First Pose...

(Test Signal Excerpt from 'Carry Me Elysium' - a work in progress)

It takes a while to wake into my face. First thing the mirror transmits is the flagging, lumpen shifts of my dead face, awaiting, like a flood breaching a dam, the return of expression; of the muscles behind the thick, cadaverous mask, to reconnect with the spirits of joy, confusion, misery and elation. Then I begin to resemble me. Only when the mirror kickstarts an internal dialogue between the exterior world and the landscape of my self-image, does my face even start to adopt the tropes I associate with me, as an entity disctinct and collaged from any and all others. And when it does, I stretch, tickle, contort the muscles, like finding a dress that fits and getting acquainted with the nuance of every stitch. Then I can face the day.

The stairwell reverberates to a sustain of about three seconds, meaning, if there were a belfry at the summit (i.e. if my flat were a belfry, rather than a garish junkhouse), then through the miracle of sustain, a rendition of chain-ringing would elicit a pretty epic array of chords, some hugely mellifluous, others harash, dissonant, seconds, clusters. Perhaps I'll get a belfry installed when the inheritance comes through. Then I can host site-specific concerts. The miracle of delay, echo, is that of solo dialogue. In the stairwell, I can conduct conversations with myself by responding to the echo of the previous utterance, and the distance between an internal utterance and an external, audible one, opens wide a gulf, in terms of how one might respond. I generate the source of the echo, but not the echo itself, and thus, I respond to an article one step removed from me, in an entirely different manner than I would an internal, inexpressed thought. So frequently, I'll sit on the top step casting out terse little avenues, to have them cemented in the ether as a ghost, to which I'm prompted to retort in a wholly new fashion. The whole of the first paragraph was born via this method. Hardcore sex, in its rhythmic, propulsive gasping, groaning, makes for a magnificent duet when practised in the stairwell.

I brought Matt home one night. Matt's a junkie. En route back from work, our paths would frequently cross. He'd be lurching obliviously in a pale grey hooded sweatshirt, tall, looming, spaced; he'd always ask for small change for a 'phone call', and I'd always give him a little more than he specified, purely in order to sustain the conversation a while longer, so as I could study his features that extra four seconds. I'd trickle inane throwaway asides, lame platitudes as I faux-fumbled through my wallet to relinquish what phone cash I could spare. Heroin is far from the only junk. And so he'd lurch off, furnished with twice what he asked for, This, I figured, was a surefire method of ensuring his continued custom, and sure enough, our encounters grew pretty regular, my platitudes always evading the obvious matter of his awesomely conspicuous habit, his need to feed, and always instead hingeing on 'how was your weekend?' and other such trophy inanities. His skin resembled white porcelain under a striplight, an essence of sickness toiling beneath an otherwise exceptional beauty, like a cloud of pollution under crystal. And his eyes, perfectly set into this peerless face, proportioned according to some apparently Pythagorean formula of objective physical perfection, themselves nodes of fluctuating, black intensity. Utterly stunning. So, increasingly, I'd linger along this particular road, and invariably we'd meet about three times a week, and I'd donate what I could, based on a now-tacit understanding of what I was actually helping to fund. Anyway, about four weeks into this totally masochistic flirtation, we outright stated that we may as well arrange a time each week to meet up, in acknowledgement of my 'getting what he's about', he confided in me, that he's trying real hard to kick the junk, and that within a few weeks he's been promised a batch of ibogaine, the experimental addiction-neutering hallucinogen, which he's been guaranteed, will end his dragging torpor and facilitate the reconstruction of his life. So, I agree to continue help funding, as far as is feasible, given my salary is beyond monastically frugal, his habit, until then. So we meet every wednesday. He's called Matt, he's twenty, he plays guitar, paints, only child, his girlfriend died last november, since when his habit notched up a billion-fold. He was driving them home for an early christmas, they crashed, she died instantly, a telegraph pole shattering her skull. In hospital, he got a taste for the fuzzy, lost vagueness of the morphine, and upon release, sought out his old teenage dropout friends, who directed him towards a fairly reliable dealer called Jackie, whose main stock was amphetamines, but in this instance promised to help him out. Prior to this, he'd only smoked heroin on occasional weekends at basement scratch DJ rallies; enjoyed it, but disciplined himself as a weekend user. When Jenna died, he figured the state of suspensions, the void, is precisely what he needed, while he rationalised his way through the grieving process. So, I recommend that, in addition to keeping him afloat, I take him out for a meal once a week, just to satisfy myself, that he's getting at least one substantial meal each week. Over loaded plates of pasta, we talk through his plans, his spasmodic emotional state, and how grateful he is for my interest in and support of his situation.

"I felt immediately comfortable asking you for cash, y'know? Like, some people, they just transmit this...panic, when they see someone, obviously jacked up to their tits on smack coming at them. Like we could even start a fucking fight if we wanted to. I really fucking appreciate you, y'know?"

He touches my hand, his skin cold, flawless, exhilarating. My diaghram gives a spasm. I've always been utterly devastated by the attention of someone I find beautiful, even if their attention is some distance from romantic, sexual. Just proximity, contact, brutalises me. Like the time the first boy I kissed at university took me back to his room to meet his girlfriend, and I just lay down, my head in his lap as he ruffled my shambolic thatch of hair. The girlfriend was barely startled by her lover's homo-sensitivity, and while I spent months labouring in agony over the epiphany of his straightness, fell hysterically in love and tried repeatedly to kill myself in protest, for that fleeting moment, I felt utterly comforted, suspended in a fluffy symbiosis where the electricity of young, hormonal maybe-love was totally palpable. He was called Richard, and used to beat the shit out of me at my encouragement, when eventually we cohabited in the second year. It was great. Physical affection meted out in whatever dynamic is all I'd ever wanted, be that via fist, tongue, toe-capped boot or cock, as long as his body engaged with mine, I didn't really care. I'm far healthier now,. Now I just beat myself up for taking twenty-five years to reconcile my warped pathology into something vaguely functional, to the extent that when I fuck someone, I don't spend the subsequent fourteen months languishing in neurotic agony as I try to negotiate my claws through the thick, spiky, toxic scrub of the term 'love'.

"Why don't you come back to mine and chill out a while, Matt?"

So, I pay the bill. The waiter seemed relieved to see us leave, obviously disarmed by the tension between having waited on a junkie for the past hour, and having to shroud his alarm in professional demeanour, given no melodrama occurred. Presumptuous fucking shitbag. Matt and I hailed a taxi and dictated my address to the driver. Halfway there he swerved with a pummeling screech to the curb and ordered us out. He'd seen Matt hitch up his sleeve and scratch a coterie of needle marks.

"I'm nursing him through this, man! He's trying to kick it. Ok?!"

It wasn't ok. The stocky Turkish dude wrestled us from his chariot, heaved us onto the curb and accelerated off, furry dice ricocheting off the windscreen like speedfreaks under a strobe. We walked the remaining mile back to mine, arm-in-arm - Matt was severely flagging, the energy momentarily boosted by food now dissipated into the cold october scree. I'm carrying his weight as well as mine at this point. I hoist him through the front door and up one and a half flights. Then he collapses, fully conscious, but scarily immobilised. Not wishing to exacerbate the scene, I try to suspend my panic as I manouevre him onto the second floor landing, where I cradle his torso in my arm and apply a palm to his forehead. Predictably, he's racing, infernal. I kiss the top of his head and attempt to offer reassuring words. He's so heavy in my arms. Despite his physical incapacity, he smiles at me and clutches at my right arm, tickling his wrist with cold-tipped fingers. We lapse into a moment, the passage of time slows to epic, laboured measures and we dwell silently in each other's warmth. Our breathing syncopates, I urge it to slow, and the acoustic chamber of the stairwell mediates a steady, mellow boom; we're mesmerised by the stark, chugging rhythm, so depersonalised by the echo, that when one of us skips a breath, we start, but scantly enough so as to rule out any self-consciousness. Besides, we've mutually and tacitly agreed that this is where we need to be right now. We're built to accommodate each other. My erection is insignificant next to the blissful commune of our bodies warmly wrapped within each other. So when my vertical neighbour strides out and attempts to intervene, the rupture is immense.

Once my neighbour has assisted my manouevring of Matt upto my flat, we collapse on the floor and resume the interlocked pose, absorbing each other's aromas, musculature, textures, idiosyncracies, indefinitely.

I recall when I was seventeen, I got abducted by a guy called John, who having been raped repeatedly by his father's best friend between the ages of five and sixteen, had gotten into prostitution, weathered considerably, left the profession and drifted into becoming the mangled headcase that locked me in his car for three hours one morning after offering shelter from the rain. Upon delivering the last of his graphic elucidations on the garden shed rapes, he punched his hairy fist through the driver's side window, launched himself into the back seat and ordered me to lick the blood from his splintered knuckles, all the while clawing at my crotch. I turned my head away and pissed myself, elbowed him in the ribs, pivoted my arm from this position; a fist impacted with his grizzled face. He started crying and retreated. Suddenly I felt really bad for him. I gave him a tender hug and let him suck my limp, tiny cock. He thumbed a heart, in blood, on my forehead, gave me twenty quid, cuddled me a few seconds, and let me out, waving me off with a smile after making me promise to phone him next time I'm in town. That's the only promise I ever yet broke. I stumbled into Kate's place at about four am, she woke, wiped the blood off of my face and has still never pressed me for the details presaging the bloodiness. Kate, for this, amongst so much else, I love you immortally.

Kate was my soul sister. My occult double. We nominated ourselves each other's familiar and would speak in highly codified, impenetrably dense in-references even in circumstances requiring a specific etiquette. She was a heartbroken, tuberculer dyke with bonkers auburn hair and amazing breasts, that she'd let me curiously squeeze, a privilege afforded me alone because women don't figure on my libido's radar. Breasts. Hmmm. I still don't get it. And I've tried to navigate my identity into the headset of a hormonal straight-as-Rome, red blooded male teen and managed to stir something down below, but the thought of palpating these bulbous lipid protrusions whilst hammering my cock home, is an instant turn-off. I've kissed loads of girls. More than Kate had, probably. But that's the extent of my hetero-dabbling, and happily so. There were a few paltry liasons where I actually ended up in bed with girls I'd kissed, and had to embarrassedly blame my barren, disinterested tissue on alcohol abuse as a young teen, which sounded cool until the morning, when the girls'd press me for details of my background, none of which, at that point, I was capable of divulging, without freezing into a paranoid lockjaw, and awkwardly shuffling out of the frame, across unblocked terrain, the director firing me on the spot and hiring a performer with a shaman's conviction to fill the role, and the girl, as I flounced into Z-list obscurity, as a ghost in the annals of Hollywood's most insipid busboys...

...I met Kate when I was waiting on tables as a jobbing actor. That's a lie. She came into our diner for coffee, sprawled her ample cleavage across the counter and whooped, hollered to secure my attention. Her breasts compelled my gaze to the extent that she playfully slapped my cheek. Recognition of my blunt misdemeanour slapped the other, and my arms sprung aloft, I blushed an apology, stating, it's ok, I'm not really into girls. To which she replied, that's cool, 'cause I'm really not into boys, ordered a coffee, and remained at the counter chattering excitedly at me. She asked me to head out dancing with her when my shift finished. I conceded. I've always got along much better with lesbians than with almost any other demographic - perhaps because the dynamic allows for zero sexual tension, and the residual paranoid teenager lurking in my reconfigured bones still assumes, that people only talk to me because they want to fuck me. That's not vanity. As I've always viewed the sexual act as something violant, brutal, violative, dark and thunderous, tantamount to being reduced to flesh alone; the sordid reckoning of a complex entity into an orifice in which friction induces orgasm in the intrusive participant. So when I state this malingering assumption, it's not out of some twisted self-delusion that I'm irresistable to everything bearing a libido. More that my trust in their motives for talking to me was always deliriously skewed. Perhaps I didn't ever believe I was interesting enough to warrant conversation beyond a veiled segue into my bruised and soggy pants. So we danced, we laughed, we hugged, an instantly invigorating dynamic got ignited over buckets of caramel vodka and a charred lump of deep-fried sweetcorn masquerading as a veggie burger, for which we scrambled together barely ample change at the greasy spoon all-nighter four doors up from the club. La Charmade that night saw my pole-dancing debut before a handful of off-duty Navy boys, who, upon witnessing my faux-sodomy by glow stick, staggered deliberately out, bellowing many a heterocentric admonishment, which we read as goading, and of course, amplified our protests way into the foggy neon morning. I missed acting class the next day, phoned my tutor about lunchtime to apologise and was asked to learn the Hamlet soliloquies by next monday wherein I'd be tested in front of the class...

Kate had enjoyed a brief, tumultuous and torrid affair with a straight girl in her village when she was twelve. The straight girl's then boyfriend (a forty-two year-old record producer with a known reputation for delighting in the company of minors) had used his girl as a lure with which to drag Kate into sexual maturity one night in the local graveyard. A clumsy, sodden threesome ensued, which Kate broke midway through, a burst of objectivity having pierced the moment. She legged it, closely followed by the straight girl, who accompanied her home, pawing reassurances, ruffling comfort. This catalysed a generic post-hysteria kiss, things escalated, they enjoyed a passionate, and clandestine romance for about three months, tales of which would later fuel the imagination of the record producer whilst having sex with an even younger girl called Eve, whose flower-laced pigtails drew him into a vile jailbait mentorship some years later, prompting Kate to issue an anonymous expose, ending his career in the industry. Kate still received thank-you letters from the girls he touched in that period, although she never figured out how anyone had tagged her as the whistleblower. Still, these thank-you letters adorned her fridge beneath magnets spelling out the phrase 'another bastard eats my dirt'. Kate had two sisters, both of whom disowned her when she awkwardly announced her sexual leanings, so, myself being an only child, we completed each other's sibling envy and surfed it, with substantially less bitchiness than blood siblings have been known to share.
Before wiping the blood off of my forehead, she snapped a photo with her polaroid, and tacked it to her bedroom wall, amidst a minefield of images, mainly of me. She was an obsessive documentarian of our times together. She believed that something would eventually drive us apart, that the intensity of our relationship was too strong to endure, and so to fervently chronicle it at its peak, would be to enflesh time's skeleton with a media saturation - meaning, in addition to our own memories of these exploits, we'd have those of the camera too, a means of punctuating the sentences spelling out our time together. I once took a photo of her dangling scarily from the railings at the top of the stairwell out side of my flat, and as the click echoed, I prayed for the flash to double up, and for the image to duplicate within the frame, like dividing a moment into a half-moment, the cracks between the perceieved instant and the actual instant shining forth pagan secrets. Instead, we got a blurred photo of Kate as she slipped from the railings, fell six stroies through the centre of the spiral stairwell and died a contorted, disfigured mesh of bones and tattered dress in the lobby way below. I took the polaroid to her funeral and photographed the coffin entering the incinerator. I glued this to the railing that failed her grip and laid replenished flowers there on a weekly basis. Sometimes others anonymously leave flowers with my own, and sometimes mine are stolen by the obese cat lady who lives opposite me. She thinks flowers are woefully symptomatic of western capitalist indulgence. And I think cats are symptomatic of a deadening loneliness born of an inability to engage with sentient life forms. Some days I picture her cats strung from the railings like windchimes, mewling and scratching at the air amidst a shower of deep crimson petals. I once made a collage depicting this scene and anonymously posted it to her. Since then, she's been very amiable, and the memorial Kateflowers have rotted untouched on the railings. Sometimes I boil the flowers down for hours into a stock and use this as the basis for soups and rice dishes. And sometimes, with certain flowers, I'm made quite nauseous, but I do it to honour Kate's passing - I'm too squeamish to ingest her ashes, which her father gave to me to scatter, and which I've since kept on my mantle - in the way certain tribes eat the dead as a very literal nod towards reincarnation. I'm reincarnated on a daily basis, as my cells replace themselves. Everyone is. The only flesh I'd ever eat is my own however. It scares me that age is decay. And unlike cheese and wine, we don't improve with age. We decline, systematically, deteriorate into the obese cat lady, or worse. I can see the appeal of youth. Perhaps when the record producer who tried to seduce Kate at twelve got caught rimming a young boy, his defence ran something like, by eating out the young, I drink from the font of eternal youth, I'm able to slow my own inexorable decomposition; to literally ingest youth is to become it; crudely articulated, you are what you eat. To which I'd reply:

"You eat shit. Go figure."

I dunno. I miss Kate. And yet, I'm so convinced of her continued presence that actually conceding that sentiment seems like a premature formalising of her death. I read of children who lose their twin at an early age, and subsequently engage in internal dialogues with the dead sibling forever, as a kindred guide, a spiritual chaperone across slippery plateaus. And that's kind of how I view Kate. An angel on my shoulder, laughing, pointing, waving, bearing enormous breasts and oversized wings to compensate. I haven't been able to decode the look on her face when gravity claimed her that day. Somedays I'm convinced it's resignation, somedays surprise, somedays, a quizzical, enigmatic, evasive blankness, as though her spirit had already left her body, hitched a ride elsewhere. The death was officiated as accidental. I don't know if I believe in belief systems, let alone accidents, but I know that that look, attached to her playful, dangling frame, is gonna taint my vista indefinitely.

...Kate always said I was more of a pathological liar than an actor, and soon, I soon I left the acting industry and re-entered waking consciousness, whereupon I received a phone call: Richard.

"Hey, mate, just wondering if I might come and visit you this weekend, if you're free, like?"
"...Wow....Hi Rich, so, er, um, what's going on? You ok? Haven't seen you for a while.."
"I know, it's been about, what, three years, eh? Too long, I know. Anyway, you free this weekend?"
"Well, yeh, I can be, totally, where you living these days?"
"Oh, y'know, same as ever, though I commute to the city each day for work."
"Which is...?"
"Oh, I'm a loan assessor. Commission-based, fairly lucrative."
"Ok. Cool. Good to see you're keeping it ethical."
"You know me, mate. Anyway, so, I'm thinking I'll drive down on saturday, take monday off, and we can get a whole weekend together. Reckons?"
"Fuck yeh, it's been ages. So much to tell you I don't know where to start.""Where you working?"
"Oh, I wash dishes at an organic vegetarian cafe. It's cool, I get to work with a bunch of gay anarchist hippies, and it's a co-operative, so there's no real hierarchy."
"Very you mate. Ok, well, look, I'll give you a call when I'm an hour away. It'll be cool, looking forward to it."
"Are you bringing your girlfriend?"
"Haha, no way mate. I've been single for about a year now. That bitch almost had me in trauma counseling. Fucking Nazi whore. No, just me, old me, mate. Ok, gotta go, take it easy."
"Cool, seeya later."

And so I sit in the kitchen, phone glued to my ear, immersed in the unwavering ostinato of the hang-up tone, mesmerised by the uniformity of its bleeping, staring at the crockery shelf, my head reeling with the dizziness of possible futures. I've not seen Richard for three and a half years. In many ways, he laid the groundwork for my sexual archetype - aloof, very straight, oversexed, ethically-bankrupt. This configuration of traits, would frequently have me locked into a realm of torpid self-annihilation, as I debased myself internally to elicit the greatest orgasm when jerking off, forging all manner of sexual scenarios, of exponentially soaring hardcore degradation. And yet, beyond the projected sexual otherworldliness, Richard was actually quite a generic, banal professional yes man, whose notion of punk was to lie in bed an hour longer on a sunday. Still, naturally my intrigue was piqued by his abrupt cry from the nothingness. I was quite pervasively tempted to buy in some ecstasy and perhaps skew the scenario in my favour, sexually, I mean. There was that one time where...I was lodging with a live-in landlord and his seventeen year old son. The son was on narcotic overdrive, and on one occasion, we took shedloads of ecstasy and under its amorous song, he decided he wanted to fuck me, so we paraded softly to his room, he turned me over and fucked me really tenderly while his dad snored next door. Tenderly is not generally my taste, although I'm reconciling of late, the need for distinction between sexual fantasy and sexual actuality, in terms of simple joys like, staying alive.

I recall when I was about twelve, living in a conservative, middle-class hamlet, seething with redneck prejudices, a boy called Ben moving in two houses up from mine. He lived with his terminally obese, diabetic mother and her eighty-three year old sugar daddy, both of whom he'd regularly punch, kick, bite, over the most trivial contentions. He was about fifteen, precocious, unkempt, and utterly lost. I was immediately compelled by his charisma. At fifteen, he was already a speedfreak and within months would be lambasted by everyone he ever knew over accusations of statutory rape - his first girlfriend allegedly found sex too painful and decided to litigate. Bizarre coincidence that her mother was a lawyer at risk of disbarrement. Anyway, perhaps he did fuck her against her will, but that's trifling next to what he did to me. Ben's actions over four or five monther were so absolutely fundamental to my programming that he probably reconfigured my DNA, with his teeth, his fists, his cock, his lips, his toe-capped boots and his boa constrictor hugs, ditto those of his friends. My wrists still carry the echoes of scars from the bindings, and there's a very discernible hemisphere of teethmarks on my right shoulder, which never totally healed. And I think about him every day, generally in positive terms. He was smoking his way through a pack of Marlborough Reds on the patio, and claimed to be staggeringly propped up on amphetamines, recounting the time he and a friend were toking on a joint and administering 'blowbacks' - only they had bypassed cupping hands as a conduit through which to transmit the smoke, by simply locking lips. He assured me this was a totally hetero, functional exchange. After the third full-on, lip-locked blowback from his Marlborough, awareness that I'd been slumped against his thight for the past half hour abruptly kicked in. My pores excited with sudden paranoia and I attempted to break away, only to have my arm yanked violently as he dragged me into his lap and, cigarette in hand, propelled my messy thatched head into his groin, explaining how I'd very quickly get used to the aroma, the sensations, the physicality of this gridsquare of anatomy, before dragging me upstairs, pausing halfway to squeez my nape really gently and kiss me with all of his cavernous, engulfing mouth. My tongue, slow to reciprocate his deep, investigative strokes, articulated no words throughout the breaking-in that occurred. Only pansy shrieks, gasps and mumbled frowns as he weighed me down on the bed and became the first boy ever to fuck my asshole. The second instance took place in a phone box that doubled as a school bus stop. Fortunately for the phantom spectators, and unfortunately for the phantom sick paedo-voyeurs, we were the only kids heading to school that day. He forced me to suck his cock, then rolled me around and fucked me in my uniform, which I subsequently didn't wash for days, so loathed was I to neutralise the aromas of his sweat and sex. I left four feet of blood-starched toilet paper in the cubicle outside the staff room that day as I was too scared to consult first aid.

"Hi, I got raped by a fifteen year old psychopath whilst waiting for the schoolbus and I think his mature cock may have ruptured my colon. Is there anything you can do that doesn't involve tying me in a sack and kicking me, like my homophobic contemporaries did on tuesday...? No, okay... I'll just wait for it to scab then."

I recall standing beneath the lacey, fanning arc of a weeping willow branch in the school grounds when I was six, as a kid called Peter wrapped his palm around the back of my neck and squeezed rhythmically, with escalating intensity. I loved it. I absolutely loved it. Under his dominion I squirmed excitedly, giggled girlishly, savoured the heat of proximity. Even then, I suspected I wouldn'y be ogling pigtails and proto-cleavage when adolescence kicked in. The teacher scalded him on grounds of potential paralysis; my blissed-out protests were met with a weary, sussed, toss of the eyes and a pitying glance. Throughout that week, whenever we were alone, I encouraged him to resume the tactile imprisoning, and developed prototypical reverse-psychology methods that would motivate boys to do what I wanted, well into my earliest twenties. A devious marriage of ego-massage and mock-protest generally ensured the requisite pallette of aches, bruises and scars would be properly administered. Quite a talent. If I were to draw you a picture entitled Accumulated Bruise Man, i.e. if I were to depict me displaying simultaneously, all the physical evidence of pumped-boy pain accumulated over the years, the image would resemble a marbled blue-black swathe of twilight in the shape of a boy. I drew it once for George, my first boyfriend. He was sixteen, paranoid and exquisite.

While Joe gingerly fucked me, and we comically suppressed our sex noises to save disrupting the slumber of his father in the adjacent room, ecstasy gushing throes of seratonin through our pumped brains, I grabbed his hips and pulled him further into me, so long had I waited to be again penetrated by a guy. It was fun, insufficiently violent, and a little awkward, as Joe's timidity compromised the vigour of his assault, and naturally it hurt, having been some years, albeit in one of the few instances in which I still invite pain. My mind drifted back to Ben, and how he'd harness me to the bed with bailer twine and invite all of his straight friends to file in and rape me, one-by-one, explaining that my asshole was a great place to debut their sexual explorations without the embarrassment of fumbling awkwardly with a girl they actually fancied. Which was a really cool arrangement for everyone. Ben made enough money out of pawning my body, to fund his speed habit, they gained their sexual experience scout badges, and I got raped, repeatedly, by straight boys, of amazing skin and few syllables, the likes of whom by day I'd be punched by for even smiling at. A symbiosis. My favourite rapist was called Ben also, and he used to fuck me partially clothed, which usually entailed the light, glossy nylon of a football shirt wafting against my hips, and that, is as sublime as it would ever get.

Comedown

He aims the camera at his face
like a microphone, eyes over-engaging
With the machine, dragging out
Fertile desperation, teen vanity.

Comedown.
Carry Me Elysium.

His hair whithers my usual bouquet
Of metaphor, tawdry, lace, webs
Slumped across the wire,
Plasticine and puerile, inanity.

Comedown.

Carry Me Elysium.

Him, a completed state, Myself
A space, which he, to fill, expanding,
Detonates, hydrogen flares along
The aurioles of my tepid, wanting heart.

Comedown.
Carry Me Elysium.
Please.

I light a candle for every cell,
I lay hymns to futures
At the screen porch of this constellation,
A centaur's fugue, I'm forced by my hand, alone.

Carry Me Elysium.
Please.

My skin more wax than porcelain,
The morning drips meringue in
Chunks of amiable bored regret;
Nothing but to hope, my face.

Carry Me Elysium.
Please.

Myself a space, he an iron lung
For the admiring vapours, making
Up atmospheres in crazed, damaged brushstrokes,
The canvas walls of my expanding state.

Carry Me Elysium.

Matthew

When Matthew vaulted into life,
He tore the womb out of her thighs,
And fashioned into a balloon,
Of hope it sailed past her eyes.

I know because I saw...

The puppet fever dance
This kid in one small glance,
Towards a life of criminality...

Arrested twice by twelve,
A dope wreck at thirteen,
And now he's sixteen,
Junked and flunked, bad dream,

A face pristine,
As beautifully obscene.
I offered him a place to stay
To get away from those who'd break his soul.

Matthew you're welcome to stay
I would whore my own dreams for your skin.
Matthew, with buttermilk hair,
Emerald eyes set in peach porcelain.

In defence
Of consequence,
You're invited cordially
To take and break and enter me,
To drag me kicking through a night
Of cruelty and sharp insight
Into the passions governing
A boy devoid of love within.

When Matthew landed square in jail
The rugged fever drained from eyes
That once could rapier hearts so pale,
Now craters empty of surprise.

I know because I saw...

Satanic ether rise,
A blackened plume of lies
Disguised as spirit
Blast from broken mouth

Up into the sky,
To meld with cumuli.
Below,
His dead heart takes a dusty shroud
Beneath the cloud,
That once had it beat loud,
A brash and angry sound.
Rheumy eyes abound.
His cellmate takes his time to ask
About our Matthew's sketchy past.
The tale inspires a morbid gasp,
"I'll kill you" comes the gravelled, vapour rasp.

Matthew bereft of the joy in destruction
That used to incite
All form of violent passion can't summon
The urge to fight.

Defences staid,
He takes a blade
A thousand screams invade,
His broken flesh,
Enjoys a livid death,
And on his final breath
There surfs a single word:
He says my name.

Matthew never loved,
His soul stood proud above
The sham veil of vulnerability.
A pragmatist lies dead,
The devil's daily bread,
And I'm the courier of his legacy.

Oblique Young Captor King

I bathed tonight
By candlelight,
In loamy foam
And dreamed of home

One day I'll get there,
And whose face will it wear?

A laissez-fair jet fringe?
A body white and lean?
A leather jacket of maroon?
And eyes bewitching as the moon?

I took to casting runes of shell,
And blasted dark habits to hell,
So I could tell

If this is true love.

I break the chains,
And what remains
Is unassuming,
All consuming

Faith and hope in
Love that shows up in

A pair of tight black jeans?
Slender neck, and thighs?
A mouth inviting as a highwaymen's hostel,
Where subterranean secrets leek?

And will I know when you show
Out in a baffling glow (I'll go)
To appaling extremes,
To meet the scent of my dreams.

Down every rabbit hole
I'll taste the deep red soil,
To ascertain the flavour.
Of the one who will gather me
In a butterfly net,
I'll sail the ocean red,
Under a sky of lead,
I'll coast on pampus grass wings,
Above all earthly things.

Say my name.
Once again.
Kiss my cheek
My oblique young
Captor King.
I'm within
Your strong arms.
You won't harm me.

Warm my heart
With your art.
Soothe my knee
So tenderly,
And sing to me

Of manning wagons

And taming beasts
More raw than I
Of chasing comet
Tales up high

As I sing the storm in,
Your tales are warming to me.

We'll build a great big boat,
And vow to stay afloat
For our remaining years,
And all the world shall hear you

Say my name
Once again.
Kiss my cheek
My oblique
young captor king...sing

"I love you,
You flighty thing.
Heaven is what you can bring
When you say
That you love me
That you love me."

I bathed tonight
By candlelight.
Dreamt my way home
Through loamy foam
Into a place where...
Into a place...
I think I'll stay...

Spring Unclean