to be more careful"






tuck & roll

I met S through working - I think we became friends because we looked kind of similar. We'd work together occasionally on account of this obvious resemblance:

"Is that your brother honey?"

but he was radiant somehow and bright, smiled like it was all just some movie with a glamorous ending - like a fucking star. we went to a lot of museums, he liked neanderthals a lot although they made him melancholy. i would sleep on the nightbus with my head in his lap and he would be absolutely still so as not to wake me even if he knew I was just pretending to be asleep.

no-one said anything about this at the funeral.

Proper use of magical powers

Watching some kind of antique pornography found in the cupboard to the left, you wouldn’t know it was a cupboard unless you opened it. No-one there exhibits any typical reactions – like arousal or shock or boredom. cc seems interested, bounces like a prelude to something, and says: “the shed there, no there – it’s out of shot now – it’s for keeping pigeons, racing pigeons.” Everyone shifts the intensity of watching in the hope of noticing something, a pigeon probably.

Some kind of quality fixes the moment, 5 faces in the light of the screen scouring the background to outdated flesh on flesh for a glimpse of a pigeon

When A comes over he is cagey and distant although he is glossy and radiates good health like a well kept animal. I sit in cc’s room and write this.

On the way back from the all night garage, when we come to the main road he holds out his hand and it’s vaguely parental I guess, or something. I take it anyway and don’t release it after we’ve crossed. We have sex in the grounds of the Nurse's Home though it feels grudging and bad tempered. I graze my forehead on a tree. When he sinks his teeth deep into my shoulder in the throes of - passion, or whatever I spit out “don’t fucking mark me” he laughs says; “you should say ‘bitch’ – don’t fucking mark me – bitch” engendering some fantasy of leaving him weeping in the moss.
"It’s just a fuck" I mumble at his back when he kind of storms off out of there without waiting for me to button my trousers or anything.

yesterday

everything is static and sticky for a really long time

look out of the window, call the bird watch service on the telephone and am soothed by this more than almost anything

him: can you imitate it's call?
me: nuh -uh

with a rush of blood to my face so hard i have to hold the receiver at arms length for some seconds

"i can't see the tv" makes some impatient movement with her hand smiled and; "stop phone-sexing the twitchers"

3 green mystery pills on the edge of the sink in the bathroom, swallow them before i even notice
3 fingers in my throat and retch plenty but they don't come out.

what were they? i write on the mirror. already written there: I'VE GOT YOURS USE MINE IF YOU WANT in an unfamiliar hand

buying plasters and oranges with my thumb on my pulse everything rushes a little when i smoke a cigarette on the street but only a little, regular and even

boy from 66 on the wall cat and orange trousers like some half detainee. smoking and damp too, mumble something to him about a party at our house, say "sort of" a lot and shuffle like i'm shifty or 12 maybe, makes me laugh i think

later in the hallway he says: do you guys want some kittens?
my hand inside his trousers at some unnatural angle painful and boring
he's not that interested

bathe

and then every time i tried to lift up my head he'd shove it down again, fingers twisted in my hair nails scrape against my scalp. the floor wet beneath my cheek. tasting my own blood in my own mouth and a ragged edge of my lip against my tongue

is this a game?

through the tiles i can hear the sea lapping against the sides of the boat i am rocked by the sea rocked

spits something into the sink, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand but keeps his hand there covering his mouth, smiles behind it affectionately i think

cigarette?
towel i say shivering and he throws it to me from the rail. i wipe my stomach and dab hesitantly at my mouth he laughs at me "you're pretty messed up you know?" lights a cigarette - tiny fizz as the match hits the water in the bowl of the toilet. bloody hand prints on the floor

curled up on the deck, sun on the back of my neck rope burns on my ankles on my wrists. when they give you rum it's never really rum burns all the way down to your belly all the way down to your feet

once i got fucked with my held under water I lie in a conversational manner. yeah? he says, kind of interested, we could do that? he squints at me, frowns maybe

put your clothes on, your feet are turning blue

last wednesday i thought he was dead lying in my bed my face in the back of this new boy who was asleep. i like him enough but he sleeps so much. i listen to the radio too quiet to hear the actual words and smoke cigarettes and he sleeps
smells like vanilla and something else much less reassuring but then suddenly i thought that K was dead - i don't believe in that stuff so he probably isn't. When we watch a movie jack strokes the back of my head which rests against his legs he buys me books and cooks stuff. I give him drugs and gag him with a plastic bag

maybe i should get a haircut?

tuesday#3

1.7am he attempts to feed the crows in the park - only attempts because there's nothing he has with him that they'd want to eat.
contemplates feeding the crows with the pigeons
the crows pull stuff out of the ground churned up by the machinery, they eat it, whatever it is.
he counts the magpies - 6 for silver


2."I don't know why you still come here"
(to steal your books and make it with your stepson?)
oh, you know, because - he looks around the room for inspiration
because - I learn so much from you


3. "you want me to follow you home?" it was a question, he thought. I didn't - hadn't - but now that you mention it? and he walks off not that unsteadily in the direction of the river.

sunglasses a cheap can of lager a split lip

when I was very sick I knew exactly who k was. I spat at him when he took my pulse. I remember that passage – took my pulse, stole a kiss, fucker
wanna play doctors and nurses?
He fucked me as I drifted in and out of consciousness. You’re burning up, he giggles. It’s so hot inside you and I knew exactly who he was.
All the time I wanted to want him more, like there would be nothing else in my life, like I would fuck myself to death, or whatever. I was very romantic. I don’t know what he wanted;it was beside the point.
if I move my arm in this way - certain gestures or expressions, I think, these are not mine. I have taken so much from him that I can hardly believe he continues to exist. jack lies on the bed, digs his knuckles into his eyes, yawns
the Captain kicks the prisoner in his side ‘til he vomits, curled up in a ball turns him over delicately with his bare toes – giggles helplessly
he reaches for me first thing in the morning and I hiss at him before I am even awake, before I remember who I am.
through the afternoon I watch the video clip that used to be my obsession – just 10 or 15 seconds or so, k and joey on the balcony at frederick’s flat some late summer sunshine white shirts. Go away, joey says, stop filming us. Their almost legendary state of togetherness, joey laughing, makes an ambiguous gesture with his left hand - k drinking gin from a blue glass. played over and over until it attained the quality of a persistent nightmare. I also have a photograph I took in the park when he played in some band, he has:
sunglasses a cheap can of lager a split lip. he is saying no, I’ve never taken heroin, it makes me throw up.
He didn’t look anything like a real person, especially when his lip started to bleed.
I think one time, the time when I was really sick, he held me by the forehead whilst I threw up. I couldn’t look at him for hours. It was just water he said not even gross at all looked up half smiled it’s only stuff from your body, it’s like spit or blood or sperm – it really doesn’t bother me . I wanted to say: you wouldn’t want my vomit in your mouth would you? but I really don’t want to know. So I say I want to come to the party instead.
but you’re sick
I’m kind of better now
I sit up and the room only sort of spins i’ll be ok, can I have some more vitamins? he’s looking at his feet in the mirror.
they’re not really vitamins you know and he tries to catch me as I fall but misses.

crow's nest

i didn't sleep now for 36 hours, and my eyes are rough and swollen.

lookin at tiny little pictures on the net, lookin for my friend, who i lost, who is lost and it hurts but it feels good too, you know?

where did i hear that before, huh? stupid child, sitting here working on you own dumb ass mythology when there is so much to be done and all the while less and less time.

you'll never be a decent pirate if u don't work on them sword skills, spending yr time in the rigging searching for crows. and where is the Captain anyhow? with that sweet taste of sandalwood and blood...

last night i had a fight like an old school fight - real punches, bloody noses and split lips, spitting in the gutter. a handful of my hair and curses so close to my mouth feels like kissing

i love you

i want to say but i aim for his eye and miss tearing a little where the second earring is and the blood is like flowers on the wet white cloth. he is in bloom.

and then we do kiss , for real, around the corner, against the wall. he wipes the blood from my chin with the heel of his hand.



stop shaking he says and i try to very hard

my other poets

When I wake up this morning eight twenty or so Jack is here sleeping in my room on the floor, on cushions. Hey jack, i want him to go away, but he's on a mission to nurse me through this latest bout of pneumonia. coughing like a cute romantic poet, don't spit on my carpet mr keats. sick of being sick, eat fruit don't shoot nothing walk many, many steps every every day, have a routine, eat breakfast.

"your life is too chaotic."

whereas really my life is all order and washed cutlery, ex-boyfriends and jasmine tea. all the time i'm a little numb, hold out my tongue for anything anyone's gonna put on it.yes please.

jack makes me jasmine tea, something i think is a bagel. i'm thinking maybe if i don't speak to him he'll go away, but then i don't wish to appear impolite. Thank you. If i don't speak it's just because my breath is short, my throat is sore.

sex with c

i was laying down all evening reading my book on account of feeling unwell. c is in my living room all evening and there are some other folk round also playing bastardised mah-jong disney games drinking vodka lime because i can hear them little cross shouts. c comes to my room maybe 2am when i'm still reading my undemanding book, shrug when he asks if its ok for him to sleep " stay over" he says like its gonna be some pajama party. i like it he doesn't speak much to me and seems to find it amusing i'm sick. i watch him undress through the bars of the bedstead. i'm laying on my belly with the book on the pillow and he lays on his side touches my thigh, i'm feverish an not under the covers cos the room is so hot, like another country. wearing navy blue tiger pants, green t-shirt.
he's kinda rough, digs his nails into my ass and i'm ignoring it but i'm reading the same line like 34 times, 35 times whilst he opens me up with 1 hand breathes ragged close to my ear. i don't fight him, i just resist some like it's a subtle distinction but i don't actually hit him except once when he goes to rim me nearly breaks my leg holding one ankle pushes it way too far somewhere above my head an i feel like i'm gonna break, also i feel kinda stupid and awkward, so i kick him aimlessly somewhere around the head and he laughs bites where its really tender, the softest flesh at the top of the thigh so i cry out for the first time, which makes me cough some. i love it his good-natured and casual cruelty which is so uncontrived, or maybe just seems so and is un-dramatic enough to make even me want him, it, uh whatever. plus it almost hurts enough. he fucks me kinda difficult with the tiger pants still there, i don't know how, maybe i'm on my side trying to push him away with my knee in his chest but he holds me tight by the hair, my head pulled down over the edge of the bed so i can't really move any without the feeling my neck is gonna snap like a twig.

would be good to remember better. for a journal ...

sometime they're just round my ankle and i'm on my back, listless like i'm unconscious, moved like a doll only i don't wanna lie on my belly so i'm trying a little not to let him do this and it's kind of funny and makes him cum way quicker i think.

always he smiles a lot after we have sex and smokes desperately and is somehow tender and amused at the same time, but he won't let me go to the bathroom and makes me lie under him a long while stroking my hair out of my face. then he has to go - i don't remember why and i wake up this morning eight twenty or so and jack is sleeping on the floor.