Wednesday 15 July 2015

Visual SCRUFF poem by Ernesto Sarezale

Visual SCRUFF "poem" 
by Ernesto Sarezale




Grindr (Subject to availability) by Simeon Simms

I lure you in with a 'Hey'
But let's chat
I want you to see what I see
and assume I'm the type of free that would tie himself to a tree
You want me?
Traveling to where you lay in jungles to make concrete sing
But hows about I don't make it too easy
Hows about I make you want me
but not just the part that grows firm in dreams
and leeks substances from time to time
Hows about I take my time
'Because I don't wanna get chop up tonight'
Sorry but I say what comes to mind
Unlike the others before me who came 
and vanished
With no opinion 
No life
So it's different this time
You're hooked
You want me but why should I want you?
Can you feed me?
Take me to go see a movie
I want three bottles of wine and a spliff...
If I agreed to come without letting you know me, you wouldn't have even offered me a drink
Hows about we meet half way
Hotel?
Pay for my cab
Pay for my sex
Is that what this is?
I mean, I don't want to give it away for free
To become just like the others before me
What do I do?
Hows about I don't do this
I'll put myself
Back on a dusty shelf
Brackakakat!
Hows about that?

Saturday 11 July 2015

JUST LOOKING... by Bren Gosling

JUST LOOKING...
by Bren Gosling  

Tap a tap tap the magic lamp
Type the password
Climb the ramp
Make the genie appear.
Going for a swim
in the aquarium,
aqualunged behind a glass pane,
I kiss the light.
Click
A plume of tiny hairs rising to the navel,
The bicep circled by heavy tattoo
You remind me of...
Gone off -line, here we go
Another Waterloo.
Click
Pierced nipple marooned
on the foreshore of a shaven chest
By an unseen tidal surge, wounded
starfish can’t hook up now,
No face pic kills my urge.
Click
Private pictures open all too quick
An advent calendar impatient for Christmas,
extra  large.
Arse splayed ready, no femms
chemical friendly.
Sorry,
don’t do bears.
Click
Your face drunken
Leery, posed with anonymous
girlfriend
In a Wetherspoons so dreary
Reminds me of a cousin’s wedding
where I ate too much cake in
Wolverhampton last year...
TV’s welcome,
No- bloody- fear.
Click
House trained romantic smoker
a plus, only black men please
don’t make  no fuss.
It’s my preference.
Click
Threesomes, foursomes
groups galore suck
me dry
then some more,
Don’t block me I’m
no whore just
a horny guy compelled to score.
ClickWash and Go
Looks unimportant, nor  expecting
a match made in heaven, hey
don’t bother me if
you are over 27.
Remove Tracks, Click
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Somewhere out there
So are you
Just looking.

Thursday 9 July 2015

BODIES by Greg Owen

(read at Let’s Talk About Gay Sex and Drugs, Ku Klub, Soho, 9th July 2015)

London - the city where muscle, ripped, VGL, hung, bisexual and straight are the currency and start up traders or those with low stock value in the above are quick to fall foul of its sexual politics and cut throat heartlessness.
These labels are flung around regularly with a seemingly blissful lack of awareness on the users' part of the base level, negative impact such apparently acceptable sexual attacks – no, sorry - ‘textual attacks’ cause and the underlying erosion of self-worth that they actively generate. And most cause the recipient to revisit any previous, now dormant past abuse. It is without question, certainly compounding any existing hangups those receiving said attacks have, we’re talking about other gay men here! 

Gay men who, let's face it, might fix up in the latter part of their teens and early 20’s with maybe… a set of veneers - yes my front 6 teeth are made out of the same stuff as your Nan’s best china - that’s porcelain you’re looking at now.

And those same gay men may have done a course of steroids or 8. Yes, that’s ‘all gone on’ right here over the last 10 years. You wouldn’t think it to look at me now though; I’ve been slacking lately and not been to the gym in over a year. And before one of you thinks it or says it - yes “I woke up like this” or as is usually the case with me “I never went to bed” – “like this”. There are a few of you in here tonight that know me – that happens!

Now that I’ve outed myself - apart from the 1 Botox treatment about 3 years ago - that is all of my fixing up - fessed up. Apart from - I dye my eyebrows and eyelashes in the summer because as a blond Irish guy – after a few days in the sun they disappear and rocking the “Chemo Chic” look is not a good look. Yes! I went there! But that really is it now.

Back to my point. Those comments and thinly guised ‘textual attacks’ within our own community which - is fundamentally a community consisting of grown up and fixed up, bullied school boys, that are now living the grown up and seemingly acceptable 2015 version of bullying - totally acceptable online but ask yourself this - as in most online versus real life comparisons… would you really behave like that face to face? If you were in a bar or club or cafe actually chatting with another guy?

Here’s how those things would sound if they were they real life conversations:

Muscle only - You're fat and out of shape and you really need to go to the gym

Ripped only - I mean have you ever seen the inside of a gym? Carbs are not your friend

Very Good Looking only – I’m totally up my own arse and only ‘up-date’

Into hung only – I’m a ‘bottomless bottom’ That is not an admission! Or a confession by the way! It’s in keeping with the rest of the examples! Like I said there are some of you in here that know me – not that well! Anyway - and will most likely be thinking I should have held out a bit longer for a bigger guy than you.

Into bisexual or straight only - This really is how out there gay men can be sometimes – “I only sleep with or date straight guys”…if you are dating or screwing him is he actually ‘straight’? Come on! And can someone please gift that gay a fucking dictionary!

These are observations not judgments. To judge would contradict the point I’m trying to make.

I know I’ve slightly exaggerated those statements for the purpose of the exercise but is it really that far from the truth? If you even vocalized anything of those things at 20 percent of that abruptness then I’m pretty sure you would qualify as a sociopath? No? So why do we do it?

Why also is there the need for the ‘not into’ information that guys like to push on a profile? This is pretty much exclusively reserved for the fems, the twinks, the chubs, the Asians, the Blacks, the gingers and the poz guys. Leading me on to HIV.

Surely there is some sort of cause and effect here? Most of my positive mates picked up the virus while on some sort of life spin out - not all of them but a substantial proportion. I can’t help feeling that the general endemic use of such broadcasts - although perhaps unintentional is unfathomably unacceptable and regularly erodes say 50% of this community’s self worth be that consciously or subconsciously. And it has to manifest itself somewhere at some point down the line. And it does! Often with a vengeance and at a hefty cost.

Maybe its time we all took as much responsibility for our words online as we would when face to face with another person of the same sexual preference. Who has already faced enough hatred for being ‘different’ in his life up to now from those that are different. Let’s not make him face it all over again from those that are the same. Instead broadcast and post what you celebrate and what you are ‘into’ not ‘not into’. It will play its small part in changing the future we can hopefully enjoy in a supposedly equal Western World.

If straight people have shown their support for us being given the right to live as equals, can’t we at least match that as a gift to each other and allow ourselves and all the other gays to be equals - consciously, actively, and freely.
You can decide for yourself with your own actions the next time you’re online.

I've just talked about gay sex and drugs – BODIES!!!

See you all on Grindr boys!

TOM DICK AND HARRY by Jacob V Joyce

Tom’s headlights blind me 
too bright to see through his window 
so I sidle up beside and look inside 
he smiles wide as I inwardly sigh because this guy 
looks totally different to his profile picture. 
His hair once tucked in truckers cap, 
Rapper thug trope of black aesthetic, 
a mimetic that triggered desire for bigger men than me 
is gone now instead thin plats dangles loosely at his back 
In a way school girls might braid just to keep it neat and tidy, 
I slide in on the passengers seat beside him 
greeting his tired eyes that say don’t run away 
its Tuesday your listening to vibes fm at a quarter past 10 pm. 
His first question off set my expectations 
The soft Jamaican pronunciation 
Was so light and airy for such a wide and heavy man
With heavy hands clamped on the steering wheel 
“How are you?” a delicate query like leaves testing puddles in the street 
Held taught on thin films of awkward tension, 
I don’t mention my disappointment but hesitate wondering how to delineate my current state,
and then explain that I am nervous.
 “Why you nervous for?” he lilted, tilting his gaze to the road partially phased out of view by the snakes of rain, breaking in chains on the window pain of his Ford Mondeo.
Its not far he assured me,
and the car engine roared key in lock,
and vibes fm assured me it was gonna be a serious night tonight. 

Dicks shiny head popped out of the covers 
I buzzed down the corridor like a bumblebee drunkenly
bumbling down a corridor to the sound of the buzzer
before The pre-recorded voice robotically instructed me
to “close the door behind you” 
It echoed the tune of clinical musk
vacuum packed new build flats,
sterile shopping isles of fully furnished identical
pre-packaged high renticles.
The last door is ajar and candlelight
creates a path as I enter and shut the door behind me. 
The glistening silk pillows of dicks bed
are punctuated by his bald and grinning head
mischievous and excited his eager glee
ignites the presence and ominous glare
of a giant teddy bear sat dominating the room
on its wicker IKEA throne chair,
a voice moans inside me,
does dick have special needs,
but then recedes many grown men must still have teddies
I still have a that raggedy rabit but I usually grab it and
hide him in the closet if I have a casual guest,
Get undressed he tells me,
Im not arrested by his request
infact it brings back memories of truth or dare,
I felt dared to share a secret part of myself
infront of this 35 year old man who has no books or photos of friends or posters on his walls instead decorating with candle lit shadows of me taking off my clothes and getting into his bed.

How can you live in this mess
harry stressed as I knelt
pushing books and and belts off of my bed
Harry carried himself over the clothes thrown over my floor,
And curled his smile wryly eyeimg me as I felt his stomach grow tense
I was so tired my eyes hurt but as soon as his shirt lifted
the sands of sleep sifted to reveal a nugget of burning zeal
yerning to seal the gap between our lips and
for him to grip me by the hips and ask me if I was his boy.
Oi take your shoes off and tiptoe up to my room, he’d warned wearily as we snuck up his stairs silly with desire and fear.
Their would be no explaining to harrys parents what I was doing at 2am on a Tuesday sneaking in to play the same game of whispered refrain that now took place at my mothers house,
we covered each others mouths dousing the spasming flames
of painfull ecstasy with warm wet cocobutter sweat collecting in pools that shuddered in utterances of
stop, stop  your gonna make me buss,
trust I get bare anti when I buss
don’t rush.


A few illustrations byJacob V Joyce

FUCKING RACISTS
by Jacob V Joyce