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Please can I have a man who wears corduroy.
Please can I have a man
who knows the names of 100 different roses;
who doesn’t mind my absent-minded rabbits
wandering in and out
as if they own the place,
who makes me creamy curries from fresh lemongrass,
who walks like Belmondo in A Bout de Souffle;
who sticks all my carefully-selected postcards -
sent from exotic cities
he doesn’t expect to come with me to,
but would if I asked, which I will do -
with nobody else’s, up his bedroom wall,
starting with Ivy, the Famous Diving Pig,
whose picture, in action, I bought ten copies of;
who talks like Belmondo too, with lips as smooth
and tightly-packed as chocolate-coated
(melting chocolate) peony buds;
who knows that piling himself drunkenly on top of me
like a duvet stuffed with library books and shopping bags
is very easy: please can I have a man
who is not prepared to do that.
Who is not prepared to say I’m pretty either.
Who, when I come trotting in from the bathroom
like a squealing freshly-scrubbed piglet
that likes nothing better than a binge
of being affectionate and undisciplined and uncomplicated,
opens his arms like a trough for me to dive into.
From Magma No 9 (Spring 1997)
Vivienne Westwood, a cento
The garment should say: ‘I am this’
A story of itself
It’s just so creative to put a sentence together
Greet me by ‘how lovely you are’ rather than ‘I like your hat’
I haven’t thought properly about dying
But if I were to write anything on my tombstone
It would be ‘The only revolution is culture’
Every time I speak to someone, I assume they understand
How easy it would have been not to lead this life
I could have been a schoolteacher
What you are given for free should not be owned
Love affairs go a long way to helping life pass you by
Behave according to the clothes
Forget yourself and you will become who you are
I am the centre of my look, like Chanel was
Punk was kids having a great time, but for what? I don’t know
If I go into a room and see Pamela Anderson looking incredible
I’m going to be delighted
The sun makes my skin itch when I’m on a bicycle
A nude is never really naked
I know exactly what I would like my legacy to be
Form is always becoming something else
I design for a world that doesn’t exist, you know, one like this but better
When you stand arms warm with froth, all you see
is a wall of stone, the suggestion
of weather, dirty glass. You know your hands
will smell of leftovers, garlic and grease,
something sweet; you will not smell good enough
to eat. When the water and steel has made
you their prisoner, he will stack himself
behind you, close as a knife. He will tell
you he needs you more than food or fortune,
spoon or cup; kiss your neck like the scent
of sunlight. And you will grow fat on the way
he holds your waist, hungry as a dying man.
Until the dirty water empties itself
against the grain in a silver tide
and you can dry your ten pink fingers one
by one; take his hand and show him what
that wooden door in the stone wall is for,
broken glass, how soft the rain is as it falls.
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