David: I heard he fucked a pillow once.
Joe: Dude, that’s gross.
David: Yeah, yeah, really gross.
Joe: I just use my hand.
David: Me too, most of the time.
Joe: Most of the time?
David: Well, you know.
Joe: No.
David: Sometimes you want something more.
Joe: What like a Fleshlight?
David: No. What?
Joe: Fleshlights. They’re like beercans but feel like pussies.
David: Oh. I didn’t know that.
Joe: How can you not? they’re everywhere, all over the net. Like when you’re watching porn there’s always an image of one in the side advertising them.
David: I don’t really watch porn.
Joe: They come in asses, mouths, pussies. Y’know. Fleshlights. Flesh-lights. Wait, what? You don’t watch porn? since when?
David: Not really.
Joe: Is this like when we used to say we didn’t wank but really we went home every day after classes and whacked one out to Carol Vorderman and see who could come before the clock reached countdown?
David: No, man. I just don’t really watch it.
Joe: Dude.
David: This is getting weird. I didn’t think guys talked about wanking so much.
Joe: They don’t. Maybe they do. I’m not weirded out.
David: Except by the pillow.
Joe: Well, yeah.
David: I’m weirded out by the Fleshlight.
Joe: I used one. It felt good, man.
David: ‘Used’ as in only once?
Joe: Well, yeah.
David: Why only once, did you return it? Didn’t they like question it? Be all you know, ‘where’s the packaging? they don’t come like this … we can’t accept used goods’.
Joe: No, it was a … f
David: Dude, it was a friends? that’s sick. You wanked in someone else’s fake pussy. I bet it wasn’t even cleaned. Can you imagine if it was his one? Bending over hunched fucking a plastic can.
Joe: Okay it’s gross.
David: Makes the pillow sound normal though.
Quick FYI, I’m not dead and I haven’t run off with the milkman (yet … we don’t have a milkman and the chances of finding a co-operating gentleman in such an adventure are slim but you can dream). I’m busy beavering away at my novel. I’m about to start a masters in creative writing and I’m going to be handing in a 5,000 word chunk of it to be critiqued so obviously I’m editing and writing and editing and writing at any available time, which annoyingly right now is not very often as life has handed me nice things again. Anyway, breathe! I’m interested in knowing whether you, lovely pretty sexy reader that you are, would like to read poetry here on somethingeveryday or some prose as well? I don’t want prose to get lost in a stream of poetry and vis versa so I’ve been putting it off … let me know! I’ll upload a tonne of work when I can and back date it all as believe me I have been writing every day. Oh! News! As I just wittered, come 20th September I will be lurking about the library and rooms of the university so … it will be a perfect place to write a new blog all about my adventures in master-dom. You interested in that at all? Maybe. Who knows. For all I know you could all be toddlers using their parents computers like that one who accidentally ordered his mum a £9,000 car. Over and out. Max xx…?
There were cigarillos in my dad’s bedroom, the one in his childhood home,
behind brown Latin books slotted in a crumpling blue box.
Tobacco, then, a childhood smell.
I would take them out when no one was around and sniff them
drag them across my lip. Back in Chorley, far away from Durham,
I would buy chocolate ones and try and smoke them to little luck.
Once, in the bright of dawn I walked through the fields surrounding the house
where sheep grazed.
I took the stick out and fumbled with the matches watching the sun.
Sparking sucked on a timeless tobacco God knows how old.
I choked, spat and threw it away.
My memory of the farm is sundrenched, balmed
but I imagine that sometimes it rained,
something about the cracking wood in the fire, and scrape of wind.
When we visited, we would sit by the river below the farm,
waiting for fish, or dipping legs into brown dark swirls.
This is where I learned the cliché of pewter for sky
and where we drank tea with powdered milk out of baby blue Thermoses
on a flat mossy rock.
In the woods I hunted under the rotting oak trunks, Jungle Book,
for ants, termites, and grubs.
Past them, past where I once held a toad in my palm
gorse thickened into plains. We didn’t go past there.
I popped Himilayan Balsam pods when I walked
felt flesh rip beneath like bubbles.
I used to pride myself that I, God, helped to make new life.
Mum and dad laughed at this.
Video taped films and shows coerced my mind into thinking that underneath
the river swell a city grew.
Sometimes submerse my head under and open my eyes.
Hope that creatures would show their bristled backs. Invite me for tea.
Narnia kept me looking for fauns and lions amongst the growth.
Up above, on the farm in Spring we nursed lambs from plastic bottles
rubber teated, milk dribbled down their curled fur. My sister, Rachael,
became a vet. We watched sheep as they were dunked and dipped in the complicated
passage of metal gates by the white house.
I would play in them when empty.
The fence creaked and the pebbles were just sharp enough
to hurt my soles as I ran barefoot.
My brother and sister and I would strip off naked and climb on the hay bales
tightened by black plastic, and bounce from one to the other. A rudimentary castle.
Yelping like lambs ourselves, if lambs yelp.
Exhausted we lay with sweating backs.
After we would dress and sit in the garden drinking lemonade under the cherry tree
battling over who could use the swing.
Shadows played across the grass and I sought out worms in the earth.
I can still smell the honey suckle.
My grandma, Erika, would hold my hand around the abandoned barns
play with me as I tried to sculpt a car from an empty bath,
make potions from dirt.
From the window panes, mostly cracked
you could see a courtyard of nettled meadow.
Back in the house during cold days
we sat around her potter’s wheel making animals out of clay.
At night John would play his fiddle for us in the room with the chaise longue
and red chair.
I would sing Spice Girls from my Walkman.
Take my coat and hang it by the door next to others.
Rip my shirt, button by popped button, tie it around your waist.
Pick up the little black things and put them in your pocket.
Undo my belt, wrench it until the loops split, curl it up.
Slide down skinclung trousers. Fumble with my feet and socks.
Cut off my boxers. Naked, take in my scent and shy eyes.
With a razor shave my hair, brows, pubes; store them in a pillowcase.
Use your fingers to peel off the dead skin from my heels.
Tap my head three times to unlock my skull, open the cavity
prise out my brain and let it dry on the windowsill.
Shed off my case and dump it shrivelled by your bed.
Wipe the blood from my musculature and smear it on your clothes.
Use spoons and knives and forks and dismember my limbs.
Put my toes and fingers in your dog’s bowl.
Crack open my ribs, suck the breath from my lungs.
Siphon the wine of me. Decant it with the rest.
Use my tendons as thread, my bones as knitting needles.
Gouge my eyes and add them to the necklace you wear.
Take it all. Everything. Now.
Bare, wordless, prop me up, a model skeleton for your museum.
Click through to read (and vote) for my short story to win the monthly prize … thank you.
You don’t text me now.
No longer interested.
I don’t cos I am.
all 3,509 of you and all the rest who come to this little pocket of the ether every day (or so). To those who don’t have Tumblr or hear about it from friends and those who send me emails and ask me questions and want help. To those who’ve given me guest slots and helped me really develop. To everyone else who’ll continue to be around for the growth of it all and every single person who’s ever said ‘you’re good’. Thank you. And you. And you.
Ello there. If you like my blog/think it’s worthwhile … I wouldn’t mind a little nomination with the Manchester Blog Award (any category is fine by me really) … you know … it’s still an award either way … http://www.manchesterblogawards.com/ thank you, you lovely lovely people.
in print. Pg 58 - 71, Back in 5 Minutes, Little Episodes Publishing.
I’m taking a week off from somethingeveryday as I’m going to Leeds Festival. See you soon!
Steady.
Look into the camera.
Do this with me.
Hold your palms
dig fingernails in,
smile.
Twist the lips
to turn up-pronged,
pointing to ears.
White and yellow teeth
a keymissing
piano.
Say cheese
whistling between the gaps.
Flash.
Framed
under a pile of clothes.
She misses her like rain in clammy July
how on that cliff they watched a sunset
burn up the clouds, skyscraper mounds:
a city, blowing west.
They talked lives—both their own
and shared. Bottled secrets, thrown
to toss and turn on waves, forgotten
for a while.
Watched the day fade out then black
the sea swept up and down the cliff.
She thought how they erode; the house
would not stand time.
Now, she misses her like rain in clammy
July. Things never forgotten, she thinks,
wishing to turn back night
and hold that hand again.
ziggee asked: How do I submit poems to you?
You can’t, they’re all my own poems.
michaeljbevan asked: that poem was beautiful..
