I’ve got a crush, I’ve got a thing

For this mister, fancy him

In my local fat boy slim

‘Fat boy,’ Cockney slang for gym

He’s my treacle, Mister Romeo

Go hardio on cardio

Go fast on him or slomio

Go hardio or homeo

Go faster, increase speedio

On him, I start off medio

Increase my pace if needio

on Instagram Live video

A crush, I’ve got a thin...

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Tremors he gave me confirmed

The heart is a muscle

Never my heart beat faster

than standing next to him

Sadly the stars didn’t align

Our hearts not in sync

Cards dealt me cruel hand

Losing both him and Mum

Find Mum’s childhood sewing kit

Anne Styles’ thread and pins

Fleshy muscle torn by grief

Sew it back together again

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I’ve come to realise 

it’s time to let go 

and that saying goodbye 

means saying hello 

to a better me, 

the best I can do,

the realisation of what it is

I love about you, 

your qualities that bring out

 the best version of me 

So, I will try being the friend 

that you need me to be. 

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I’ve come to realise 
it’s time to let go 
and that saying goodbye 
means saying hello 
to a better me, 
the best I can do,
the realisation of what it is
I love about you, 
your qualities that bring out
 the best version of me 
So, I’ll be the greatest friend 
to you that I can be. 

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There is no violence as loud as silence

Silence as violence

Silence as violence

Silence as violence

Silence as violence

Kill the silence! 

Coming to terms with that oppressive feeling of

having to keep everything I feel about you quiet, silent

How can I swim and keep my head above a sound

so deafening, so loud, so violent

A hissing sound with a freq...

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I was hungry feeling whack

Drunk a few with James and Jack

Got last  train departing at

midnight but the driver slack

Did he go off for a snack?

Having piss around the back

whilst he doing line of crack?

Maybe likes a little smack

On my train, got on my track

6ft Santa, sexy black

in his costume with his sack

Lets just say he had no lack

Ooh ...

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CHRISTMAS CRUCIFIX

Tie them up tight

these ribbons to tree

but I’m feeling choked

by this constant cheer

Call me miserable and uptight

but at least this means a week off work

Tie them up tight

those thieves who stole Christmas

who ripped it from its pagan roots

Stripped it and stuck on it a great big sticker,

a story based in Bethlehem

Tie me up ...

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Better keep quiet

This moral dilemma

cannot get out

Keep your mouth shut, boy

Better keep quiet

Ever breathe a word

of this oral dilemma,

I’d have to tie your tongue up, boy

Words are mapping pins

Wasted mine on a charmer disarmer

Fuck his reticence!

Few pins he ever spoke never showed the alchemy of his flesh

And you, poet, smiler boy, fuck yours...

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Light as violence

Light as violence

Light as violence

Light as violence

LIGHT!

You do not necessarily need to ‘see’ something to be a witness.

Implicate yourself in an ordeal

through oral connection by means of

conversation with your inner voices

Self-reportage bestowing upon you 

a certain involvement and moral dilemma

My two eyeballs hanging on t...

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You do not necessarily need to ‘see’ something

in order to be a witness. Implicate myself in this ordeal

through oral connection by means of

conversation with my inner voices

Self-reportage bestowing upon me

a certain involvement and moral dilemma

The pins started to fall one by one in domino effect

Now my continual fight to be heard and seen

must take an involunt...

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Bruv, you know that thing, that thing we were talking about

when we went out for drinks and we almost passed out?

Bruv, you know that thing, that thing, the other week in the pub

we were chatting about when we were out

on the lash and I was up for a snout?

Looking back, I regret it, like what must you think?

This thing that I told once I’d had a drink?

You know ...

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Paul, my mate like to mock
John, my Dad, Scottish ‘Jock’
Sat at home, doorbell knock,
Open door, ‘JOCK THE COCK!’

Out with dog, ‘JOCK THE COCK!’
Dog and bone, ‘JOCK THE COCK!’
Down the phone, ‘JOCK THE COCK!’
Slam it down, ‘JOCK THE COCK!’

Where’s his brain? Out of stock
But lock the door, he’d pick the lock
Round the clock, ‘JOCK THE COCK!’
‘JOCK THE COCK!’, ‘JOCK THE COCK!’

Sai...

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It’s going well

between you and your date

Until he puts in a spanner

and calls you ‘mate’

Oh fuck.

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We are cut  

from the same cloth

Our poetry, our words 

are mapping pins

The inner rip

The visceral tear

The internal cut 

Fist rage embodied 

in every silent tiny prick 

of the mapping pin 

Your pins,

in their cadence, their sound,

Gravity loss in my pins

Damn it! You’re clever

you keep my feet still on the ground

Your pins map the ...

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We are cut

from the same cloth

Our poetry, our words

are mapping pins

The inner rip

The visceral tear

The internal cut

Fist rage embodied

in every silent tiny prick

of the mapping pin.

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Better keep quiet. This is complicated. Multiple parties involved

Save the answer until better times

ME. Reckless homosexual, romantic punk

loves being taken on journeys

with as few words as possible

HE. Charmer, disarmer, gambler, better

His few words took me on journeys

Did he ever really care? I bet he never did

FUCK HIS RETICENCE!

I bet on him and lost

YOU. K...

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BETTER

All that I had in mind for me and him in the future,

now in a long but unforgotten past

You are the better version of him

You are all the things I wish he would have been

He, who I had no so many hopes for,

promises he never kept

He was a charmer, disarmer, an addict, a better

I bet my dreams on him and lost

You are the present day version of him

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SMUDGER JOCK

Though in the print by trade, how the bills got paid,

my Dad for years went window cleaning

Smudger with scrim,  I remember him, 

 Jock kept those windows gleaming

With bucket in hand, throughout the land, my Dad was fit as a fiddle

Up high he would go whilst I’d stay low, not even to the middle

of his high ladder, would go my bladder whilst Dad up 80 foot

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Friend, you are the better version of him

You are all the things I wish he would have been

He, who I had no so many hopes, dreams for,

Promises, he never kept

All that I had in mind for me and him in the future

now in a long but unforgotten past.

Friend, you are the present day version of him

but I will never tell you

how you embody all those hopes, dreams

Prom...

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I’m going about my day

NEWSFLASH!

Unexpectedly

like a bolt out of the blue

my body interrupts me

46 years of chronic pain sciatica

has taught me the disruptive nature

of the body’s physicality

Visceral newsflashes

Corporeal shoots of pain

Physiotherapy and Amitriptyline only temporarily numbs

My body heckles me

Poetic, lyrical, unexpected, transformative interru...

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Following my feature set,

sharing poems about losing Mum,

the next artist started his

shouting something rather dumb

‘BIG UP ALL THE DEAD MUMS!

My Mum died years before your Mum, Lee.

And I was much younger than you

when my Mum died. So, I WIN!'

This woman in the audience then shouted back,

‘IT'S NOT A COMPETITION!

NOT A BATTLE OF THE MOURNERS’

I would no...

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You Google, you search, you find

and then print it off

Checklist for

how to arrange a funeral

it will say you call this person,

 you do this, and you arrange this,

and you pay this,

go through it

very linearly

You can go through it

one by one,

tick, tick, tick, tick, tick

But at the end, there should be a

‘now you just go and figure it out

on ...

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HOW TO LINE MANAGE A NARCISSIST 

I used to work with Blowers-Browne
who gave everyone dirty frown
Though I line managed Blowers-Browne,
he thought it HE wearing the crown
A narcissist was Blowers-Browne
who liked to put everyone down 
He had this voice did Blowers-Browne,
everything else out it would drown. 

In Chelsea, claimed lived Blowers-Browne,
but bet he lived in Canning Town 
...

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I always felt ,when it first happened,
and still now, that there are certain feelings that I have 
and experiences that I go through 
that I just cannot find the language for.
Or I don't want to.

There's nothing that neatly puts it 
into a term.
If I say this word, people go, 
‘I know what that means’
It's like just looking around
to have something 
which you cannot put into language
...

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You Google, you search, you find

and then print it off

Checklist for

how to arrange a funeral

It will say you call this person,

you do this, and you arrange this,

and you pay this,

go through it

very linearly

You can go through it

one by one,

tick, tick, tick, tick, tick

But at the end, there should be a

‘now you just go and figure it out

on your own’ box

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Discover the same other

whilst under the cover

Creeping seeping peeping

covert operations

my teenage fascinations

awkward altercations

with non queer populations

Sensations that taught me

if ever they caught me

side cautiously er

deliberately blur words that infer derogatory slur

I got very clever,

very clever at seeing without being seen

...

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I’ve lost my body

Where is my body?

Has anyone seen my body?

Mum, I

miss you.

Ever since

losing you,

I’ve lost

myself too.

Life events

you prepare

yourself for

play themselves

out in

front of

me. I’m

a spectator

in my

own body.

The audience

in the

protagonist’s skin.

Like I

am watching

my life

...

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DAD BOD

Link to poetry film online 

https://filmfreeway.com/DADBOD2024

I spy, my eye

Summer day in July

Lee go lido

Know just where me eye go

Hairy chest bloke

over female breaststroke

Cute lad, sad sod

and oh my god his dad bod!

I spy, man boobs

Blimey, look at his moobs

Dad Bod swagger   

Hardly Moves Like Jagger

Quick flash, bum crack

makes ...

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Who’s sat there on that bar stool

with half a cider jar full?

Big Head Ben - dirty rascal

of Elephant and Castle

He’s never been to charm school

A handful and an armful

Up your Dover, partial

Like Dad, an army marshall,

the apple don’t fall far fall

At night as shooting star fall,

there underneath the tarpaul

in Ben’s Capri, his car full

of men eating ...

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Image: Me aged 18 at Maidstone College of Art in 1996

LOOK AT YOURSELF! 

‘PAINT! PAINT! No, you ain’t!’

said Mike Addison, my Graphics tutor

to me at Maidstone Art College in ‘96

‘PAINT! PAINT! No, you ain’t a graphic designer!

LOOK AT YOURSELF! You’re covered in paint!’

Hands in paint! Mate’s complaint

I can’t stop painting hands

The words ’BLOODY HANDS’

gr...

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(Image: Me at Maidstone Art College in 1996, aged 18)

‘PAINT! PAINT! No, you ain’t!’

said Mike Addison, my Graphics tutor

to me at Maidstone Art College in ‘96

‘PAINT! PAINT! No, you ain’t a graphic designer!

LOOK AT YOURSELF! You’re covered in paint!’

Hands in paint! Mate’s complaint

I can’t stop painting hands

The words ’BLOODY HANDS’

graffitied in black pain...

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Word famous landmarks. Wonders of the World

Golden Triangle, California road trip, 1993

Me, twink. R.E.M mix tape on my Sony Walkman.

One of the things I remember most, what I still carry as a souvenir,

is being winked at by guys sitting outside a bar in West Hollywood

as I walked past them sipping cocktails

If I had only had the confidence back then and known my true sexual...

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I spy, my eye. Summer day in July

Lee go lido. Know just where me eye go

Hairy chest bloke over female breaststroke

Cute dad, sad sod but oh my god his dad bod!

I spy, my eye. Swimming pool in July

Fee, fum, fi, fo, get me bum off lilo

Dad bod, back stroke, butterfly or front crawl

Towel fall, all pool sees daddy fully frontal!

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Standing in front of David Hockney’s Peter Getting Out of Nick's Pool

Aged 16. 

I have always been a keen swimmer

The thrill of the cold water sea chill - that sensation

And now I was keen at looking at the swimmer in front of me

I felt a sensation

I was unsure then over my attraction 

The form and content of

Supposedly ‘flat’ static surfaces 

reveal themselves over time

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He gets home

and locks the front door

Confronted by a sound

so deafening, so loud

Its noise goes in one ear

and out the other

A hissing sound with a frequency

as devastating as the fear

 of being eaten alive

by white noise

He sits there and imagines

she is in the other room

Even though they often spent evenings

in separate rooms,

they were together...

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JAKE THE SNAKE

Northbound overground

Southbound underground

Say you’re straight but play around

in London’s gay playground

You go to pub, the Fox and Hound

Get in the drinks, it’s your round

Til orders last, bell sound

Then bus it home, northbound

Your sorrows how they got drowned

Shots you had, pints downed

Tonight you’re not the one crowned

in strip...

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ILLUSTRATION BY LEE CAMPBELL (2010) 

In  apple orchards, playing games, a rather fruitful tale

of teenage me and my friend James who thought he knew me well

Not just the cider talking or me being drunk on ale

Me sober seeing him naked set off my ding dong bell

At local pub one night got drunk, James only wearing socks

Him nude on that tree swing, me see the sexies...

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https://youtu.be/Suwqf8LHLEQ

Boys’ changing room, Dan hid my towel

School bully boy, he not my pal

So, I nicked his, nicked it somehow

He lucky boy, so well endow

The size of it made me go, ‘WOW!’

I knew right then what I’m still now

I’m into boy, not into gal.

I fancied Dave off Emmerdale

Made straight things gay. That Tory cow

Thatcher made  straight white ...

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https://youtu.be/p87NvF_Qiy8

Teenager in Nineties’ Britain, always had in my hand,

a pencil to make drawings, to help me understand, 

the world I was born into, which felt like foreign land,

my homosexuality was not what they had planned

Me drawing in a straight world, but mine was gay instead,

I made drawings in secret, hid them under my bed

I drew the world I ...

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Keep on the bics

Keep off the box

Keep on the kicks

Keep off the cocks

Keep on the dicks

Keep off the dox

Keep on the fix

Keep off the fox

Keep on the hicks

Keep off the hox

Keep on the icks

Keep off the ox

Keep on the jix

Keep off the jocks

Keep on the licks

Keep off the locks

Keep on the nicks

Keep off the knocks

Keep on the pics

Keep off ...

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Cut off your pee

Cut off your piss

Cut off your bee

Cut off your biss

Cut off your sea

Cut off your sis

Cut off your dee

Cut off your diss

Cut off your fee

Cut off your fist

Cut off your gee

Cut off your gist

Cut off your eye

Cut off your iss

Cut off your key

Cut off your kiss

Cut off your Lee

Cut off your list

Cut off your me

Cut ...

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Boys’ changing room, Dan hid my towel

School bully boy, he not my pal

So, I nicked his, nicked it somehow

He lucky boy, so well endow

The size of it made me go, ‘WOW!’

I knew right then what I’m still now

I’m into boy, not into gal.

I fancied Dave off Emmerdale

Made straight things gay. State not allow

gay pics back then, that Tory cow

Thatcher threw men lik...

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Teenager in Nineties Britain, always had in my hand

a pencil to make drawings, to help me understand,  

the world I was born into, which felt like foreign land,

my homosexuality was not what they had planned

Me drawing in a straight world, but mine was gay instead,

I made drawings in secret, hid them under my bed

I drew the world I longed for, imagined in my head,

I wishe...

Read and leave comments (0)

Teenager in Nineties Britain, always had in my hand 
a pencil to make drawings, to help me understand,  
the world I was born into, which felt like foreign land, 
my homosexuality was not what they had planned

Me drawing in a straight world, but mine was gay instead, 
I made drawings in secret, hid them under my bed 
I drew the world I longed for, imagined in my head, 
I wished my world w...

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** Italics means Polari slang – some translations like ‘nosh’ into English (not ‘food’ in Polari) are too rude to print ** 

State school in ‘90’s Britain, near posh boy’s private school

From working class background, those posh boys were so cruel

Laughed at Dad’s Ford Cortina, my Iower class accent

For them a double no-no - being common, being bent

They shouted through the s...

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Losses

are also traumas

Embed themselves

in our bodies

May be surprising or shocking

after several years

That you're still living it

almost as if it's the same day

Immediate kind of rawness

when something first happens

Like the top layers of your skin

have come off

Ebbs and flows, not linear

Comes and goes

in waves.

Can't always know

whe...

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Memory Scents

I used to buy Mum flowers

Put them in a vase

Their petals fell where Mum

looked out the living room window

Their scent filled the room.

Dad now buys Mum flowers

Puts them in a vase

Their petals fall where Mum

is now buried.

I urged Dad not to buy plastic flowers

because the scent of real flowers

fills me with memories of Mum

I be...

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In for a penny, in for a pound

In for a benny, in for a round

In for a hurry, in for a half

In for a murray, in for a laugh

In for a penny, in for a poke

In for a jack, in for a joke

In for a smack, in for a smoke

In for a sack, in for a soak

In for a penny, in for a pop

In for a tip, in for a top

In for a blip, in for a bop

In for a slip, in for a slop

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Handkerchief on his behind, has this gay guy called Frankie 

Know what’s on his mind, just from the colour of his hanky 

Red means only hands, he wants just winky wanky

Shower, if it’s green, must clean your pinky panky

Black, the flip of that, he likes it minky manky 

Blue hanky, his behind, has our guy called Frankie 

He’s feeling so inclined, up for some hanky panky 

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Mum, I

miss you.

Ever since

losing you,

I’ve lost

myself too.

Life events

you prepare

yourself for

play themselves

out in

front of

me. I’m

a spectator

in my

own body.

The audience

in the

protagonist’s skin.

Like I

am watching

my life

and I’m

in every

scene but

my body

is elsewhere.

I , the

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