Things I Never Told Anyone

Sitting on your knee
In a pink paisley sari
On the front sofas
Of a club in town

As your girlfriend
Goes and takes a piss
You whisper to me
“if I wasn’t with her
you’d be mine’

You push
another tablet
into my mouth
and I feel
your grip stroking
moves on the
side of my waist

The music plays loud
and the bass is deep
the lights filter across
your shimmering face

And I feel like
a whore
as your girlfriend
well she’s my ‘best friend’
and I just can’t help myself
when I stare into
your eyes

They are black
deep
like coalmine crags
from the north east
of darlington
or the banks of drax power
as you put your drink down
I feel the kick pushing
up the side of my throat

You pull me outside
and I throw up all over
you hold back my hair
stroke my shivering back
telling me
everything’s gonna be all right.

But to my lasting credit
I never once touched you
never kissed your lips
dreamed of you at night
but I thought about you a lot.

We stopped hanging out
after a while
me and your missus
and sitting here thinking
8 years down the line
maybe I should have had you after all?

Megan Hall

Stone Roses.

It started out as a bit of a joke.

His wife, you see, once DJed with Mani, formerly bassist in The Stone Roses, currently bassist with Primal Scream. From time to time, she saw him about town, emerging from Sainsbury's, having a drink in The Cornerhouse, all over the place, and they'd let on to each other.

'Alright,' she'd say.

'Alright,' Mani would reply.

Or she would raise her considerable eyebrows and he would return the favour.

And so it became a bit of a joke. If they were sitting in of a night watching some history of the 90s or something, and Mani popped up, he'd say, 'There's your second husband again,' and she'd reply, 'Oh aye.' If there were rumours of a possible 'Roses reunion, or a new Primal Scream album in the works, or if Mani was DJing somewhere local, he'd make sure to mention it later the same night over gammon and eggs.

'Your second husband has been busy,' he'd say.

'What's he done now?' she'd reply.

And then he'd regale her with the latest and they'd laugh and she'd say, 'I don't know why you're laughing. That's my second husband you're talking about.'

It was a joke and a joke it remained until she left him for a stone-mason from Altrincham who specialised in carving fancy flowers into the pillars and porticoes of the rich and famous.

Peter Wild

www.peterwild.com

Paris

I was fucked in the back of a taxi last night as this Moroccan cabbie with apparent mental health issues that North Africans like to pass off as culture or exuberance was swinging his cab in and out of traffic with glee, going on and on about Iggy Pop, and telling me I had the eyes of his beautiful brother, Ali.

I told him 'we are all brothers' and that I'd been to an album launch party thrown in the Meat-Packing district in New York. Ice T and some band that looked like, but wasn't, Blink 187 had been invited and sat roped-off in the VIP area all night drinking cocktails. Iggy Pop is tiny, very skinny with clear tanned Californian skin and hair from a shampoo commercial. His tall black wife with big fake black tits towered over him as the cameras flashed. He carried his dog under his arm all evening and smiled nicely. I couldn't think of the word for poodle in French. I told the cabbie that I had felt disappointed at the time. Iggy Pop didn't die. He just kept living. Listening to The Stooges makes me want to scream out, rip my t-shirt off and get high. While he is still alive he will continue to invite Ice T and Sum 46 to his parties and make people talk shit about him until one of his songs comes on and you shut the fuck up.


I was so fucked up in the back of this cab. Passing out. Heading to a bar somewhere in Paris. I had been drinking all day and was then invited to a party held by an American kid studying to be a chef. His apartment looked out over the Eiffel Tower which spasmodically erupted in flashing lights. In that loneliness that overwhelms you at parties where you hardly know anyone, I let the lights dance around in my eyes. You could never grow tired of that I thought. I kept grabbing people to the window when it happened. They didn't seem to be that into it. The American had prepared delicate snacks and refreshments. My favourite was the grapes in goat’s cheese rolled in crushed pistachio nuts and the mango vodka cocktails. I don't think I touched the food after the cocktails kicked in. My brain clenched and my mouth said things that made me laugh like an idiot. Things you could easily regret. I had quickly got to the stage where the faces on girls I was trying to fuck were twisting with contempt. We were all staring out from behind the narrow slits of our masks. I couldn't help but act like an asshole.


I was in the back of a cab with a Polish asshole and his Swedish friend. A girl of no obvious charm. My tongue was hanging out of my wine-stained mouth for effect as I let myself slip away. I came to as she was amusingly lapping at it like a thirsty lap dog. It hardly endeared me to her. She was wearing me down. She was making me feel like shit. Later on I was fucking her in some half-built bathroom in the basement of a youth hostel managed by a black Hell's Angel. I had met him before. He'd warned me with a stupid frowned face to never fuck with the Hell's Angels. They were not a joke. 'Like WWF wrestling?' I'd asked. No way. They were killers. He'd walked into a room of Hell's Angels polishing guns once and...I don't remember the rest. Another time a guy had given the finger to a gang roaring through the Pompidou Centre. You would think that they would let that pass, but no. They knocked him out and took that look off his face by pressing it against the scalding engine of one of their bikes, burning off with his twisted smile melted and singed to the gleaming chrome. That will teach you.

The Polish guy, Joseph was setting me up. I knew that. He was fishing for me in a lake of destructive fish. In a lake full of fish addicted to the hook. Fish that spat out worms and pushed their throats deeper into shit. If I fucked the charmless swede her friend Anja would find out. I liked Anja and she liked me. Joseph was in love with Anja and didn't want it to happen. He had made that quite clear to me by trying hard not to.

-You love her. Don't you mate? You love her.

-I don't love her. I hardly know her.

He hated that. Anja was happy for him to feed her and console her. To listen to her shit. She had thrown herself at men she didn't trust and he had became family. When it had all gone wrong and they were alone he would pour out his advice. Digging his hole. She would quietly nod and sigh. He only had her tears. She didn't love him.

-You love her don’t you mate?

He was sneering at me. Polish Joseph was sneering at me at the party. He didn't give a fuck about the Eiffel Tower exploding in fire behind him.

-Don't worry mate. I won't tell her

-There's nothing to tell you Polish cunt.

'But you will,' I thought. 'You will'. He was waiting. Patient and waiting and I was bound to bite. I thought of day-time cop shows like Colombo. He was the evil guy with black leather gloves and the injection. No doubt about it.

I was so fucked up in the back of the cab and Polish Joseph's eyes were shining with laughter and squeezing my arm with Judas fingers. Go on, they squeezed. Go on. The wrong Swedish girl was staring forward now, waiting for the lights to change.
Later on, Polish Joseph's friend Sammy the black Hell's Angel was pointing at me and telling me not to fuck with his bike. He had parked it inside to protect it. The Swedish troll had linked her arm in mine. I stopped fucking with the bike so that Sammy would go away and then started fucking with it again. Drunkenly pulling at the handlebars. I didn't even look up.

-Have you heard from Anja?

-No

-Is she going to come back to Paris this weekend?

-I don't care right now to be honest with you.

-Look...I'm not going to fuck you.

I had never used these words before. They bemused me. She was smiling like an idiot. WERE WE ALL FUCKING IDIOTS HERE? I WAS LOSING IT, I THOUGHT: 'FUCK IT, LETS GO'. I DRAGGED HER DOWN THE UNLIT STAIRS AND INTO A TOILET CUBICLE. I PULLED DOWN HER COTTON UNDERWEAR REVEALING HER WILD BUSHY HAIR AROUND HER CUNT. AN UNKEMPT VILLAGE IDIOT THAT SCRATCHED MY DICK. I TRIED TO FORCE IT IN. I STUCK MY FINGER IN HER. SHE GASPED AND PUT HER MOUTH TO MY NECK. I PUSHED HER BACK. MY DICK WAS HARD. I PUSHED IT IN AND MADE HER SHUDDER. THIS IS WHAT YOU WANTED YOU CUNT.

POLISH JOSEPH WAS SOON BANGING AT THE DOOR LAUGHING. I PRETENDED THAT I WASN’T THERE. THAT I WASN’T DOING IT. THRUSTING AT HER. SHE GRIPPED ONTO ME TIGHTER. HOW LONG UNTIL ANJA FINDS OUT I THOUGHT. I FUCKED HER GOODBYE. I FUCKED HER AWAY. SHE LIVED SO FAR AWAY. IT WAS AN ILLUSION JUST A DESPERATE ILLUSION. MY EYES WERE CLOSED TIGHT AND I THOUGHT OF HER BEAUTIFUL EYES AND SKIN, HER HAIR, SUCH A DESPERATE ILLUSION. JOSEPH WAS STILL BANGING ON THE DOOR.

-USE A CONNIE MATE, USE A CONNIE

I CARRIED ON THRUSTING INTO HER. WILD AND REGRETFUL. I WANTED TO DISAPPEAR. TO FADE INTO THE STREETS, INTO THE BLACKS, THE ARABS, THE TRAFFIC. ANYWHERE FROM HERE. FROM THIS TOILET, THIS STINKING MESS. TO DISAPPEAR TO WHERE THERE WAS NO BLOOD, NO BONES NO TISSUE. I WHISPERED EVILLY INTO HER EAR.

-IM GOING TO COME INSIDE YOU

I STARTED TO THRUST HARDER, MY HAND AROUND HER NECK, HER CHIN. MY FINGERS PRESSING INTO HER CHEEKBONE

-NO, NO

-IM GOING TO COME INSIDE YOU

-NO, DON’T, DON’T-

-YES,YES I WILL

-PLEASE
BITING MY NECK.

-NO, NO. I'M GOING TO COME...

I CAME ALL OVER HER WHITE STOMACH. IT COULDN’T HAVE SEEN THE SUN FOR MONTHS.

M.Frankel

Dead Letters

Dear Father,
The Sunday night you died you had been dancing with my mother - a slow waltz I expect – when your heart gave up, and you died right there on the dance floor, in full view of all your friends and neighbors.
I, who had been drinking heavily some seventy miles away, learned of it when I was awakened in the early hours of the following morning by a member of the local Gardai. I can still recall it; fuzzy-headed from the effects of the alcohol, and wondering what kind of country it was that had the police waking up people in the middle of the night to tell them their father is dead.Later, sobered up, and in the cold reality of daylight, I realized that however little we had said to each other in the past there was no chance of expanding on it now – or ever again.

You were always the silent type; I wouldn’t say you were secretive but you were definitely silent.

This poem is for you

The Night the Music Died
He lay in the box quite comfortably
His waxen face staring into infinity
Looking much better in death than he had ever done in life.
And all I could do was peer at him through slatted fingers
From the back of the room.
The ever-present smell of tanning and leather aprons was absent now
More than forty seeping years of it
Scrubbed away one last time.


The moped which was a natural progression
From pedal-power when his legs gave out,
Lay discarded in the coal-house.
No driver you see;
And mother still had her shopping to do.
He dug turf, cut down young Sally trees,
And turned over his bit of stony ground
Endlessly.
In summer he clipped sheep slowly
With a machine bought by post from Clery’s.
Carefully stowing it away in its box when the shearing was done.


The chalk pipes he sucked on,
Their stems held together with blood pricked from his thumb,
And his three bottles of Sunday night Guinness
Standing corked still under the counter
Were redundant now.
Who would dance a half-set with her now
My mother enquired of no one in particular.
The smoky saloon bar stunned that the music had felled him,
Knocked him to the floor in the middle of the tune.
He lay there with a smile on his face
Knowing it was over.
And I never got to know what was on his mind.


Later, we put him in the ground
And sadness trickled down me like dust through my fingers.
And afterwards, everybody stood around
Saying what a great man he was.
Slapping the back of my overcoat
Sure he gave forty years to that tannery
And what did it give him?
I wanted to shout to the throng.
A gold watch and a tin tray
And both had his name spelled wrong.



Your loving son
Tom

Tom O'Brien

http://letters-to-dead-relatives.blogspot.com/

Never Meet Your Idols

It was miserable day on Briggate. I had just decked out an LSD Christmas hologram window with diamante covered mannequins crawling across the floor dressed in haute couture festive snazz, and was stood outside checking out the display. As I stood back to check the dimensions, the structure, the placing of my masterpiece I caught the reflection behind me of six burly bounders.Unusual really, to see six beefy blokes at 11AM on a Friday in Leeds. Bet they’re hiding someone famous? I noticed one of the men was wearing a Crossroads Benny beanie hat, and the other one had a rockabilly quiff with brothel creepers. I recognised him from somewhere but couldn’t quite place him.


Out of curiosity I decided to stalk the party into the department store. Now this wasn’t any old bargain pound shop, I happened to be working for one of the top notch couture markets outside of London, let’s call it by the staff’s favourite nickname, Hairy Nipples. The store policy is that you are never under any circumstance to approach a celebrity at anytime that they are in the shop, otherwise you will be fired. When you sign your contract, you even have to sign that agreement before they’ll employ you.I was still intrigued to find out who this hidden man was nestling between the bouncers, so followed them upstairs with some hanging graphics to conceal my face. It wasn’t until they reached the underwear department that I realised exactly who the mystery man in the woolly hat was. He happened to be headlining the Town&Country Club that night. It was the man who I had spent my entire teenage years worshipping at the feet of, covered in daffodils, bitterly re-enacting scenes of Oscar Wilde in the cemetery, it was him.
What exactly are you meant to say to a man like that without sounding like an idiot fangirl?


What I really wanted to say was this: Steven Patrick, you are my life, my love, my total inspiration, and have guided me through my dark years of teenage life, giving me hope through the journey of literature that you laid down to me at an early age. If there is any small way that I can repay the favour, then don’t be afraid to say. I’ve always dreamt that one day I would meet you, and would be able to tell you in person how much a soul like you has rescued a whole generation of smalltown nobodies like me. Thanks Morrissey, from the bottom of my heart.


I would then peck him on the cheek, he would give me a hug and say ‘Thanks, that really means a great deal to me. Here’s a VIP ticket to my show tonight. You know what, why don’t you come along and hang out with me in Los Angeles, I’m sure you and Nancy Sinatra would get along a treat!’


I had this dream of who he was in my head. You build up these people, stack up your idols, and when you find out they are just as much of an idiot as you and me, then it breaks your heart.As I peered at Morrissey through the Prada underpant shelves, I could see the security guards watching over me, one of them said ‘We know you are following him. Stop it before we grass you up love.’


From what I could see from my overhead view, and this was look don’t touch, he was leafing through the silk underwear with Boz Boorer (his guitarist) and a very camp suntanned lizard who I presumed to be his boyfriend. This was the first time I realised that Morrissey is infact 100% gay, and not straight, and definitely not celibate. Morrissey is also partial to very expensive designer clothing, and does not, contrary to popular belief wear Oxfam shirts. He is also very handsome in the flesh, but he works on that suntan.


It was an Ally McBeal moment, but I kept stalking the fucker some more. It was shattering my dreams just seeing him there in the flesh, he’s only ever been a thought in my head. But he was there and for real, and I saw him spend £2000 on designer underpants. That’s Morrissey the whole hog. He sells the poverty dream to you and me, makes the money, then wallows like a fucking fat cat in LA, spending my hard earned pounds on 4 pairs of silk underpants totalling £2000 in Hairy Nipples.The dream was dead.


As I saw my once favourite miserablist hand over his Amex Gold Card, my love affair with him was over. I sat on the steps to the store and played with my rotten shoelaces, thinking how can something so special be ruined so quickly, and so out of the blue?When I got home, I chucked out Viva Hate through the bedroom window, as it smashed on the concrete below I said my last goodbyes to the man I always loved but never met.

Last Chance Disco

The Secret Art of an English Gentleman

Tom Poulton - Out next week on Taschen ...

"Thomas Leycester Poulton was an English magazine and medical book illustrator, born in 1897. Upon his death in 1963 it was discovered he was also a prolific and imaginative erotic artist who produced hundreds of sketches and finished drawings of women proudly and exuberantly displaying themselves in ways shocking to conservative post-war Britain. The archive remained hidden until the 1990s, when a collector of erotic artifacts passed it on to a fellow collector willing to share it with the world. Though Tom Poulton’s work tells us much about English society between 1948 and 1963, there is a universal quality to these images of joyous, uninhibited sexuality that transcends time and place."

To Conquer Those Who Make You Suffer

Untold amounts of mental and material torture may be inflicted upon one by the evil spell cast out by another with ill intentions. When you are sure of the ones who have harmed you, it may be justified to reverse unto them the evil spirits they have cast upon you and to render them helpless to again hurt you or others who may have fallen victims to their vile doings.

The spirit of revenge is not one to trifle with and should only be used as a gesture of self defence that will protect you from harm and return to the doer the same agony that they have bestowed upon you so that it will serve as a lesson to them.

Begin the spell on an evening when there is no moon, and do not let anyone see you or know of your endeavours. Take some War powder and sprinkle it in front of the house where your enemy lives so that he or she may walk in it or step over it as they come and go from the house.

After sprinkling the War powder, wait three days. Inside your own home, you shall burn some Helping Hand or John the Conqueror Incense each day from the first day. Each evening, light a black candle and under the candle place a piece of parchment upon which you have written the name of your enemy nine times in Dragon’s Blood Ink.

On the fourth day, take a small bottle of War Water to the home of your enemy. With it, make a cross in front of the house and walk away without looking back. As you return home, sprinkle Confusion Powder so that the evil spirits who have been hounding you will be confused and go back where they came from.

On the first day of the spell ritual, scrub your floors with water to which you have added ten drops of Van-Van Floor Wash. Do this every third day for 2 weeks as evil spirits cannot abide a place where this wash is used regularly.

For any crossed condition and to overcome enemies who plot against you, pray Psalm7 early each morning and you will find that your enemies will cease their persecutions and leave you undisturbed.

Do these things faithfully according to instructions and you will get your satisfaction and be avenged. No longer will you be worrying when you should be enjoying peace. No longer will there be tears of anguish but they will be replaced with smiles of joy. No longer will you endure stress and strain but the gods of contentment and happiness will surround you and your home.
So Be It ………………..

Anna Riva

The Shit Kicking

another time
me and two
of
my
friends
got the shit
kicked
out of
us
late at night
walking home
pissed
and
tripping

beaten up
in three different
backstreets
by
two boys
younger but
tougher
and
madder
and
rougher
than us
the sons of
dealers
and cons

i can only
remember that
night
by a collection
of
memory
photographs

by the way
the moon
lit
up the massive
rock
that one of
them
raised about
his head
as if to slam down
on
poor davey
and the way
poor mark
(now dead)
freaked out
and
hid
in a
coal-bunker
where he stayed
for ages
watching coal
and
cowering
and
hallucinating
intensely

and the way
they stole my wallet
from my
pocket
and my
leather
coat from my
back
in slow motion
and the way
i
just let them
like a
fucking pussy
with a sore
jaw

but
i suppose
the one good thing
to
come
out of it
was that
i’ve
never been a
fucking pussy
since

because even when
i got the shit kicked
out of me
again
and then
again
i went down
raging
and fighting with
iron in my
stomach
gravel in my
knuckles
and curses on my
razor
tongue.

Ben Myers

www.benmyers.com

On Metaphysics

“Lifessa fuchkn jdoke,” said the man clutching the bottle of tonic wine. He had a bruise on his face like the map of some undiscovered country. It was dark and multi-hued, purple, yellow, red, oil on a wet road. One of his eyes was toad-swollen and closed.

“D'ye hearr me?” he shouted but no one replied. A pigeon pecked at a wrapper. A bus passed, it’s hydraulics hissing at the pedestrians.

“Yer all fuchkn slaves!” he wiped his mouth on his cuff and staggered forward. “Go home and feather your… fuchkn nests! Yer all up to your debt in eyeballs!”

Then he roared a guttural sentence without any verbs or nouns before pirouetting on one heel and onto the flat of his head. The bottle clinked twice down the street before it smashed.
I thought nothing of it until my friend told me a story one night when we were drinking. His cousin and a mutual friend were fishing out on the coast when a car pulled up on the pier. The engine stopped and a guy stepped out. He sparked up a cigarette and stood there staring out at the sea and sky. He didn’t pace up and down or even look at them, he just stood there staring into the distance silently smoking. Then he got back in, started the ignition and put his foot to the floor. The car revved and in a split second tore off the pier and flumped, belly-flopped into the sea. Within seconds the whole thing had tilted and the taillights were disappearing into the depths. They dropped their rods and ran over. Great fists of bubbles were coming to the surface. They looked at each other. Silence. The driver burst to the surface, wrestling with the waves.
"Jesus boys, it's fucking freezing" I believe he said.

Darran Anderson
www.myspace.com/andyamsterdam

The Willy Watcher

the first time I had
sex
with a
girl
as opposed to my
hand
i laid down my
leather
coat on the grass
of a
wasteland
behind a
pub
in a north-east
town

then we did
it
right there and
right then
grunting
and it was
night
and it was
quick
and it was
pretty good
because I’d been
made
to
wait
and I came like
a
prisoner
on
parole

and afterwards
as we hoisted
up our
tangled
pants
while in reasonably
good
spirits
a figure suddenly
appeared
from the
bushes
appeared
from the
night

a grubby little
balding
ginger
man-child
from the mental
hospital
a toilet lurker
a willy watcher
with a mis-shapen
head
and he
came
for me
reaching out
a hand
urgh
and going
the police are coming,
the police are coming,

and i thought
i bet they are
you cunt
but what i
said was
back the fuck
off
and jumped at
him
with my
fists
because now I was
a
man
and
men
protect their
ladies
and men
leap at other
men
with their fists

act first
think later
that’s what men
do
isn’t it?
and now i
was one
too
and now I had
a new role
to play

only I didn’t
consciously know this
as the pervert
retracted back
into the
shadows
like a gimp on
a leash
and we skipped
back to the pub
going
fucking hell!
drunk
laughing
my cock
sore
but
victorious
and finally worthy
of the
title
manhood.

Ben Myers

www.benmyers.com