Sophie Hannah
Must I give up another night
To hear you whinge and whine
About how terribly grim you feel
And what a dreadful swine
You are? You say you’ll never leave
Your wife and children. Fine;
When have I ever asked you to?
I’d settle for a kiss.
Couldn’t you, for an hour or so,
Just leave them out of this?
A rare ten minutes off from guilty
Diatribes – what bliss.
Yes, I’m aware you’re sensitive:
A tortured, wounded soul.
I’m after passion, thrills, and fun.
You say fun takes its toll,
So what are we doing here? I fear
We’ve lost our common goal.
You’re rubbish at adultery.
I think you ought to quit.
Trouble is, at fidelity,
You’re also slightly shit.
Choose one and do it properly
You stupid, stupid git.
End of the Affair
Dan Burt
It ends soundlessly: my hand slips yours
To adjust demeanour for a neighbour,
No bang, bombed body sprawled, no prayer,
Just a gentle unlacing of fingers
Wrests warp from woof in the tapestry we
Fashioned from Fragonards and poetry
To decorate our idyll. We stand
Naked by the roadside with vagrant hands,
Sunlit in senescent imperfection,
My stoop and vanished waist, runt canyons
Time and disappointment wore in your face,
In silence that surrounds a fall from grace
And separate soon after, sans goodbye,
Relieved what never lived had died.
6
‘WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?’
Badly Chosen Lover
Rosemary Tonks
Criminal, you took a great piece of my life,
And you took it under false pretences,
That piece of time
– In the clear muscles of my brain
I have the lens and jug of it!
Books, thoughts, meals, days, and houses,
Half Europe, spent like a coarse banknote,
You took it – leaving mud and cabbage stumps.
And, Criminal, I damn you for it (very softly).
My spirit broke her fast on you. And, Turk,
You fed her with the breath of your neck
– In my brain’s clear retina
I have the stolen love-behaviour.
Your heart, greedy and tepid, brothel-meat,
Gulped it like a flunkey with erotica.
And very softly, Criminal, I damn you for it.
Fetish
Samantha Willis
I can see this relationship tanking,
so it’s time to be honest, I think.
In the space between dreaming and wanking,
I’ve developed a striking new kink.
Though I used to be coy and coquettish,
as all men like their women to be,
my new-leaf aspirational fetish
is demanding, ‘What’s in it for me?’
I can see this might be disconcerting
for a man who likes hookers and porn,
in whose mind every female is squirting
to the sound of his name, dusk till dawn,
so let’s get you some sex education
with incentives: my Love USP
is undying devout adoration
but first tell me: what’s in it for me?
You would like me to make you my hero,
to discuss, at great length, Aston Villa;
in exchange you are offering zero;
one-way traffic. So dull. So vanilla.
I’ll forgive your flawed pacing (too snaily);
I’ll provide all you need, and for free,
and I’m happy to email you daily
if you tell me what’s in it for me.
Is it something I’m presently lacking?
A locked room with an out-of-reach key?
If you want my support and my backing
then I think anyone would agree
you must tell me what’s in it for me.
Please, before I’m a hundred and three,
can you tell me what’s in it for me?
Wendy Cope
The expense of spirits is a crying shame,
So is the cost of wine. What bard today
Can live like old Khayyam? It’s not the same –
A loaf and Thou and Tesco’s Beaujolais.
I had this bird called Sharon. Fond of gin –
Could knock back six or seven. At the price
I paid a high wage for each hour of sin
And that was why I only had her twice.
Then there was Tracy, who drank rum and Coke.
So beautiful I didn’t mind at first
But love grows colder. Now some other bloke
Is subsidizing Tracy and her thirst.
I need a woman, honest and sincere,
Who’ll come across on half a pint of beer.
Message
Wendy Cope
Pick up the phone before it is too late
And dial my number. There’s no time to spare –
Love is already turning into hate
And very soon I’ll start to look elsewhere.
Good, old-fashioned men like you are rare –
You want to get to know me at a rate
That’s guaranteed to drive me to despair.
Pick up the phone before it is too late.
Well, wouldn’t it be nice to consummate
Our friendship while we’ve still got teeth and hair?
Just bear in mind that you are forty-eight
And dial my number. There’s no time to spare.
Another kamikaze love affair?
No chance. This time I’ll have to learn to wait
But one more day is more than I can bear –
Love is already turning into hate.
Of course, my friends say I exaggerate
And dramatize a lot. That may be fair
But it is no fun being in this state
And very soon I’ll start to look elsewhere.
I know you like me but I wouldn’t dare
Ring you again. Instead I’ll concentrate
On sending thought-waves through the London air
And, if they reach you, please don’t hesitate –
Pick up the phone.
Benny Hill
Paul McGrane
This bloke is sitting on a bus
We cut to where a sign says PUSH
beneath a bell the bell is pushed
We cut again Outside a caff
the door says PULL he pulls the door
Inside the caff the waitress comes
of course she’s young and beautiful
We have a close up on his face
He rolls his eyes and licks his lips
and reaches out toward her chest
her badge says PAT he pats the badge
Your face looked like that actresses’
when you caught me with your sister
at the party in her bedroom
we were dancing to old records
we’d speeded up to 45
so they would sound like Benny Hill
I’ve changed the ending of this scene
to make it seem more humorous
You’re chasing me through parks and fields
dressed in heels and red suspenders
mock-angry fist raised in the air
And me? I’m Benny Hill! At last!
With no responsibilities
except for making people laugh
and grabbing their extremities
Anal Obsessive
Jane Holland
He was a blip on the radar – I had
several that year – but since
he was up front about it –
‘Don’t trust me, I’m a bastard’ –
I let him screw me, and then
screw me. The woman
he left me for was older,
uncompromising, sober.
She would never have rolled over
for that sharp pain
in the derriere, or thought
extensively of England,
face pressed into his mattress
with its bachelor stains
and cute ringlets of pubic hair.
I remember his stubble,
the wind-tunnel tilt of his penis,
how I stripped off for him
the way it’s done in Amsterdam –
to be greased up, pokered
and prodded – and can’t
imagine now why I bothered.
Katya is Bored
Fiona Pitt-Kethley
Katya is bored – as bored as I would be
if I perused a sack of Blyton books.
Katya has worked the Tanga Club for years,
in Grosse Freiheit off the Reeperbahn.
Her Chilean partner looks a little bored,
though he’s not half as bored as Katya is.
Above, below, behind, legs up, legs down …
The fucks clock up …The audience loses count.
Katya is bored. She’s far too bored to act.
The corners of her mouth turn firmly down.
Her eyes stare firmly at the scene ahead,
locked on to nothing, somewhere in our midst.
She’s shagged and doggy-fucked around the club,
on drinkers’ tables, floors, the bars, a swing.
Can endless repetition bore to death?
If boredom was a terminal disease,
She’s long gone dead. Bored fucking, fucking bored.
The monumental ennui she exudes
each time her partner’s plunger plumbs her sink
impresses me. She makes no compromise.
She has a rule. She never smiles at work.
Chris of Dublin
Fiona Pitt-Kethley
A brothel with a creche for the girls’ kids,
long gone now and it is a darker scene,
no help for those who choose to walk the streets.
I met Chris, young and bruised, with missing teeth,
and drunk, and heard her history of abuse,
abuse that no-one ever had believed.
My courage faltered. Back in my hotel
a wave of fear swept through me to my soul.
I pushed a cabinet against my door.
Thus shutting out the darkness of outside,
lives without hope, torture, torment, abuse.
I slept and woke to write her story up.
I wish her well, wherever she is now.
Somehow I doubt that Chris is still alive.
Jaffa Cakes
Fiona Pitt-Kethley
Three neon strips, one violet and two red,
mark out the bars that really are not bars.
Girls from Zaire, who’re tall and elegant,
and Belgian blondes sit in red fun fur chairs
or pose with stomachs in, tits out on stools.
The windows where girls sit are full of props.
Some girls are reading. Others do their nails.
Yet others gorge themselves on takeaways.
When clients come they disappear from view.
I studied the windows when I couldn’t catch their eye,
looked at what’s left behind: their lingerie,
brushes for make-up, mirrors and high heels.
One window’s different from the rest of them,
a Buddha statue and some Jaffa cakes.
I told this story to a Polish friend.
He said he’d definitely visit there.
Couldn’t resist a brothel with Jaffa cakes.
Buggery
Don Paterson
At round about four months or so –
the time is getting shorter –
I look down as the face below
goes sliding underwater
and though I know it’s over with
and she is miles from me
I stay a while to mine the earth
For what was lost at sea
as if the faces of the drowned
might turn up in the harrow;
hold me while I hold you down
and plough the lonely furrow
Carmen 16
Gaius Valerius Catullus
I’ll fuck your ass and rape your face
Cock-gobbling, power-bottom poets
Who say my fancy, fluffy measures
Make me a flaccid, fluffing fag.
A pious poet should be pure
But his poems don’t have to be.
Poetry should taste like sex.
Its meaty words can lick and flit
Their tongues to scratch the itch that lifts
Not just young boys but wrinkled men
Whose cocks are as curdled as their lines.
Because you’ve read my kissing poems
You think you can make my mouth your cunt?
I’ll fuck your ass and rape your face!
Trans. G. M. Palmer
To His Coy Mistress
Andrew Marvell
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast;
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart;
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
The Flea
John Donne
Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
Thou know’st that this cannot
be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do.
Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, nay more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, w’are met,
And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that, self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.
Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?
Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou
Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now;
’Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:
Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,
Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.
Hombres Necios
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
Hombres necios que acusáis
a la mujer sin razón,
sin ver que sois la ocasión
de lo mismo que culpáis:
si con ansia sin igual
solicitáis su desdén,
¿por qué quereis que obren bien
si las incitáis al mal?
Combatís su resistencia
y luego, con gravedad,
decís que fue liviandad
lo que hizo la diligencia.
Parecer quiere el denuedo
de vuestro parecer loco,
al niño que pone el coco
y luego le tiene miedo.
Queréis, con presunción necia,