Perry had been a frothy drink all his life,
she was a special mixer, bubbly, indefinable,
arty-farty-smarty
relishing her intoxicating effect
she split herself with brandy on him
amused by the way he wilted when she spilt on him
and swelled when she came back on him,
then she washed his ego down his hatch,
it was just no match
for her wet, smile-shielded treachery,
unimpeachable because of its spontaneity.

Dont bring peaches or brandy into it, he would irritatingly intone.
Perry was quite enough for him on her own.

She knew her zingy femme fatale attractions
and never showed her fatal femme infirmities
Some said she had lost a part of herself
but she didn’t care for vulnerability
no rounding or reuniting for Perry
She was very very very
in control of her relations.

She buzzed and tripped through organs, veins and social situations
dished out sore heads, raised libidos
rash impetuosities, bizarre imagination
rendered him to blubber
with her gaiety and flavour,
privileging him
reminding him
of her generous favour……..
not everyone got Perry…….
he should show appreciation.

Then one day he woke up, parched,
sucked at the perineum and found just flat dregs,
tongued smears of a dehydrated stickiness
on the bottom of her fluted glass life.

Perry had run out, empty.
The froth had regressed
to a dirty scum laced with lipstick pink
on the brink of her brim,
and she hadn’t yet exhausted him.

He then acquired a thirst for other drink,
discovered Kir, with vintage Veuve Cliquot,
left Perry,
an empty bottle beside the sink.

on her Greek Island
children playing
as she talks to plastic
the earpiece gibbering
my voice failing to deal with
this electronic place
where blood doesn’t pump
lungs dont breathe
bodies dont bleed

on her Greek Island
hanging up the phone
making for the night alone
me grabbing at the wire,
chewing, trying to suck her
out of it again
breathing with difficulty again.

There is no purple moon here.
There’s a muddy drizzle
at the dull window.

Are they waterproof
these unsinkable
but leaden ones?
Do they have
the backs of ducks?
Are they buoyant
these spindly boys in the Odeon ocean?
Their selves seem so thin,
their eyes and me’s so porous!
Will their bones self-inflate
or is this the unthinkable
male dissolution in the undrinkable
sickness of motion
pictures?

Picture this,
one boy’s girl shows up,
the Odeon organ swells,
Titanic goes down,
with the pair’s approval,
then there’s the wet kiss
and the removal
of her damp dress

and the rain is gone,
gone with the wind
back to the carpark
with all the rest.

Under their baseball hats,
their healthy backs are packed
with Antipodean practicality,
honed in the sun,
the English boys run scared
but the Arabs
seem to have a simpler
form of fun

and the Jock stocks booze
in a stained room
his legs are white and thin
his courage swells
spills out over muzzled city sounds
as his sense of humour
wins him clarity
here in polyglot
hunting grounds

transients, transexuals,
transports going up and down
trains crossed with  buses lorries and bikes
pizza expresses spud-u-likes
KFCs , dispensers,
sprites and pepsis, styrofoam,
the coke of the to and the fro
pours into young platelets
nurtures red corpuscles
driving hard muscles
of internal, arterial contraflow

Only the drunk stand’s still
gazes with bewilderment
at the way the cars go
catches himself edging into a spin
totters on his thin binsearch legs
and begs for twenty pee
was that a Scottish accent drifting
on the wind?

travellers and tramps
the butch, the camp
shaved men hanging from chains,
one ogled by an ageing cross-dresser
turns out to be a chemistry professor
attending the mind-bending
Pharmaceutical Ingredients
Worldwide Symposium,
major event of the drug-peddling year
must talk by day with large Dutch men
in name-tags and suits
with secret thoughts of licking their boots
give them sophistication, courage to thrust
in the marketplace
each year he hopes and prays and waits
to be selected as a delegate,
gets away from struggle and strife
to have one week of a secret life

In bedsitland, the young without baggage
drag huge portmanteaux down the stair
so much to take to God knows where
whilst not far away
they do a show right there
a college of scaffold erection
puts on an impromptu exhibition
brown grinning tattooed youths
strip to the waist
toss poles like cabers to each other
spin six-gun scaffold keys
they love display, love to please
the broad tanned girls with rucsac straps
who must pause and adjust them
steal sideways glances
at the choreographed dances
and routines of socket-spanner lust.
The erectors enjoy their truck
the way it blocks one lane
and the shaven-headed men
are there again
with upturned eyes
and lascivious smirk
passing the work
on their way to the clinic
yes sex is dangerous,
sex kills
the same as those multi-coloured pills
they’re selling over in the hall.
but sell them they will
and thats all.

The Jock’s got his confidence
up and running
on whisky and beer,
speaks, says
“I’m definitely here”
but speaks so fast
he almost doesn’t
follow himself

but this language turned into a monster
it gnawed the entrails of what had been
the simple belly attraction of two animals
needing warmth

it made us forget
where we came from

Like the Unions now
I’m outdated,
I’ve lost my teeth and have a softer kiss
guess that’s what happens when we get
agitated.

try to think of yourself
as a melocoton of spheres and curves
ellipses, ripe fruits
convexes bangles
of soft fabric
not those isosceles triangles
or the trapezia and hypotenuse
of the Pythagorean school
calculated with a sliding
rule

they’re not all out to get you
you know
not all points and peaks
and sharp bits to watch out for
not even the weather is after you
only me
and I have
but a small soft and round
vested interest.

Michael’s there,
his work this
young booty
in his care
but I’m assessing
her fine toes
and prepossessing
and guessing enough
to take one small step
for this mankind.
I’m selfish
I suppose I want her
to be mine.

I try a little move
I feel her feet
with my soul
in my fingertips
so delicate
so sexual
this fetishistic touch
and she doesn’t withdraw them
I am answered this much.

There’s a tension
in the hot unspoken air
seems he’s losing her
soon as he’s found her
and its not just one foot
its a pair
after all those hard
highbooted marches
she needs Dr. Scholls
if anything at all,
I feel
her heel,
Achilles tendon and all,
massage her arches
and slowly move around
to caress the soft parts
underneath.

Then he breaks it up,
“Are you enjoying yourself?”
he blows the words like hailstones
through his teeth
the voice slices
in its iciness

though the answer’s yes
our warmth
confidence
and closeness
are completely shaken

obviously
these insteps are
taken

They had not been getting on too well,
various attempts at diplomacy and tact,
bludgeoning of brains
and smacking of bottoms,
hypothesising
propositioning
and dealing
had foundered,
left them racked
on their own vile
unstoppable machine
producing hurt
and healing
and hurting
again

Two titans of tension
and gladiatorial tenacity
slugged it out
in their own sluggish pit
of different logic
and different feeling,
they were reeling with it
unable to turn
even if there’d been
a recognised bearing,
their magnetic senses
and sensitivities
hopelessly scattered…..

then there was an earthquake

and suddenly they both knew
what really
mattered.

But guarding
the future’s threshold
is a thankless, endless task.
No creature passes through
but no one comes to relieve you.
Your legs grow varicosed
your countenance fixed,
your body stiffens
over its outdated blacklist
and finally
through lack of exercise
the exercise fails.

When I asked him to smack my bum
he got so turned on I thought he’d come
but that night things deteriorated
to a scenario I’ve since then hated….

I was hot but couldn’t open enough
and he was hard and pretty tough
and when he started to cut up rough
he cut the balls off his bit-of-fluff
rather roughly.

Crystal Gayle
still means alot to me

My ex-wife
looked on bleakly
as I fumbled in my pocket
for The Maintenance Money

Why dont we do that?
Because this is difficult.

Now , growing bold in that round brown belly
kick all you like at what’s on the telly.
That news just tells us what to say
We dont watch telly anyway.

And if you think your dad’s complicated,
well maybe that’s why we procreated
over the earth and into you.
I didn’t sell. I only grew.

Grew from the mud into all those factors…
Coca-cola, starvation, nuclear reactors,
grew into clouds with hazy eyes…
the cotton wool of compromise.

But you you’ll slide out without a name.
They’ll have no clue how or why you came.
Chances are you’ll scream and burn inside.
Another Jesus crucified.

Even so the fragrant mud will remain
Seeds sow, things grow exactly the same
as they did last time the planet exploded
as glacier gouged and fire eroded.

Out of plague and hurricane, famine and thirst,
the unthinkable holocaust, H bomb and worse
Someone will wander

You’re first

I’m a kid’s wheelbarrow
by comparison,
no brakehorsepower
whatsoever
and very little traction
even in action
which I am now
but rarely

barely had I reached
my prime
when they started saying
you’ve reached the end
of your earthmoving time.

Bulldozers don’t get put out to stud.
they get left in the mud a few years
then scrapped or broken up for parts

hearts
have the biggest
market
but they’re
often overgrown with weeds
which is not
what the customer needs.

I go for material stuff, the standard lamp’s shine,
I smash it for company, violent like my heart,
you see scales on my skin, the comic hun, the bad egg,
the monster of dependency,
a hunched public enemy,
and dealer in the unacceptable.

You put a brand to my brow,
I scream, it scars, permanent disfigurement,
“unforgiven” it reads.
I become the bad sadness of me
as you turn away, your tones
frogmarching the raw sob of me
back to my shit-smeared cell.

Then later, in solitary, a bash of keys
and you come down on me,
a sudden lust for company
violent like your heart
a rubbing need, a self-determination.
You are muscular and meaty, globs of liquid
fold from your lips.You know the physical, using me,
you know searing me with softness
you know to ruddy me with pink, going beyond
the rude in me, you know breaching the edge,
for I showed you this in stronger times.
You appropriate all of me, I am taken with you,
emptied of bronze, melted for your statue
and what a monument we make to you !
Then you slacken, sigh, linger at my given thigh
and the smell of birth swaddles us.

You mutter opinions in your dawn
while I dress, damply stoic to repeated severance,
stoic to this door closing over again
then Monday.
I back into stained pavements,
the flyovers of humanity,
places where no one stops,
the open prison of the exhausted
and the meek.

learned to say boo
round the bedpost
as her parents
disintegrated
there

at five
an egg and spoon race,
stood wide eyed after
the race had started,
wondering…..
why……?

at ten
the same look
with new friends
glad to be part of it
not sure of
her function
tried saying boo
to melt ice
found
boo worked

Boo! she said
at sixteen
some second hand
rebellion
she never quite
believed in
more disbelief
she could have
gone that far
and still
be liked.

then her wedding
squeezed into something
whose shapelessness
she wondered about
said boo to a goose
or two
boo to her husband
and his lover
found a child
at her bedpost

Said Boo
to you
too

Splatfest
without guns, razors or a chainsaw.

he picked me up at Charnock Richard
and by Knutsford
he was tearing along my major arteries
abusing his choke
burning blue smoke
stoked with Yorkie bars
from a throaty stack
and gunning his throttle
round the back of my neck
where flecks of pollution
blocked my pores
while a dark engine rumbled and roared
and made me want more and more and more
as if this was the last chance
to get love trucking.

It was in Knutsford we decided
to give the wheel a spin
making me grin
like a Cheshire pussy
when it came up a deuce
steering us both along one road
to the transport cafes
of eleventh heaven.

I had been on the road so long
had never hitched my skirt high
nor been suggestive with my thumb
never bared my breast
never showed off my bum
on the hard cold shoulder,
never kneeled before
the crown of the road.

The dark
juggernauts flew over
their marker lights hissing
in a pre-stressed forest
rear double tyres kissing
under the weight.
I tilted up my
tramp lady chin
to spoon a cold tin
of spaghetti
the red juice
spilling into
my secret dreams of an interchange,
of leg-shaving,
craving
a certain
betrayal
of this independence thing
I gave in,  enjoyed it.
We were married in spring

He was on a long haul
for Aberdeen Shore Porters
one dawn
when the frigging rig
just jacknifed
and ruined my life.

It sliced my aorta
bloodying the mud on my walls
taking my barriers with it,
chevron painted wastes of space
spilling its load of frozen plaice
all over my arterial routes

when the fish thawed
I was raw
in shocked pink
damaged, saddled
with baggage
sent to a shrink
and a course of primal scream
I screamed the obscene
while the silver darlings rotted
with the stink
of his failing
prevailing

Since then
I view the state of the art
of the heart
with a frosty eye
almost arctic
and though articulate in the main
my lips and tongue are numb
to heavy transport
and the roar of 18 wheels
in November rain.
Since that artic articulated,
since trailer fell out with tractor
I’ve thrown away my Gillette Contour II
and other crass symbols
eschewed the tacho
and the HGV macho
and accept rides
only from women motorists
because they’re better at it.

However I have a plan
one day to pull a speciman
who’s fit and cute
and carries weetabix perhaps
or Mr. Kipling’s cup cakes
or something vegetarian
and will be honoured
and enlightened enough
to make light of driving
one light delivery van
once carefully up my junction.

you see I’d like to procreate
but I dont want to be a driver’s mate
hearts fucked anyway.
through bad butch
trucking

With you I nibble your ears,
use lips, all the things I’ve got
with slow sensitivity.
You moan with the tedium
of this intimacy.
I kiss your thighs
they twitch a little,
I do that thing I do
with one hand at your perineum
one at the down of  your neck
and my mouth at your pearly gates.
You dont open them
you dont scream for more
you  snore.

Last time anyone called me that in a derogatory tone it was a cheeky little Thompson’s gazelle.

I smiled and cradled it in my arms for a while, feigning fatherly magnanimity, then ripped off one foreleg cleanly from the shoulder and ate it.

The Savannah Star stirred up a stooshie (or a fomentatious stew as they say in some places) the way it nearly always does. The Tommies all got together, formed a committee, demanded an inquiry, campaigned to have me thrown off the reserve.  I resisted of course, saying “I’m a baboon! I have degrees in both mimicry and violence. How am I supposed to live without a degree of bloodshed? Thats the trouble with you people and your degrees. Am I supposed to eat nothing but acacia leaves  like those ridiculous giraffes? And what about Acacia? They may seem green and benign but they dont half do damage if you get one of those spikes in your nose. Maybe they evolved from the sabretoothed tiger.

And if you’re condemning me for deceit, the fake nurturing bit is just a technique, a technique I learned in baboon kindergarten where one learns how to survive and sustain life, especially one’s own. I suppose you’re going to suggest that the art of camouflage is not fair game, or that snakes who drop from trees are just not playing cricket, or that flyspray aerosols are cruel. They’re only cruel if you’re a Jain Buddhist and I’m not, I’m a baboon.

Degrees of this

Degrees of that

I’ve nothing against young gazelles in principle. On the contrary I feel very positive about young gazelles because they melt in your mouth.

Isn’t it strange how raw nature gradually gets cooked and loses the vitamins of a global system?  There was a time when no-one would have batted an eyelid at a baboon doing what it’s meant to do, but now there’s all these ragged edges of evolution scurrying into the millennium…and some of us, especially the ones with bald patches on our arses, are just not ready for it….everyone living in harmony, self-regulated mating programmes, old-gazelle welfare schemes and what have you. Maybe my grandson will have evolved into a flying fucking fruit fox or something but me I’m a baboon, and I can’t change that.

What’s happened to good old hunting imperatives, the urge of testosterone, the need for males to spend a bit of time together at the wadi of an evening, the odd fight over the girls?

I am a baboon and I’m still proud of it. I’ll drop the subject for now. Its a bit of a poisonous snake of a thing and I want a peaceful life. But if we get hitched and you ever start giving me gip about boozing with the boys, or spending too long at the office I’ll tear your arm off and throw it to the lions. Then let’s see where your vegetarian and slightly gazellist aspirations have got you.

She wanted to take me there
eat light cosmopolitan bougie-lit food
fuck me long and late and hot
into a bed of cool music,
then the slow woogie waltz
in a morning of hedonist senses,
fresh-ground coffee
and the scents of imagined
permanences.

She went to LA, got married
to an indistinct figure
named Rick, or was it Joe,
wrote to say “Save me,
my best years are here
but so’s they dont just disappear,
hold on to Austin
where the young ones go”

I’ve reached Austin now.
On 6th Street I dine alone,
watch the kids all coming
to a 6th Street saxophone,
their charged laughter sweeping
like an instinctive mistral,
and fatherly law enforcers
on fast fun bicycles
policing urges that are natural……

…..but I’m twice their age, these easy ecocops,
I’m unfatherly, dirty-minded, free
and the only part of Austin left with me
is the loss of it.
Austin, Texas
was never meant to be.

I was her last male bedfellow
to my knowledge…
there were murmurs of love talk
for a few short years
but this Dublin streetwise waif
would have been hard to convince
that what she needed
was a handsome prince.

She thought I was
the most female
of men
the way I moved
the way I spoke,
I had a female feel to me
and when she felt me
I was her princess
I guess.

I always suspected
I was a Lesbian.

One day, looking down at me
after another marathon
of moaning sensuality
she said “You’re a very serious young man”.
With every lover since
I’ve known she was right,
she gave me this forever
to keep as a jewel
of self-knowledge
meant to come in handy
whenever I feel randy.

Annie went
to Baltimore
to take up sailing.
We heard she took it hard
when Baltimore
didn’t understand its gain,
but Annie’s tough,
she sailed on
like an Irish immigrant,
raised on blight and pain
I think she did it single handed
rather than in pairs,
and from the little that I know
Annie could still be sailing there.

Had Annie stayed
she might have gone all straight.
Had we persisted
in that particular yacht race……
I loved her fingers
reefing in my face
and the exhilaration was in danger
of getting even better……
most likely I’d have gone all bent
but then in any case
Annie went
to Baltimore
and never sent
any letters.

You drink, make each other laugh late,
You seize the opportunity for animality
in this rather grim position of formality.
You stumble to your hotel room
then you’re naked,
she’s wearing only a leather belt,
which enhances the theatricality.

You’re hungover and spent.
She says she’d like to do that again.
You hear yourself saying you would too.
You exchange numbers.
Is that what you really meant?

You go home to wife and husband.
You go to a phone box.
You’re already working
on the whiteness of lies.
She invents a weekend conference.
Its no surprise, fits.
You invent delays one Friday,
You’re tired and the drive’s too long sadly,
but not too long for her,
she needs it so badly.

She wears silks, scent
You trim your nose-hair
draw in your belly.
You meet in the middle of some other land
where there’s nothing but discretion.
You need a bed so badly,
an arena, somewhere gladiatorial.
You search for a hotel.
Price doesn’t matter,
nothing else matters
you need it so badly.
You must couple.Its destined
and its become conspiratorial.

She greets her big old friend.
You drink at the cup of her universe.
You both take brandy, steam rises,
staff are sent away,
silk is stained, cotton sullied
you are pink and chafed with rubber,
you rest, you go to eat unwashed
keeping the smell that links you,
you rub knees under the table
you’re at it again
you need it so badly
you’d suffer any pain gladly.

You say you’re not in love.
You drive her to her car
her perfume lingers for weeks
on the passenger seatbelt.
You wash it like Lady Macbeth
taking the strain now,
a sense of approaching death.

You do it again
and then another time
nothing else matters
You’ll drive further and further for it
You are driven.
She’s driven
a coach and horses
through you
and you need it so badly
you’ll drive anywhere.
She will too.

You are raw
You use creams to heal your member.
She writes you a driven message.
Her husband finds it,
phones one chilly dawn.
Its November.

You meet him,
talk, lover to cuckold.
His name is Bill, a bank manager,
He doesn’t knife you,
he asks about his wife
You talk about your kids, football,
where to get his car spares,
what she’s like, what to do
about this sorry state of affairs.
You part benign, almost drinking friends.
It is the end.

Your wife asks where you were.
You tell her.
You need to tell her so badly.

The family Christmas that year
is a little strained, sadly.

I  had met Amparo, a dark
handsome but unadorned
45 year old
mother of three`
some days earlier.
She was usually about the place
peeling vegetables,
helping her mother
attend to her father.

I knew her husband was away
for a while
(I had been told this much)
but I had not seen her
all that blistering day.

It was a thick Spanish night
hot and big as the plains
of La Mancha
which brought no breeze
other than red ovenlike breath
to this scented citrus grove.
A number of cousins, uncles and aunts
were assembled for supper,
their children placed and neatly indulged,
the aunts yelling with filled bosoms
and deeply sonorous senora voices,
bringing food to the little ones,
the uncles mumbling in chairs
or staring at their toes,
perhaps making an odd chess move
with a teenage nephew.

“This is Amparo’s husband”
Rosa said.
We shook hands and grinned
and as the man shook
I noticed that he barely concealed a hurt
behind his robust familial gusto.

“I am not just Amparo’s husband”
he said as jokingly as he could.
“My name is Balthazar.
I am Balthazar.”

He turned away
still laughing like
a tortured stag
and there was Amparo
wearing make-up
silver
and a shorter dress.

I left two loveable curved indents
behind my behind
and when I turned from the sea
I saw your indents were
just conical holes.

You are not anorexic.

You have not been slimming.

Then I noticed you were only sweating on one side…
something adrift with the drainage ducting
or extra-terrestrial style features?
I considered your endearing thin spiked ears
remembered you cannot abide
going anywhere slowly
and the look of startlement
in your green antennae
when I mention
washing dishes

Her ringlets might be sensual on a hot pillow somewhere south
traced by a spent lover’s hand, smelled like the best coffee in a morning.
Resting there she could be unfit, fat and taken warmly
not flabfighting in a place where everything she likes is wrong,
where lovers can’t be found
because they’ve all gone
to Venezuela.

The growth industry of retailed listening skills
those gently manufactured self made cures for self made ills
the kind that make you reach for alcohol and pills
foundered. They were flawless
and boundless…
but he couldn’t pay
the fucking bills.

Bill stepped shining out of an ad for sex by phone
the contact was made, he made Adam his clone
and chained him screaming in the basement of his home
made kind of love. The boy
did well….grew to like
being rubbered stretched and owned.

Adam grew old. Eve and the kids were gone.
His hair was greying
and Bill in his terror often went out playing.
Adam looked for God by kneeling down and praying
but he didn’t apologise
and soon found
he was
still paying.

The Lord in black leather later met him in a pub,
said “Let’s have more sleaze, I’ll take you to a club…”
The Lord asked: “Giver or taker?”….ah there’s the fucking rub!

Adam dozed and dreamed
of the erstwhile once-upon-a-time-long-gone…
he smiled at days no longer halcyon
days when when young girls might have called him Dom
but now
he was clearly
Sub.

Backwards I fly in sleep
to the time that somehow
seemed our last chance
before we got old.
With your almond face
more beautiful than it ever was
in youth
and your back arching into
the full curve of your hips..

I am in amber light. Its dawn
You prepare for me
the icy sadness
expected in your eyes,
gently drink me as I turn to water
you know about this liquidity
..nothing solid in your own life

You were the untouchable one…
and yet you let me touch you….
I never thought I would touch you
that wasn’t meant for me.
and yes I was right
for it passed again
just like a season does…

Are you skinny or fat now,
are you happy,
still wet between your legs
like you always used to be?
I noticed you were this morning
in my halfdream

Once more
I almost fell in love.

You were a dirty girl…
and I brought out the filth in you..
I loved to do that….
to make you wet yourself with lust

I think the last conversation we had
was whether you had given me
those pubic lice or not
You said No!
Perhaps we’ll never know
but if you did
I can definitely say it was worth it…..

Sorry to hear
about the breast cancer….

I’ll be older and wiser by then.
In your beginning will be my end
yet so’s you dont  feel unfulfilled
and  I’m at peace and pleasurably killed
and you cant accuse me of selfishness
or of being rough or making a mess
I’ll wait until you’ve come
go gently, building up slow
then have my coronary
in your afterglow.

Its just not
cricket

On the edge of Russafa
an old part of town
they live with Wittgenstein
and wine

Its been a long time
for George
he never could get comfortable
often he played the part
of “The Fulminator”
and folks tired of it
easily

But now
he plays the part of George.
He’s old and wry,
gets plenty of
peaceful sex
and laughs alot

They enjoyed it thoroughly
soon becoming locked in a slippery
hot motion of tongues, taut thighs
and fecund juices, their parts swollen
in obscene dark reds and purples
the  wet hairs of their pubic pamperings
stuck between teeth and tasty parted lips
their burrowing nostrils
sniffing the heady inner scents of
their most personal private places.

Blue steam rose from the tiles.
The wall clock and the timer on the cooker
turned away their blushing faces.

69 was proving to be gratifying
in its provision of additional accessibility
and did have very real oral advantages.
They were able to indulge both lovers’ arses
and all seventeen of the lover’s arsenal of senses.
However, there was one notable exception.
With two pairs of ears clamped by immensely soft thighs
they couldn’t hear anything.
This aural disadvantage had been deafeningly absent
from their well-thumbed
Kama Sutra for Dykes.

When mum arrived home with Aunt Elsie in tow,
and her string of young tearaways
the lovers didn’t notice the sound of the car engine
nor the slamming of the front porch door.
Scuttling farcically into a bathroom
or a  wardrobe with a clutched towel or sheet
was not an option due entirely
to blissful unawareness,
and it was bliss
for they were at their perfect peak.

It was perhaps a good thing
that such purity of enjoyment could continue
unsullied by ugly awareness of others,
false modesty, feigned shyness
or the much misinterpreted
Pleasure Privacy Principle

When Mum dropped the shopping on the floor
behind them in shock,
they responded only by moaning
an eerie duet into each other.
She and Aunt Elsie stared
at the pulsing white tangle on the floor,
unusually lost for words.
The tearaways burst through to the kitchen
screaming, then skidded to a permanent halt
just beside the lovers,
not at all sure what they were looking at.

Mum made to touch a body,
by way of saying “Hi folks I’m home”
but where to do the touching?
The feet, she thought, briefly,
might be the least indelicate prospect
but she noticed even they had salacious
little licks of saliva over the toes.
She leaned forward and picked up the shopping.
She had lost her bottle and her groceries
and there were hungry kids to feed.

She put the potatoes on.

During lunch there were several
muffled climaxes from the floor,
and at one point a slightly noisy
interruption by a flurry of playfully
slapping hands on buttocks
accompanied by a curious throat-based sound
that could almost have been a smothered giggle of delight.
On the whole, though,
despite being temporarily gobsmacked
the lunchtime conversation resumed
the kind of facile emptiness
that lunchtime conversation should have.
The kids had a fight over who should sit nearest the sweating mass,
then pausing for a flushed breather
asked Mum what was going on.

“69” said Mum grimly.
This seemed to satisfy the children,
for they knew then that she was less confused than they were.
They started a jumping competition over the couple.

Aunt Elsie,
who had been uncharacteristically quiet
over her Summer Pudding
finally stood up
and with a mix of purpose and studied care
circumnavigated the couple
and made for the telephone.

She dialled 969
the little known number of the Fire Brigade’s
Specialist Crack Response Unit.

Aunt Elsie had been there before.

“I told you not to smoke”
she sounded
very satisfied
I sighed.

I went to see the doctors
got sent for tests
to know the truth
it’s for the best

“You’ve got Big C”
they said with max reverb

I said “Oh?
How long? What chances?
Why does my voice echo?
What’s the word?

I threw up
in the institute
in the chemo
on the radio
but after stem ginger
more carrots
than you could
shake a stick at
and what puritan joys
I could afford
I settled into micro-life
it was jolly
in the ward.

When I slid away from them
all the friends I’d met that day
and all the ones from decades back
it was a wondrous journey
the best I’ve ever made….
a starry tunnel then the light
shining reunion with mother
in a long white dress
and a young beauty again.

She said
“Who’s that dreadful girl
you were with?”

I looked back
saw my wife
mouthing the words
“I told you so!”