This is a terrifying tale as told by Ebeneezer Sweetlove, my late cousin*

I remember how I met Edwina all those years ago: and there was none of that "eyes connecting across a crowded room" crap. Well, not in a romantic sense - it was just pure lust. I suddenly realised this woman was staring at me with undisguised desire from the other side of a cocktail party at some boring conference at the five-star Grand Hotel. I was ***** as buggery as my latest girl friend had, just the previous week, committed suicide by jumping to a hideous death off scenic Beachy Head, so I returned the ****'s look with a lethally ****** stare of my own and then licked my lips as vulgarly as possible, indicating I was simply barking for a hot oral session, no holes barred.

The woman I was to know all too briefly as Edwina took the hint and came over and we talked as though we'd known each other all our lives; but even someone as suave as I was a little surprised when she groped me quite openly and shoved her tongue into my earhole, dribbling hotly down my cheek. And then she seemed to go all shy and little girl-like until I sophisticatedly suggested we go out for dinner and then back to my penthouse suite for a night of mind-blowing *******. I have to say I was embarrassed when the head waiter in the little bistro I selected complained when she took off her knickers and gave them to me for a refreshing sniff.

The *** was amazing - Edwina was like a beast on heat, screaming like a banshee while we ****** each other's brains out. Yet, in between *******, she was as gentle and charming as a little ***** cat. Six times I gave her my hot ***** that night: once in her mouth, then four times in the usual place, finishing off with one up her rear end. I was more or less totally drained of my love juices and in need of a good long kip before lunch.

But, tragedy struck: well before the dawn's early, she woke me and whispered she had to go as she had to get home before her husband got back after his night shift from down the sewers - he was apparently in charge of the entire East Sussex sewage system and liked to have an hour long shower every morning to get the stench of ***** off him.

I begged her to stay, saying I would happily pay for a divorce so I could have her with me for always. I even offered to have a contract put out on her sewer rat of a hubby, mentioning that my brother-in-law, Kosmo, was big in the Albanian mafia and owed me a favour. But she said no, I could ******* with my pleas. As dawn grew nearer I could see her becoming ever more frantic to leave and it was only then I realised the truth, having at last deciphered the real meaning of her blood-stained and scabby third ****** and the scarlet 666 tattoo on her luscious **** cheek.

Yes, Edwina was a ***-demon from deepest Hell and thus I was left with only one course of action. Ever so reluctantly, I bravely reached for the sacred wooden stake and mallet that I had carried round in my Dolce & Gabbana crocodile suitcase for so many years just in case of such an eventuality. Sadly I drove the stake into her beautiful ***** with a mighty blow and, instead of the blood which might have been reasonably expected, only a stream of warm **** poured out. Before my very eyes, her corpse disintegrated into a pile of odorous dust. Truly was Edwina a daughter of darkness.

As you may imagine, I had to give the chambermaid quite a hefty gratuity in order to get her to cleanse my room and to bin the evidence, but so grateful was she for the honorarium that she agreed to share my bed the very next night, knowing she would be likely to receive an immense tip of quite another category.

rusty knees folded under a
quilt weaved by the calloused hands of
particles of grandmothers' grandmothers,
head heavy on a
down-breasted pillow,
rising and falling softly
in a bedroom den,
whispering relative semantics of
a testament revised
while outside, tornadoes uproot trees
and displace plywood houses
with charred pies frozen on the windowsill,
entombed from the harsh winter's frost
and incubation in false ovens;

i recall seasonal naps of
drifting and wakening
and colourful mosaics
painted across the dreamland sky,
drinking cups of melatonin-laced chamomile
steeped in an angel teapot that induced
psychosomatic apparitions in constant relay
from earhole to earhole and
assisted with pulling an endless rope out of my
mouth which had been tied to the pit of my ulcerated stomach,
my head twisting in a corkscrew spiral,
meeting a longing gaze
and twisting back again,
oh! my bottled neck!

you retell poems softly spoken loudly
with my kisses on your heavy eyelids,
before we drift through the sheer veil
into unified consciousness,
taking a glimpse at our crowning home in
an infinite land,
enveloped in time-honoured Love
bestowed upon us in
pure, Divine fate,
watching endless words of
'i love you', 'i love you'
trickle like sand though a
heavenly hour glass figure;
to wake, a chance to celebrate,
to die, a chance to find each other again.

This is a psalm by my friend Mad Pastor Grovell*

Praise the Lord with the sound of the trumpet!
Praise the Lord with the psaltry
(whatever on God's green earth that is!)
And with the harp while you are at it!
Praise the Lord with the tambourine
(another queer one!) and with dancing!

Praise the Lord with stringed instruments and electronic organs!
Praise the Lord on the loud cymbals and gongs
(and the high sounding cymbals too)!
Let every thing that breathes praise the Lord
(even midgets and the clinically obese and perverts)!

And that includes YOU - so get praising Him straight away!
Get down on your knees, blow your trumpet,
Rattle your silly tambourine like a mongo!
Clash your assorted cymbals and play with your *****!
Sing songs and hymns and cries of adoration to the Heavens

And clap till your hands are bleeding with joy!
Be a one-man band of earhole-busting praise for the Lord!
Praise ye the Lord lest He smite thee totally ******* senseless!
Or else WATCH OUT FOR THE GOOD LORD
WILL BASH OUT YOUR ******* WORTHLESS BRAINS
FOR YOUR FILTHY ***-SINS AND ALSO CONDEMN YOU
TO AN ETERNITY OF PASSIVE ****** IN HELL!

A famous "Barry Hodges" poem!

I was strolling along the Normandy beaches
In the close vicinity of Caen one day
With a very tasty piece of arm-candy to hand
When I found a bleached human femur on the beach.
Oh dear me, what thoughts this conjured up in my brain
As I imagined whose bone it might have been!
Perhaps some pathetic soldier boy landing in forty-four
Who got slotted by a gallant German gunner,
His eyes feasting on the sacrificial cannon fodder
So foolishly supplied for his target practice.

Then, as I grabbed my lady friend's juicy ****,
Causing her to turn and sink her tongue into my earhole,
We sank onto the sands in order to sate our lusts,
(enflamed by a very delicious meal of *moules marinières
and a bucket or two of well-chilled Muscadet sur Lie)
I thought, what the **** does it all matter?
This is now, and that was then, and this old world
Has become a much nicer place nowadays;
But how mistaken I was in that fond thought;
Oh what an idealist I am in a world of woe.

For, all of a sudden, a contingent of fat dwarfs appeared,
Totally naked apart from their luminous Uncle Sam hats
And the Stars and Stripes hanging from their arseholes;
How I marvelled at their disgusting shapes
(and how surprised was I to find their genitals
were of normal measurements and thus
rather intrusively large by comparison
with the rest of their miniature bodies).
O dear Lord and alleged Father of Mankind
Forgive their horrid ways verily and forsooth.

With a whoop, those demented military retards, [see note below]
The famous 118th battalion ****** Marine veterans,
A contingent of whom emerged from a portable toilet
(which must have been a bit of a tight squeeze),
Chopped my girl-friend up with their bayonets,
Whereupon I crapped myself in terror and pity,
Before retrieving the purse from the eviscerated corpse,
Realizing that her PIN number was still useable
Until 'les flics' discovered her unfortunate remains
After the shore ***** had partaken thereof.

Red buds or beams flicker across my chest
lined and ready like a velvet-lined coffin
for me to take an infinite rest in.
Lips a bright cherry color
but it’s blood that’s caked.
Ruby gems in each earhole
flickering in the cave’s scarce light.
But I’m not dead yet
---just coming back to life---