SELECTED POETRY
by Matthew Devereux

SEKS BE HID

The bike sheds were a hornucopia, a legend Wurlitzer
trysts to the rumour mill, a fleshy utopia
where genitals mingled like salmon and streams
where the don juans of the primaries lothario�d
got off their rocks in honeyed rows of
fair fleshpots.

soused in the bathhouse
deloused and de-liveried
to a love, never tender.
orgiastic splendour.
to libertad.

bs she dike. anti-confessionals.
sheik beds. steamy sessionals.

Well, that was the story of morning gory. Mostly it was just pre-pubescents locking and unlocking bicycles.

� Matthew Devereux
Reproduced with permission

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AQUARHEUM

I�ve heligo landed
In church this day of sun.

Sins sloshed in baptismal fonts
Abluted and abated. Jacuzzi ganges.

Here strangers are not strange.
Social class is
spa bubbles and steamroom vapours
Personal his stories, nightmares. Awake.

Unmasked flesh. Status rank and exposed.
The Emperor�s genitalia flap in the wheeze of the breeze
For below crowns and thorns
each geezer and each sleazer
is the same foibles and follicles, nipples and knees.

No more Sunday best, no need to dress to impress.
Each bather be priest of their own parish.
In waterripples and sunspangles, in handfeet and love handles
Transubstantiation. The fears of the nation are perspired in the fires.
Portered to the waters.
To dissolve, the dreams of fishes, out to old lives as new
As the wells of wishes.

� Matthew Devereux
Reproduced with permission

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THE MOON IN THE MAN

Full fathomed in full moonlight
In the midst of the fire-fight
This firefly makes his flight.

From the pharoah�s phalanxes
And the phallus seas of sphinxes

I fly
Fall fathomed
In fair moon night.

� Matthew Devereux
Reproduced with permission

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HIGHER STREET

The old woman with the beard of a goat, a flotilla of shopping bags, a Moscow greatcoat,
full-stops.
She is butterly pinned.
Around her the city spirals its mercantilist sulphur.
Shopping carnivores battle to save face,
Children scatter like fresh newts
And police knights carve routes
For diplomats to speed to receptions.

A cortege confession slipstreams through the road
And makes her think of tadpoles and toads.

The old woman stops, draws breath
Raises eyes to the skies, contemplates death.

� Matthew Devereux
Reproduced with permission

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PAWNOGRAFICA

The sphinx and the imp play riddles of chess
Blessed with drinks by the gimp in the dress
Viddying are the minx and the nymph
Who jest that the winner is not what she thinks.

� Matthew Devereux
Reproduced with permission

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TOM CATS, TOM BOYS

Tom Foolery and her friend Tom Thumb
Sip green tea and sup dim sum
In the Chinese restaurant with the plastic chairs
The pools of card sharks
Lonestar stares

And in the aurora of musk and of tusk
They�ll mango and mangrove and monsoon
Their lust.

They�ll sever their tithes
And gather their scythes
And make love from the ashes
To the dustiest dusk.

� Matthew Devereux
Reproduced with permission

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Matthew's Previous Publications:

Coffee Break (Guildford fanzine in early 1990s)

Cherwell student newspaper, Oxford

Paintbysound.com (Moon in the Man)

Swamp.net � an article called Homohetero

Shortlisted in 2001 Webb Essay competition (run by New Statesman magazine and the Foreign Policy Centre)

- In the last month I have also set up a magazine and a band, and there will be updates on these projects

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Matthew's Links:

Paintbysound.com

Melodic.co.uk � my musician friend Pedro releases his work on this label

Nataliegoldberg.com � I recently read a book by Natalie Goldberg called �Writing Down the Bones� (Shambhala Press) which is inspirational.

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Matthew�s Top 5 Words From The Indo-European Root �Sreu-�:

Rhyolite

Rhythm

Maelstrom

Catarrh

Stream

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