[cw: explicit sexual references]
Figgy, Figgy Manquim and Other Poems
by Barney Ashton-Bullock
Figgy, Figgy Manquim
Dextrous omnilingus of figgy, figgy manquim
like the fizzy, kicky-kiss of insect-o-cutors in
deft sequence dance; volt-stabby tongues
lance to mince dee-lish such sweetmeat, coital
‘creampie’ quince with scabbard licks
to ruffle to dog-ears the crotchless environs
of such well-thumbed, aged, powdering keks
o’latex once so skin-fused but, so soon,
so loose… unfurled/unloved/undone!
Sexy sup-up t’trussy slipway’s flotsam, it’s
frothy cummucino; the conducting baton of
prick, the spindly conducted pantograph of
akimbo legs, the short-sharp-shock circuity of
flash-flood ’gasm, the Gloriana glistening
monstrance of decided discharge, its leakage
from the transept of the pumped-rump ramparts
of we workday, already forlorn, post-coitally
forsaken, faux-braggard ‘power-bottoms’, who
are transfigured in the balming bless of plenty,
plenty cum from succubi supplicants whom we
immure with the immanence of the everyman,
the everyday, the Allhallows bellow of saint
on each primordial enclosure.
From such primal writhe, we will rise triumphant;
From the blitzoid bolt of such buggering blast,
We leave the till and toil of parched flatlands
For a quenching glimpse of the rolling verdant.
mtv tattooed
Swiving, aging curs, our shags, serial
spermatic stacks of pontoon spare parts
grinding, well-lubed, to a spindrift gruel,
unpanted, decanted, our antennae pricks
as uralite stanchions cankering mid-life
to a toxic mulch in the marshy march of sex,
your blurry fade of MTV tattoo says so much
about that then ’80s new-wave youth, a Corp
ident emboss as proof of a fledgling aspiration
flown off with the cathode Trinitrons. That
slick, hissed, telegenic “mwah! mwah!” as,
sated, you left of your own accord and didn’t
glance back, syn-drumming on to proverbial
sensu-sexual pastures new, pubic green shoots putrefy
under the weight of misdirected spendings and
we, so fudgily aflail in our sex-life’s gloop, can’t
gallop back to callow cool youth, so sally-on,
sallow with, and without, many a man like you.
derelict
a feigned matey-hatred that we glibbed so well
in our bespoke, sub-glottal slaw in which we regaled
gutter-heart poets whose ashen lips were for sale
and chain-letter love notes we wrote, but, never mailed.
all fugitive eulogists
arrested by memories never lived,
hung on clawing craws of rhetorical ‘what-ifs’,
the waiting room is to be boarded up;
the rails rust to powder,
the trackbed scuffed up
with the saplings’ shift into new life.
and you write with your caked lip-salve
on the cracked, mottled mirror;
words scrawled and impenetrable
about lost chances incalculable,
about your valiant waiting,
even when the first nails to rotting frames are mauled in.
light, henceforth, will slither through slits
but, still, the love of your life, you think, will find you in this,
derelict.
Barney Ashton-Bullock, is the poet/librettist in the ‘Andy Bell is Torsten’ music-theatre-poetry collective and he narrates his own verse on the Downes Braide Association albums. He has poetry published, or pending publication, in a wide range of cult online poetry journals**, in the ‘Avalanches In Poetry’ tribute anthology to Leonard Cohen, in the Dreich pamphlet ‘Famous’, in the Pilot Press ‘Queer Anthology Of Healing’ and in the ‘Soho Nights’ anthologies published by The Society Club Press who also published his first collection ‘Schema/Stasis’ in 2017. His latest poetry pamphlet ‘Café Kaput!’ was published by Broken Sleep Books in 2020. Find Barney on Twitter @Barney_Poet
(**the Wellington Street Review, the New River Press Yearbook, SPAMzine, Re-Side Magazine, -algia Press, Scab Mag, Pink Plastic House Journal, Lucky Pierre Zine, Poetry Bus, Neuro Logical Magazine and the Babel Tower Notice Board)