Motion

And what would happen in a motionless world, where the only exercise for men was masturbation and the groans and squeals of trifling ecstasy were supplemented with filth and beer? I want to live in a world where people move and touch and stretch their senses beyond the unimaginable. I want a world where people grin and bear, instead of reaching out to touch their hair. If vanity were replaced with calm, peace would flow from streetlamp to dirty streetlamp, from parking fine to strip club. There would be no war, no competition, no flashy twats in chrome topped Audis, giggling drunkenly like babies at the wheel of death. No curled moustaches. No girls by the side of the road. No vulnerability. No flames of destruction flattening the villages. No boys with toy guns, plastic knives and re-usable fireworks. I want to walk down the street without being told to change my religion. I do not want your books and preaching; if God wants me he can tell me so himself. I do not want us to fear sleep or death or life. I want to wake up in the morning without my eyes having been glued together by night’s sticky grasps. I want to see the sun, see the day. Lose myself for a short while. Hold on tight to life’s weak grasp. I want to see the clouds from an aeroplane again, to see a baby screaming with glee, a mother not using her fists or her sweaty palms. I want to see a father loving and holding tight. No pleading, no suffocation, no impatience. Only disorder from a broken home, and the foolish grin of a child who is no longer concerned with the matters of the past, and runs with his eyes tight shut towards the polluted tides of the future.

Sobriety ,

Brandishing your cigarette like a flare
You walk so calmly through midnight air
You make it sound all naughty; forbidden
Without explicitly saying what’s hidden
And it’s a big ‘fuck you’ in the face of society
The bullet-hole couple struggling with sobriety
Street disposition; facades, black towers
Crawling the curbs, damp-cheeked for hours
Why such long paces? such sadness and joy?
Belt not a skirt; a magnet for boys
And they’re young and they’re angry (they just want your flesh)
Some brutal and broken (trunks of wire, of mesh)
You inhale the tar into the deepest core
They rip off your knickers and scream out for more
The towers above you, murky eyes staring
You spin on the pavement, broken heels, far past caring
What monsters await you on leather seats?
Twisted minds, gold filled cavities greet
Your Maybelline mouth and he licks you; “undress”
Reveals bony shoulders, nothing left un-caressed
Slides off your coat, its blackness, its velvet,
Its buttons pop open, showing everything private
The soft pink hills spilling over your dress
Burn holes in his eyes, create smooth white mess
And he’s rubbing your arms, so thin like his daughter’s
Each hair standing up, tongue playing explorer
The grease from his fingers, the struggle with zips
Unoccupied stare, now he’s biting your lips
Pushing face down, the sweat and the groans
You see Jack and the baby; visions of home
Symmetrical flowerpots stacked at the door:
Armchair, remote, bedside lamp, dressing gown,
Garden, nappy bin, hot towel - nothing more
But is it for money you slip off your tights?
And let him clamber over you – dizzying heights;
Your body splayed out in the back like a carcass
His face so near you can hardly focus
Sliding his fingers up blue battered thighs
Do you squeeze your eyes, strike out or cry?
The sweat from his brow drips onto your breasts
Crushing the life from your lungs,
Nothing left

Black Coffee

You were drowning in the sweat, you were soaking up the dregs
I was on the floor, below your knees, rubbing both your legs
You were crying, back to wall, jumper burning friction
I was reading, I was screaming, you were swallowing my diction
You panted like a tiny dog, black coffee dark as night in fog
With no headlights
With no seatbelts
When we were squealing, wheeling, hard-shoulder dealing
Last summer's troubles, taxed, no feeling
Wiped your dripping face against my collar
Didn't care, didn't care much
For you anyway

An unfinished story about loving a girl

She was steaming like an air hostess, brown hair all fluttering in the propeller wind and the little men in yellow jackets running backwards and forwards and backwards again as if to keep her happy. But I could see she was not happy. She didn’t need anyone. She had herself, and she didn’t need to open her mouth to let out the anger and the fury because everything she had was locked up inside. The girl was very beautiful. Her eyes were blue and green all at the same time without meaning to be, and her hair crawled down her spine and curled around her shoulders like a python. Her cheeks were warm and brown and a few freckles rested quietly on her chin, a few around her nose. She flared her nostrils restlessly as though she were waiting in the terminal, plastic cup in hand just resting there, all silently against her hip. Her scarf was of cheap satin, pale blue, almost indigo, and had become tangled in her mass of dark hair, her other hand held a grey rucksack, the strap delicately slung between thumb and forefinger. She was not preparing for lift off. She was not even at the airport with me. I had seen her through the window of the car and fallen in love with her. She was waiting for a bus, not a man in a business suit with a black shoulder bag and freshly polished shoes, and her eyes screamed at me through the window of my taxi, as though the entirety of her soul was trying to break free. We had stopped at a set of traffic lights; there were road works up ahead and small men in hard hats ran circles around the plastic bus shelter and prodded the pavement with metal sticks as though an earthquake was about to rip apart the surface of the Earth. And perhaps it was. She stood in a flood of private agony, her perfect face battling the morning breeze and legs all thin and jerky and a mile long at least. Her black coat swung out behind her in the wind like a magicians cloak and she dropped her bag by her feet to pull it back around her and seal herself inside its comforting embrace. I can’t remember exactly, but I think she was wearing thin grey slip-on shoes, and as she knelt to pick up her bag my eyes followed every movement, from pavement, up past shoes and ankles, with traffic darting between my eyes and hers, and her knees, and perfect thighs. Her shorts were denim, frayed at the bottom with a purple bruise shyly revealing itself at the hem. She slung the grey rucksack over her shoulder; it dangled there lifelessly for a second but was buffeted back by the wind. She struggled with the straps as they entwined themselves around her hand whilst wriggling to pull down her shorts to cover the fast approaching darkened flesh cloud. I could feel her struggling deep down inside me somewhere, I don’t know how or why. I wanted to get out of the taxi and pull the bag from her, throw the cup to the floor and hold her in my arms as though we were the last two people standing on a desolate wasteland at the end of the world. God, I could have kissed her. The fire in her eyes burned holes through my skin and I grew hot inside the cab, trying to remove a cardigan from around my shoulders without losing eye contact. Was it me she needed at that moment? Why such fear, such fury when all around her were the daily obstacles of life which, over time, we have all grown used to and can ignore.