You are boneless flesh
You are crisp winter skin in my
Gushing mouth
But you are eternal hunger
Rib-racked with fever.

You are the breeding mealy-mouth
Riddled and crawling.
You are rancid salivery froth
Trickling
This way.

You are cloying mucus in my
Festered lungs,
Slapped closed clamped up popping alveoli
You are.

You are the creaking cartilage crack
Creeping.
You are the insistent night sweats
Swamping.
You are the crystallising salt left behind.
You are that vomitous death-stench that
Catches
In my sickly throat.

You are
Thankfully
Alone.

He Devil

I like your smile, he said
He said, I like your style.

I smiled.
I said, I like your face, your lips,
Your teeth, your eyes, I said.

I want your arms around me now
He said, just here.
I’m at your feet, he said
To worship your beautiful form.

I said, that’s not me down there,
Look up, I’m here.

The essence of you is what I want, he said,
To breathe you in is what I need.
I want to touch the very heart of you,
Your solar plexus truth, he said.

I said, bless you, but
You want to feel my heart bleed out
Between your filthy fingers.

He said, I want to tear your soul apart
And fit the pieces together again.

You want to destroy my Self, I said,
And crush it beneath your thighs.

But how else will I know you, he said,
If we cannot build it together?

You’re tearing down the sky, I said, and
Threatening the air I breathe.
How can I grow with your fist upon my skull? I said.

Without me you will not grow, he said.
His horns began to show.
Without me you are nothing, he said:
Desperate, weak and slow.

I said, without me there is no purpose,
You cannot live on this soil alone.
His eyes burned bright and he struck me down.

My mouth sucked up the earth, grasped the air.
This is my essence, I said,
The ground you walk on with your primate friends.
I said, I am the fertile muck and blood upon which you feed.

His fists solidified into cloven hooves and
He rampaged for a while;
An ungainly heavy dance as I blessed my torn-away roots.

This dance you think you do for me, I said,
Is laughable to us.
You prance and shiver your hairy limbs whilst checking for the eyes upon you.

I do not hear, he said with force, as his strength
Washed him away.
He shrivelled and shrank until
His feeble paleness lay naked against the blood-red earth.

I said, I like your face, your lips,
Your teeth, your eyes, I said,
But not enough for that.

Part 2

She Devil

Come ‘ere, she said.
He did.

You stifle and punch
And the heaving swell thrusts our spiralling skeletal
Down to the depthy green
The blackish grease from
Cast off bodies
Clinging to my dripping skin
As I in turn cling to your dripping claws

Deepish blackish green in situ
Still it lies, settled
Broiling fluidity of trailing raked-up drudge

This acidic menstruation
The blood runs through my hands like water
Your Dead Sea mind
Is fucking with mine

***
And I can see your dancers.
They catch my eye
And wink.
They catch my breath
And throw it to the wind.

***
Are you
As lost
As me?
Will you cling to me
With me
As the earth it swirls above
In turquoise immunity?

***
I shall cling to you, my breast against yours,
Your breath pouring onto me
Drying me out,
A desert rejecting
The rain.
Did you see
The flicker
As that moment passed us by?
Did you see me?
Did you see
Me?
Did you see?
And you laugh
And you drown
In my beauty
Here.
Here, it’s yours.
It’s all yours.

I smell you
In corridors
On other men’s clothes;
A haze that follows
Borrowing my heart
For a while
Until the heat cools
Until the summer ends
Then your smell will fade
Like the smoke we inhaled
Together.

We told each other
What we liked in bed
And made promises of sex
At work
In your car.
They seem like lies
In this sober frame.

A misty ride,
A sudden end,
Too short-lived to be worth
A photograph.
These nights
And the shower water
That drenched us
Smooth.

I’m pulling you out of my chest
Tendon by tendon
I can feel the stretch
The tug.
The sway of my hips
And the shine in my eyes
Will never tell.
I find out about you
From other mouths,
Words I know already.

I’m leaving,
Anyway.
Memories in boxes
Sealed with tape
By my own hands.
You’ll be inside
I’ll trap you
And open it up
With scissors
When I want to go back.
I’ll always have you
And that look in your eyes.

I played my drum for Him
For You honoured me’

Little Drummer Boy, 1958, composed by Katherine K. Davis, Henry Onorati and Harry Simeone.

***

The dawn broke, and he heaved himself into the day. The slender figure in his bed let out a little sleepy moan, shuffled herself onto her side, and wrapped the extra duvet around her shoulder. He stood and the blood rushed down his body, blurring his vision briefly. He paused for a second, squeezing his eyes shut and rubbing his insistent erection.
He showered, rinsed mouthwash and spat it into the water as it drained down the plug hole. He contemplated having a shave as he wiped the mirror to remove the condensation and the ghostly ‘hi dad!!! ’ message left behind from the weekend. With a smile, he slapped his cheeks gently, and decided against the shave.
Once back in the bedroom, he flung open the curtains and laughed as the woman cursed the light and pulled a pillow over her head.
‘Fuckin hell, it’s stupidly early,’ she mumbled. ‘Bloody bastard.’
‘But it’s a lovely day, baby!’ he exclaimed, coughing.
Once dressed, he leaned down to kiss the pillow, grabbed his keys and shut the bedroom door a little too loudly.
‘Ta ta!!’ he called, as his smile faded.

***
A couple of hours later, after his housemates had left for work and the heating had clicked off, she sat up in bed, looking at the room that he’d hurriedly, obsessively, tidied the night before. There was no sign of the empty vodka bottle or pint glasses and straws, the ashtrays moved. The only indication that she’d been there was the small pile of neatly folded clothes on the chair. Taking a deep breath, she threw off the covers and searched for her knickers at the end of the bed.
It was his musician’s fingers that attracted her initially. They had met over a pint of cloudy cider, the kind that seemed to dissolve the muscles in her legs, but maybe that was just the effect he had on her. This first encounter at the bar after his gig, where she’d absorbed the music and kept her eye on him, left her wanting. And she danced to the beat of his drum, and smiled at the way his thick fingers grasped the drum sticks, arms curving in strength, head bent in concentration. Swaying her hips to the music, she knew those fingers could drive her wild.
Her own fingertips now tingled with the memory of touching his flesh, of reaching beneath the cotton and stroking his haunches, gently scratching down to the waistband of his shorts. It was only after several fucks that he had told her about his parents.

***
The day passed for him as each day usually did; gripping the tools and digging the earth, a rawness that seemed to run through his life like a vein. The occasional twitch in his dick was the only reminder of the long night before. He yawned.
The usual banter ensued, the workmen calling to each other across the yard, some of them in trucks, others wheeling barrows piled high with rubble, others, like him, thrusting machines deep into the soil that was thick with rocks.
In the moments of shuddering mechanical vibrations, he’s practice the harmonies for the rehearsal later that night. He wasn’t always aware of singing out loud, a habit that exposed him to much piss-taking in the yard. His music had consistently invited attention.
‘Hey, twat!’ a voice called from behind him. It was early afternoon, their lunchtime pints settling nicely in their stomachs. ‘Fag break!’ and as he turned, a Marlboro was thrown in his direction.
‘Alright, mate! Ta very much, don’t mind if I do.’ Deftly, he had caught it between two fingers.
They both sat on the flat back of one of the trucks, their heavy boot-clad feet swinging against the thick tyres, watching the secretary struggle up the Portakabin steps in her tight skirt.
‘So how’s you, mate?’ his friend asked. ‘How’s yer littl’uns?’
‘Ah, they’re cracking, mate, thanks. The oldest was at rehearsal at the weekend, he bloody loved it.’
‘So yer still in that band, then?’
‘Yeah, got a gig this Saturday, as it happens. Up for it?’ He flicked his cigarette into a puddle.
‘Yeah, should be, although have to keep the missus sweet for Sunday, yer know.’ He looked across, and continued. ‘Mother’s Day on Sunday, mate. How have yer missed that?’
‘Ha! Just the dumb fuck that I am, I guess,’ he replied, before jumping down from the truck and going back to his digging. His mate called after him, but he didn’t hear what was said.

***
She left the dishes drying on the side, wiped her hands on the tea towel and dropped her cigarette stub directly into the bin. One last glance around the kitchen, she picked up her hand bag, double checked for her toothbrush and mobile phone, and left his flat, almost holding her breath as she felt the click of the lock falling into place. She gazed up at the grey sky, and leaned back against the door.
His generosity had flattered her from the start. He’d greet her with a tight embrace that softened her body as she leaned right into him. He’d take her out for meals, and stock up the alcohol to see them through until dawn. He taught her some rhythms on the drums, and they’d strum guitars together, before laughing at the drifting punters in the street below who fell out of the pub at last orders. Laughter and sex would keep them awake. In the early hours once exhausted, they half- heartedly pleasured each other until cuddling into a drunken sleep.
And after the relentless fucking, then what? After the dawn broke and she realised she’d leaned in too far? During the long hours at work, and the long days in between his calls, he was on her mind. She knew there were moments when he lost himself in her eyes, but there was always that missing jigsaw piece left under the bed or swept beneath the carpet. Maybe he stepped on it and squeezed it between the treads in his trainers. That would be like him, taking away that last piece of pleasure for himself, closing the door. But maybe that door had been closed when he was 9. She guessed she’d never know.
A sharp intake of breath and she descended the steps towards her car.

***
His last memory of the full household began at the start of a spring morning. His brothers had woken him with their Scalextric and the inevitable raucous crashes off the end of the figure of eight and into the radiator. He swung his legs out of the bunk-bed, tugged his pyjama bottoms gently down so that they reached his ankles, and ruffled the youngest’s hair as he passed.
The felt tips and paper still lay on the kitchen table amidst unpaid bills and stinking empty cans of cider. Nothing much shifted in their house unless he attended to it, but most of the time the dog shit and cigarette butts were too much for him. After sniffing the carton of milk, he poured himself a glass and sat down. Under the pile of paper he’d hidden the half- finished card, a roughly folded A4 sheet, the picture on the front needing its final touches. With a milk- stained top lip and his tongue creeping out as he focused, the skinny boy with his matted hair chose the pink pen and finished colouring in the petals on the flowers.
Inside the card, he wrote heavily, almost pressing through the page, ‘Happy muthers Day, From me x’ and decorated the corners with more small flowers. As the morning ticked by, and the house stirred around him, he proceeded to make an envelope from an old drawing, before searching the kitchen drawers for sellotape to secure the card inside. He propped it up against the kettle before hearing his mother’s irregular footsteps on the stairs.
Later that day, after he’d been told to pack a small bag and the car outside kept its engine running and his younger brothers were snotty with crying, he spotted a bright piece of paper sticking out of the bin in the front room. The veins of the pink flowers were revealed through the creases and folds.

***
When she thought back to those glorious, painfully sweet and erotic nights, underlined as they were with the fierce but unfulfilled connection, she remembered the fast and insatiable fucking that left her breathless. In the end, she knew that every compliment, every stroke of his skin, every deep kiss, wouldn’t matter. Of course she forgave him; she forgave his distance, never knowing how far she could tread into his inner world, never sure how much to tell him. It became an unspoken transaction, this subtle exchange of love, expressed with a look, a tearful embrace, and the occasional late night text, an afterthought.