The glow fades slowly, shrinking..
as the summer solar sphere dolefully droops under the horizon line,

An unfathomable mass of heat.

As the breeze tentatively sweeps through the tree, against which he rests his back, the leaves flutter playfully like string-less puppets.

Remarkable invisible master.

I place my head softly against his chest and feel the methodical pulse, a beat, repeat, repeat..

Fantastically functional inner machine.

Gazing emptily into the distance, I think, I thank, I speak… Only to say, it’s all about the simple things.

I rarely win things,
apart from hearts,
of which I have way too many,
apart from my own one,
which got ripped out of my tiny chest a while ago,
which is why I have this hole in my rib cage.

Another pub,
calls last orders.
Or does
the night last longer?
Get drunk alone again,
Those groaning men,
flock to your ex.
Looking for her online presence.
Less sense, senselessness.
Text message the next ex,
Half expect sex.
Get nothing,
give nothing,
never
the
less.

Billie is sitting on a navy blue wood-chipped bench and tea is dribbling from her mouth, little by little the entire contents of her forest green paper cup is falling into her lap and there is now a puddle of saliva infested tea soaking through her grey trousers. Her head is raised, poised in the air, watching the old man with the colour grey painted between his wrinkles. Billies eyes bore into his, following Point A to Point B of the sunken yellow valley below his eyes. There are sprinkles and sprinkles of tiny grey hairs resting above his lips; Billie does not know if it is the remnants of a moustache or if it has fallen from his nose.

Billie now stares at all of the man she can see in front her, looking beyond the grey portrait and drilling her eyes into his past life, the life that is living behind every orange white patch of skin, the life that his hidden behind his freckled forehead, behind his tired eyes. Billie closes her eyes for a long moment and creates a moving picture of his life: a man and a woman kissing, tongues drenched spit clinging to each other tightly. The woman is sighing, squeezing his back repeatedly and waiting for his arms to embrace her body – he does not and instead remains rooted to the ground, hands glued to his sides, only tongue moving.

The old man stands, he waits for only a moment and walks away from the navy blue wood-chipped bench. Billie sees the loneliness painted on the grey portrait and sighs, the old man’s past life still tiptoeing across her mind. She wonders who he is and who the girl was, she wonders if he ever did fully embrace her, fully move with her body, fully love her, fully kiss her. She wonders too much for a person who does not know the old man’s name. The forest green paper cup falls carelessly to floor and Billie begins to dab at the puddle of tea soaking through her grey trousers.

“Check this out”

Steven wasn’t concentrating on the class work they’d been set.

“Ben, check this out”

Now Ben wasn’t concentrating, he hadn’t really been able to concentrate since the shuffle around in 6Bs seating plan. Miss Boronsko had made the switch from alphabetical to a more culturally diverse spreading of age order within the year six class. “No more Mohammed’s in the middle” was the chant, Miss B was actually a bit nervous at the racist-sounding-ness of the slogan but persevered nonetheless. Although I mean she hadn’t even said it out loud but you know, ‘NSA’ etc.

Whipping out his new Casio FX-115MS-SC-UH and handing it to Ben, Steven began;

“So you take the number of potential puns about UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon’s name made on the internet and World of Warcraft.”

“Right.” Ben tapped away.

“Divided by the number of closeted dick jokes ready to go to print by DMG media.”

“Wait, is this going to be political?”

Stephen assured him it was.

Ben continued tapping.

“Add 5″

“Sure”

“Now, multiply by the current levels of radiation at the geographical centre, ground zero if you will, of the Chernobyl disaster and add the first number.”

“OK, is this going to carry on much long…” Ben’s voice trailed off has he hit enter.

He’d never expected this, this was big.

The answer? 80085.

Ce matin, tu as dû te réveiller tôt.

J’étais encore dans ton lit
tournée vers le mur
roulée en boule sous ta couette,

j’avais chaud même si j’étais nue.

Tu t’es allongé contre moi
ton bras frais m’enveloppait.
La peau de mon corps
qui était découverte,
a eu des frissons.

On était triste de se quitter,
encore.

Je me suis levée,
tu m’as serré fort dans tes bras,
longtemps.

Je n’ai pas réalisé que c’était la fin.

I followed you down, Regent Street
Admiring, assessing, head to feet

Well contoured curves, shiny hair
Tailored skirt, straining buttock pair

Moving level. A firm, tight breast
Careful jewellery, skin sun-blessed

Raised my eyes, nervous, shock
For you my love were a BOBFOC

roses are red
biolets are vlue
we spoon alot,
because i love you.

What would Jamie Oliver say
if he saw you eating that?
He’d probably talk about olive oil
and lemon.
Lemon is fresh as a baby.
When a baby laughs
I feel like I’m swimming in lemon
and a healthy lime.

Nigella would say ‘Ooh,
I know I shouldn’t
but I just can’t resist.’
She would lick the mixture off the spoon
with a cat’s tongue.
The chocolate tastes like velvet curtains
that are held back
with ropes and tassels and adjectives.

Ramsay wouldn’t give a shit
but his kitchen is cleaner than mine.

He licked his lips as he moved the cake closer to his mouth,
His heart raced and his hands went clammy with excitement,
Simon grinned as the powdered sugar glistened in the sunlight, he took his first bite,
and the jam dribbled out like a young Ryan Giggs penetrating a Coventry defence.

A man called William is standing in the space that belongs to the yellow door. Beyond him there are thousands and thousands of chairs; there are so many chairs that his brain, my brain, your brain cannot even begin to count them. Our brains would not even attempt to count them because they all share the fear of the pink and the blood splattered everywhere. The amount of chairs in the room beyond the yellow door Is overwhelming and William will sit down on one, William will sit down in an empty room and disturb the emptiness of the thousands and thousands of chairs with bare fronts. I am thinking that one human soul sat down on an inanimate object which is then surrounded by thousands and thousands of inanimate objects is scary. One human soul is that room is all you, me and William are aware of, that soul is William, except once William has sat down I wonder if he will question “the human soul”. I wonder if the emptiness of everything he sees will make William doubt his own humanity, I wonder if the thought of all these thousands and thousands of chairs also having human souls will bury itself in William’s mind. I wonder how you measure a human soul. William wonders how you measure a human soul. Do you wonder how you measure a human soul. Is it you? Is it William? Is it me?

“be my bride”,
he cried
but to no avail.
his request denied
with nowhere to hide
unable to debride
he traveled worldwide
his wounded pride
to salvage

he groaned he moaned
and agonized and why’d
in terms of emotion
he was oversupplied
his insides hog-tied
deep-fried
filleted and hung out to dry

anyway.
one day
during a longish car ride
he eyed the view
and thusly spied
a dewy cobweb
glimmering and wide
a tree bestride
broken.

he attempted to deride
but with a start, realized
hey
i lived
i loved
i tried
es tut mir nicht leid
(he’d had some free time
to study German)

at this point,
the writer rubbed his eyes,
sighed,
and went off to the loo
to commit well-deserved suicide.

I am thinking about the people who are sitting on that fast train that just went by in the distance, and the fact that some of those people are probably gazing out of their windows and looking at the same low sun as I am, and some of the same fields and trees and maybe even houses. And maybe some of those people are thinking about the people in those houses who are sitting in the last rays of sun of the day and looking out at the low sun and the fields and the trees, thinking their own thoughts about the people who love them or the people who don’t love them back or what they are going to have for dinner. And just maybe, some of those other people sitting outside their houses in the last rays of sunshine of the day, like me, are thinking about those people on that fast train that just went by in the distance.

I’m just a lonely pint of milk,
I stand outside the door.
It isn’t quite so lonely, when the
customer wants some more.
For then I have companions
and we have a chance to talk.
And looking at the people who pass,
we can watch the way they walk.
But how I wish when empty,
you would wash me nice and clean,
‘Cause when I am cloudy,
I’m ashamed of being seen.
So please remember Ladies,
before you put me out,
Give me a rinse, so I can be,
proud to stand about.

Martin Adams hired a black Ferrari for 24 hours,
He instagrammed over 2000 photographs that day,
and entered over a million hashtags,
By the evening he had lost all of his followers.

We used fingers and thumbs,
hands squeezing bums,
but no tongues
in and around delicate places,
just in and out of each
other’s faces.
It was fun,
something to do on a
Sunday afternoon.