FIVE POEMS by KIT ISHERWOOD
Over Text
we tell each other the sordid things
we want to do
to each other and to others
while the other watches or catches
in the act there
but not there
in the heat of the action an onlooker
of sweat and flesh and groans
that bounce around the room
like a ball dropped down stairs
that rush towards
a destination flooding out
into the hallway
where I’d hold myself
through my trousers watching
your bodies in rhythmic
transgression his gnarls of daddy
fingers stretching over
your back your hand around
his throat eyes pressed into his
as if trying to become one
I Tell You I Love You
but what I mean is I am grateful you are here
with me in this dark time against
the dim light of the flickering bulb against
the pushy sun and the dancing moon I tell you
I love you against the backdrop
of the distant nights that you crawled over me
fingers snagging at the hairs on my arms
asking me to hold you and I did out of love
out of duty out of respect for what we had or didn’t have
anymore
I tell you I love you
because I am thankful you are here with me
cosied up as the rain hammers its drunken fist against
the window again the way it had all those years
ago cocooned in the bed of my father’s house
my arms as barriers we couldn’t cross and again
in the world beyond the tracks the coy eyes
and unclean lips words never heard but understood
and I told you I loved you and you smiled
just as you do now when I tell you
that I love you because
I don’t know how to tell you anything else
I tell you I love you
but what I mean is
I don’t know how much longer I can do this
Afterward
I am sipping breakfast tea and thinking of you it has been months
since we last met almost as long since I last wrote
about you about us about what we had and didn’t
the sky has turned a hideous congealed-purple colour
like a bruise as if someone had punched the sky days ago
and it has only just become apparent
I guess this is how I am feeling you could call it pathetic fallacy
could call it revelation after the fact could call it no call it
the ending to the original Planet of the Apes film
when Charlton Heston realises
he was home
all along
In the Club
we were freshly cut diamonds precious
jewels amongst the rough rubble-faces
built up from decades of partying lusting after
the newest gem to waltz through the door and
make this place its home for the night soon
to be gawped at grinded against directed
by the wandering hands to the centrefold the
dancefloor circled around the flashing darkness the
mighty plug ready to be pulled down through
the pipeline of smooth movers tugged out
to the smoking area toward what dismal light
offered for further inspection the fresh air
a treat the smoke a sourness that burned
the eyes of us who were new to the nightlife new
to the quick-step pace of whatever
this was whatever they would allow it to be if
they wanted it to be anything more than
the passing of stone over palm and so the story
unfolds of a lustrous mineral polished by the hand
who might pass it on after a night slightly-used no
profit made just relishing its beauty
The Men
the Welsh crush the boyfriend the comforter of the night
the supporter of Labour of Aston Villa of silence
the doctor who had a wife and a dead Christmas tree in the corner
the peacekeeper the Buddhist the Muslim who wanted to talk
afterwards who taught me the delicate truths of the world
the Christian who afterwards said we needed to head to church
to repent the barista the friend the other friend
the friend’s friend their friend too the friend I fell for
who wasn’t quite ready for more but smiled anyway
the friend it got weird with
the cinema buddy the writing pal the dancing partner
the ex who told me my writing would get me nowhere
who wanted me again months later detached
the uncle the father the son
the boss who took me aside whispered sweet nothings to me
made me work in little more than my dignity
the other ex the ex’s ex the ex of an ex of an ex of an ex
the waiter the bartender the smoker
the man who gave me a false name just as I did to him
the right one the left one the one stuck
in the centre of a triangle he couldn’t figure out
who walked out who stood on the outside and looked in
the posh bloke the poor bloke the man who offered all his
change to the homeless who saw goodness everywhere
the one who offered nothing but took everything
the one who stole my heart and promised me paradise
even if it was only for a single night
Kit Isherwood (he/him) is the alias of a twenty-six-year-old queer poet from Birmingham.