A bee with innards spilling
A lost tabby,
A blimp caught up in trees,
Tintern Abbey.

The gravestone of a lover,
A drowning ship,
An NHS delivery of
Fortisip.

A girl with alopecia and
Fungail nails,
A one legged pigeon,
Exploding whales.

Ivy choked churches,
Merlot tongues,
Parrots plucking feathers,
Marlboro lungs.

Girls locked up in attics,
*** toys.
Boys punching girls
And punching boys.

Babies crowning
Fussed about like kings.
Darlings,
You shall see such pretty things.

The English vice,
Some Etonian curse –
Set down in grass
And purple verse,

Lavatory bred
With ransacked blood,
Skin slapping and
With a falling thud –

Takes boys at childhood,
Wishes them away,
With promises of popper fuelled buffets,

And poisons them with
Vice and virus red,
And sees them unmarried
Giving head.

I don’t regret a single thing I am,
I’ve tried it out
And can’t abide the sham –

I’ll **** men
And make them beg for more,
I’ll scrabble for their love upon the floor,

I’ll love men
And love will love me too,
I’ll love for love’s own sake
And when I’m through

I’ll die and I’ll be thankful that your hate
Never made me beg that I was straight.

He takes his shirt off without
unbuttoning
and in the dead of night
when he goes for a ****
I see his silhouette
and think -
what a marvellous man.

We row a lot these days
and he is often cross
with the way I never clean the bath,
with the way I move,
and sometimes
with what I eat in bed -

I know I'll never be
the heartless soldier he knew before
or the gym bunny with two iron eyes,
He'll never be quite as blond
as I want,
nor quite as odd.

But still I look at his silhouette
dark and strange
when he goes for a ****,
and I think,
dear me,
what a marvellous man.