SLURP
I drink your
strawberry
chocolate
salted caramel
hazelnut
even
vanilla milkshake
slurp your sarcasm
as if
it were melting ice-cream
munch your foaming banana
fudge
as if
it were
direct from drug store spigot
sweet Vesuvius, blessed
Krakatoa
fallen
like hot manna
into my lap
swirling like
a spiral nebula in the
machine of your receptacle
thoughts
of cosmic body horror
subsumed by the
rush of your
sudden pink
flamingo
sugar
treacle and absinthe.
PARSE
we lay
on a play
white sheet
like bodies
on snow
two
transitive verbs
needing
reciprocal action
needing to
butterfly into
something amazing
a score
a script
that delivers everything
in a killer
selection
from the most economical
and resonant
of
linguistic
expressions
not a tortuous, ill-judged
lingering and rambling
bog
standard
phrase (adverbial) of
sexual pleasure
FIRST
our first chess game
taking so long
each of us
terrified of making
awrong move
we know
the game but
have never matched up
against each other
do not
want to blunder
our queens
lose the opportunity
of playing superbly
making a supreme sacrifice
mating the King
NOT TO MINCE WORDS
“deserts of vast eternity”
O coy mistress
I read your
performance
in that poem
and frankly, Madam
was so disappointed,
loving
Marvell and speaking
to you from
a sexier age
(or so we like to
tell ourselves,
since the Stones
and the sixties
it has been our assumption)
would like to make it clear
as the lady in the pub
in the Wasteland said
“not to
mince words”
think it
behoves you
not to stretch out the coy
and coquette and
then
the foreplay
for all of three centuries
until you reach
our age
whilst Andrew, not getting
any younger keeps
writing his
metaphysical whatnots
though what
we have here
outdoes him I believe
for his
natural style and
flavour
leaves the poor man
wanting in comparison
to my most
conceited conceit
AT THE MANTIS BAR
first day on
the new planet
picked up
a woman
at the Mantis bar
should have
had second thoughts
seeing her
lick her
lips at me
after hearing
in her culture
not an
Inch of distinction between
different
kinds of lush and
de-lish
INFERENCE
she whispered
in the philosopher’s ear
that there is no inside
except
as metaphor
metaphor
itself
a metaphor
the whole of the Universe
standing for
something else
the softness of
her voice
the movement of her lips
destroying
the mere thought of
counter-
argument
any possibility of
a different conclusion
THIS IS NOT MY BED
this is not my bed
it looks exactly like it
but it isn’t
where is
the book on parallel
universes that I was reading
left above
the covers?
and who is this woman
calling me darling, lover, husband
naked
exposed by those
thrown-back covers?
this is not my bed
but in this parallel universe
it is quote obviously
so going to be
need to show her
she has not yet met the Damian
who loves
most alternately
TO A T
loved the detailed
account of how
he did you
so much to touch on
there to
tease out
there
and so much
better to
show
not tell
loved the account
since
so interactive
all those
finer points
when
all is said and done
to
feel the love
between
you two
to a T
impeccably
NIGHT SCHOOL
I often think
Y about X
D (for me
to the
power
of
two)
over
U
great
sine curve
C into
V
(better
factor it
in)
and here a lab practical
on my
way to
graduation
algebra
of your (bra)
and all
that lies
beneath
the line
(subtext
we term it
in the writerly trade)
angles and
circles
gradients
and tangents
still
to be worked
yet
to be teased out
O what
an allnighter to be pulled
when push comes to shove
GOODFELLOW
that juice
that misguides
messing with
the truth that is youth
in its
absolute
love
slurring word sounds to
fit that
shifty, narcotic
sex-dream picture
Oh
I do not hear
what I hear
do not see
what I see
my brute body far more
beast that it has ever been
your
fairy bower so
exquisitely
kindly
your words dripping with
the wonder of your
mouth, lips
parts I might
list
if I had
time to
Oh the love you have given me
too much for lifetime, enough
for one-night stand (more
might drown me)
that juice, my Queen,
so translated, brought
base to gold
great
alchemy
beyond the perfume trick
of simple chemistry
we must have bathed in
must have flowed, rolled
over our bodies
like a river
at which sight
Puck
puckered up
so
deeply impressed
Erotic poetry 