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CHRISTOPHER BARNES

In 1998 I won a Northern Arts writers award. In July 200 I read at Waterstones bookshop to promote the anthology Titles Are Bitches. In Christmas 2001 I debuted at Newcastle's famous Morden Tower doing a reading of my poems. Each year I read for Proudwords lesbain and gay writing festival and I partake in workshops. 2005 saw the publication of my collection Lovebites published by Chanticleer Press.

THE SOCIAL INSECT

Wakey wakey!

To Cabaret and high-noon lustre.

Because my heartbreaker’s in Wormwood Scrubs

there’s only a quincunx of bonhomie

under pink and gay bedclothes.

Sunday hallelujahs go to-and-fro like this.

But Anthony’s remembering is blank as a sheet.

He has no jot of a fortnight before,

when with polyrhythms of devilry

we’d quizzed-up our vice -

his thinking was a melody then: bait little H.

to a guzzling of Whiskas for breakfast

(9 out of 10 cats prefer it).

Who’s an appetite for pate on toast?

Each and every mother’s son?

I’m self-denying, a blot

of splendid jam for me.

Chomp, chomp my kitties, have your fill,

for decadence needs a fiendish host.

THE RUSSIAN TEMPERAMENT

“Tchaiskovsky thought of committing suicide

for fear of being discovered as a homosexual,

but today, if you are a composer and not

homosexual, you might as well put a bullet

through your head.” - Daighilev

An off-putting tilt to the first light.

A shut-eye yawn.

Midwinter ablutions,

a pack-ice urgent splash of water.

Darting, the jowl muscles tug-of-war

around a grimace. Comb needles plucking,

subsiding

and the sprung finality

in an orientation of moustache.

From a fastidious impulse

his kilter germinates a melody.

A twangy counterglow in his eyes,

an underlining pedal to the day.

Obbligato the madcap revives,

slender figure of man-love,

positions at the barre,

-- gouls in the head

deadly as a castrato's bullet.

UNITED NATIONS

I like the way you move

Nailing the fog to the wall

Collapsing arm juts,

Knee bends dripping blobs.

Bogart relations

Labouring rightwards.

Foreign policy whistles

Through the bullet holes

Of fawcett-teared meat.

Gays howl in armies

Of jazzy stockbroke hotels

Colonising joints.

Dutchies snatched from skinny hands

To mountain ambition

Dust.

Severed Hope’s head

Slants

As daddy’s mawkish hawk bites.

UNLOCK UNAUTHORIZED INTERPRETATIONS

(after Bertold Brecht’s The Players)

Sits under bright lights

plasti-stirring, potatoless fries

stinging salt. At the chill counter Coca-Cola

for those in frigid zones,

or the sunbaked.

Micro bacteria

within patterns on kitchen walls.

Downstairs, a rat nests

on a tower of polystyrene,

a haze of over-indulgent waste.

She checks up. Alert the menu.

Her status, no more than yours

a digit on the rent-roll.

Unlock unauthorized interpretations,

grill yourself, she wont do it.