She is Sunday service love letters written in the centrefold
of a hymn book.
A coffee stain smile hiding the words of my favourite pages
of poetry that sits every night next to my bed.
This is my doomsday notebook rolled into the edges of cut off jeans
and you were my judgement day,
standing on the edge of a cliff pretending that my life didn't depend on it
in that second,
depend on me.

She is my Maundy Thursday:
give away everything I own like I can live with nothing.
Live like I don't exist anymore.
Leave without a trace like burning,
because that's how I am when I don't remember you now.

Sitting in my bedroom with the lights turned out
you moving next to me like dancing with the covers off.
She promised me Saturday nights and feather dreaming
and now all I can do is this.
She told me the next evening:
'so many of these boys are clueless, I really hope I'm not'
I tell her 'I don't think you are
anymore'.
She says I'm down to earth.
I think she is too when her head isn't stuck above the clouds
there are things I would give to see what she sees
when she looks down.

I want to talk about gods with her.
I want to know if every medicated son of god complex really was
a psych case
or simply someone trying to finally send us down something good,
like we pretend we would see it when it happens.
Someone tell me how people
can paint the sky with their guts and the broken dreams of strangers
and call it religion.
How can these gods hate any kind of love?

Tell me why you wanted to die the year before you were a teenager.
How you're still trying five years on like you can't face
the seven months before you become an adult.
I don't know if you're terrified of real life
or being a child,
or if you still sweat in the middle of the night at thoughts
of an incarcerated man's hands touching your innocent body
like it was ever supposed to know what to do with itself.
Your body a haunted house, breaking from the cracks
you left in yourself.

You couldn't leave your own ghosts out.
Is this why 'god' lets you be so afraid of living in your own skin?
that you will dice yourself into pieces
praying for bad fate for once, tonight,
you're out of luck this time honey.

I'm sorry I don't know what to say to you nowadays,
I just don't want you to be all my fault.
I'm sorry I can't talk to you like I used to, like I didn't know
you were a time bomb
but I can't pretend you didn't light your own fuse,
because all you feel is leaking out the lines you left in your own skin.
I find it hard to believe you will ever actually detonate,
but I am more than over prepared for any hint of explosion:
buried my head in a glass case,
pretend that whiskey could ever take away the pain
like you were barrel aged.
So go ahead
knock yourself out.
I can pretend I didn't feel anything like you did all those years.

You sit, breathing in the last shreds of sunset like the sun reclining could make you any more alive I tell you
just stop trying.

You are a painting.
Da Vinci,
3 years on,
incomplete,
no idea of your own beauty.
Your glazed surface
isn't cracked yet.
You are a work of art waiting to be fully formed.
Paints hand-made, every brush stroke a sacrifice,
you're more than this oil
not an acrylic, he can't paint out your mistakes.
Tell me how does it feel to be the pigment in your lips does it feel like home?
Can you see me?
How does it feel to hang all those years
do you forget every face?
Can you hear what I'm trying to tell you
for once?

If you see her, can you tell her:
I only wish I could have captured her on film
before she left
me.

she is an asylum,
her walls drip blackness
writing every word
that neglected
to slip past her
teeth,
she sleeps on
****-stained spring
mattresses as the
clod tiles bite
at her heels,
hair and skin hide
beneath her fingernails
as palms are twinged,
the padded walls
whisper screams
of coercion; wrists
bound by silence and
tightened by insanity.
to bedposts
rusted,
her hands retired on
ridged thighs
hugging her
goosebumps with
convulsions of agitation.
her mind
scratches melodies of an
insomniac,
the flickering lights choke
her vision and blind her speech.
a room of contradictions
irregulating regularities
intoxicating sobriety
hallucinating reality,
the muffled screams
that weave through
the fibres of the
pillow clinched tightly
in her lap harmonize
algorithms that pull
each padded wall
towards her howling
being — centrefold the room,
as the walls hug her body
she awakes and paints
antonyms to
perpetual despondency

a park bench
a gazebo in the middle of a circle of a keyhole
like a teapot centrefold
three dance inside of it- bright hair
and nowhere else to go
passing around a single thin cigarette
my ankles have goosebumps

a streetlamp that creates the illusion
that the night isn't setting in
and yet beyond the gazebo the sky looks
like it would smell like lavender
and "seaside"
the buildings and buses all let of orange yellow glows
i'm getting too cold
the wind really gets up under my coat
this time

Love me as I love you.
For I am stuck within a draught.
A diagram a scheming plan.
A draft filled with champagne like fizz.
I bubble, you bubble.
I spit, you spit, vehement messages tumbling from your messy toxic tongue.
A poisoned potent pen.
You behave like Carmen Electra starring as a centrefold.
A centre fold in Centre- Point as now you’re living in the cold.
© LIVVI

Benedict
thinks of her
Christina

the girlfriend
at high school
as he now

undresses
preparing
for bedtime

she far off
in her house
in her town

her parents
probably
below stairs

watching their
dull programmes
on TV

while she in
her bedroom
undresses

or so he
imagines
(in his head)

watching her
removing
each piece of

clothing
as he too
undresses

in his room
a coloured
centrefold

of a fast
racing car
on the wall

and her small
photograph
by his bed

she gave him
he'd seen her
on the field

at high school
during their
lunch recess

she sitting
with her friends
giggling

then walking
together
off alone

high smell of
lavender
her soft hand

lips kissing
now in bed
lying there

lights all out
just moonlight
reflecting

her image
he pretends
she is there

next to him
not speaking
not laughing

both watching
the moon move
and stars shine

hands touching
fingers entwined
each having

the same thoughts
in shared mind.

nowadays they  have  to pinch the  ends

of their  cigarettes  before they  cross the  threshold no longer allowed to  herd  the  crumbling swarms of ash  across  the  gingham veldt


outside the  window, on the  pavement,    lies a  bible and  the  radio declares their  readiness  is high
seems like a  good   night to let the  smokers in and warm around a  last  embered light


on the  table I  browse  the  “priest“ they  called him

in the  centrefold, deep in the  heart,  a  flyer,

man’s  journey  into christ,

I  guess  we’ll   find out  soon enough the  veracity  of the divine



but until the  young-un  and the  white horse riders have  decided who can  ****  the  highest
leave us  to the  daily diary  and  its  tales  of

days  of ******* each  other’s  husbands and  wives



I  bought a  Dylan Thomas book one the  way  home, from the  junk  shop,
when I  got it  back  I  saw blood   on the  back cover

I  licked my  finger  to  wipe it  off but  she  said  “no!
you  fool“

sure  it  carried  the  plague of some cursed lover



I  plagiarise myself

a  drink  is most definitely in order

the  tawny  coolness tock tick toxic keen  as  the sharpest  dissection
and  then  you can  find me   not just  like everybody else but  just  like

everybody  else,  lying, hemi-hydrate,  below  the bridled  tension

of  life’s  meniscus

Sutcliffe brings
a magazine
to school
(his old man's
he tells us)
and we group in
under the shelter
near the outside bogs.

He opens it
page by page;
his fingers shaky,
his eyes, blue,
enlarged,
peer the page.

Look at the state
of her,
O’Brien says.

I look over
his shoulder
at the naked dame.

Can you imagine
Miss A doing this
from our old school?
I suggest.

Don't make me puke,
O’Brien says.

What the ****'s that?
Sutcliffe asks,
pointing a finger.

It's where
you were born from,
Davies says.

Can't be,
Sutcliffe says,
I was born
in Guy's hospital.

Your mother,
poor cow,
has one of those,
O’Brien says.

Sutcliffe pulls a face
as if he'd bitten
a lemon.

Shan't look at her
the same way again,
he replies.

Turn the page,
I say,
see something other.

He turns the page,
a centrefold,
opens it out,
arms outstretched,
eyes widening.

Wouldn’t say no
to her,
O’Brien says,
scanning in
like a swooping air plane
to dive bomb.

Me, neither,
Sutcliffe mutters.

I see Sutcliffe's
inky fingers shake
on the edges
of the magazine;
the woman has big eyes
peering out,
her nose has an air
of: had your gawk?
We just stare,
no place
to waste words,
we stand,
open mouthed
and don’t talk.

just reading it makes me quizzical in a queasy sort
of way...
                it's about teenage girls and their
  internet interaction...
                         frenzies and tornadoes...
earthquakes and tsunamis make more sense -
         this constant beehive drone buzzing:
what's obsolete, what isn't...
                  7:45 - 10 minutes scrolling through
Snapchat and Instagram -
                            24:00 - the phone gets a breather -
it's funny how quickly we've aged -
             we were born before the internet
was synonymous with mobility -
                          i'm used to the internet being
stationary - in one place, the radio is there,
and i'm here: you can write a lot of history with
just enough of nostalgic condensation -
j. geils band - centrefold -
                                              it's there,
a back-catalogue that merges with relations to the
d.n.a. - primarily cultural -
                after a year or so you realise you've become
obsolete in the microscope of other people's lives:
their children -
                            but like that ******* matters...
what matters? the closest any philosopher came to
utilising grammar was Aristotle,
but he only nibbled at the idea of nouns: proper names,
that's what he called them...
           he never really tried to encompass any
sorting words of grammar, other than deliberating
nouns (or proper names) -
                                               then comes Kant:
how strange to get so much by adding a merger of
two n squiggly zigzags - misnomerism -
yes, an -ism,              i'm tired of using exact words,
sometimes you just place the wrong words in
the place of the place of what probably exist, but is
too obscure to be kept - like a wristwatch in the times
of digital watches on the phones -
              i dare you to write the hammer into
obscurity, i dare you to write the television into obscurity,
i dare you to write alcohol into obscurity...
         no, i doubly dare you...
               but never mind that...
the antidote to the phenomenon: Kant's noumenon -
one and a half of an n later - generation photograph
       not welcome -
                                    i need pedants! i need pedantic
       behaviours!
                                the aversion - which never never about
listing such a word as dissection worthy:
         it's not clearly a-               (without)
                   a     -version     (example),                like
you might clearly state: apathy: lacking the germination
of all forms of pathology -
                                                     or atheism -
  the etymology of this word (aversion) can be tricky -
averted is already more plausible in the grammatical
allocation as counter-etymological -
                     grammar is like a post office of words:
this goes here, that goes there...
                                                      bu­t only
Aristotle alluded to it, only briefly, concerned with only
nouns, dealing with a indefinite / improper
                   and the definite / proper             names / nouns...
odd, isn't it?
                                  i like the notion that i'll write
a book very few people will read... it just means
i'lll generate very smug readers, and hopefully writers,
which means i can carve out a variation on the notion
of privacy: the privacy debate will just write itself -
to make writing something akin to a fisher's netting -
automated filtering process -
                                                    pretty funny...
like today, on my usual walkabout the labyrinth of
English suburbia... cigarette in hand, can of beer in the other,
a car pulls up, two girls in it, one jumps out of the car,
and asks me to put on a baseball cap on my head
and says to me: can you put it on your head,
it's a prank for our friend... so i comply...
i put the baseball cap on my head, she takes a picture...
jumps back into the car, bids me goodnight and they drive off...
                                        the ****?
                 am i an oddity, an Essex hipster?
no, i get celebrity culture, but i was just walking with
a cigarette and a beer... i'll probably trend as some sort of joke
on the internet: east London hipster making it ****** in
Essex... bearded *** takes the crowd by storm...
          self-deprecating humour transcends comedy or tragedy...
   it's just there for the taking...
                  ever get a drive-by: put on this baseball cap
   so i can take a picture of you to send it to a friend as prank
done by two girls?               well, there's always a first time.

The doctor had said she looked tired today
the tests had shown it wouldn't go away
her looks might go, her living could too
how would she cope, what could she do
she was late arriving for the photo shoot
in her tight blue jeans and high heel boots
the make up artist did her thing
and soon she was ready for anything.

She looked so good as the flash gun fired
with her make up on she no longer looked tired
the photographer told her what to do
with her long blonde hair and eyes of blue
she knew how to ****** the camera lens
each exposure was her latest friend
it was clear to see she photographed well
even though she just felt like hell.

She knew how to grace a magazine cover
knowing how to look, more than any other
often she would be the centrefold
in a magazine, that was never under sold
she still always had that look in her eye
even when she wanted to just sit down and cry
Something had to give, something had to change
it was clear to see things couldn't stay the same.

But that was then and this is now
there's always a way to survive somehow
gone are the looks that brought her fame
but she earns her living, just the same
now she works as a photographer herself
taking pictures for the magazine shelves
and she knows what to tell the girls to do
with their long blonde hair and eyes of blue.

I tear on
your lingerie
with my teeth and
hear the snap of
the waist band
beg my mouth
to pursue farther,
I can taste your
tremors on my tongue,
I can feel the bedsheets
being held harder and
your legs are crushing
the cusps of my hip bones
as I trace the spine
of your stomach, centrefold,
to a destination,
and your eyes roll back like
storm clouds,
the shadow reaching
out like fingers from the light
on the nightstand tells
me to stitch my back
to the duvet as we switch
rolls and you drag your
chin down my chest,
wrapped to the head of
my **** your spit sways
from your lips
like a spiderweb
in lonely wind,
and you slide your
hands up and down
in unison with the gags of
reaching your throat,
it's becoming unbearable,
the atmosphere covering the walls
can't take the anticipation,
tension cut like warm butter
and your slammed off
the side of the bed,
only saliva and excitement
slapped on your **** and
the first *******
like a knife wound;
your exhale could
cut glass,
handprints tattoo
necklace pendants
and you cut holes
in my back with blood
dripping like a broken faucet,
blurry vision and heavy breathing,
bent over and your heels
meet the hair on your head,
the drainage hair stuck
to your face,
mascara running with
sweat from problems
and you ***,
and again
and again,

the walls are taking a beating
your *** is condemned to crimson,
and you beg me to *** for you,
on your face,
on your ***,
on your ****,
"just ******* ***"
you scream,
you get down
and slam your knees
to the carpet with an
open mouth and
closed eyes as my
thighs become your
fingernails and you're
covered.