To The Men Who Killed the Choir Boys

There is a silence;
Little deaths
And sacred sins
Things we were never meant to find out.
Dead kids rewire their brains
After fifty year blackouts
And suddenly the world is void of saints-
There is a void,
And unholy debts to pay.
There is a silence, and five thousand graves.

“Repent”
Says a man in white.
At his feet, a boy is perched on his knees,
A quiet songbird,
Facing away from him
His head raised to God
Looked to a stained glass window.
Light passes through the panes
And illuminates a spectrum on his virgin face.
The church is quiet,
He repeats himself.
“Clutch them rosaries
Like your shame boy,
Repent!”
His voice is low, bellowing and demanding,
The boy in white has his tongue caught in a roasry snare
The priest holds the key:
He complies.

He confides in him,
Tells him he had sinful thoughts
And that he prayed for validation,
Prayed that this recreational mindset
Was just a distraction
A mental refraction of flesh and sin
And prayed that lust was a war he alone could win.
The pastor grins;
Bait laid out before him
Like a doe with broken limbs.

Already erect he tells the boy
He must inspect the sin.
“Repent” he said as he took him to bed
The boy is on his knees facing away from him
His face raised to god
He sees a picture of Christ,
With his chest open, spilling out a spectrum,
And he remembers that Christ died for this to happen.

The pastor and the teacher, weaponise
The boy’s faith, turn faith into a chain
And make him invisible.
When he steps forward about the abuse
Thirty years later they pacify him
Pay their penance in pounds
These victim’s can’t make sounds
How will that make them look?

All that tax evasion let them save up for law suits, didn’t it?

The boy lives, but he also doesn’t.
The boy lives in America, and Canada,
And Belgium, Germany, Italy and the UK
The boy was abused in 1950
He was also abused at the same age in the nineties
The boy is also a girl
This boy is many boys and girls
The boy is a liminal space
Of victims lasting decades
The boy is a construct
To say each story is different
But exactly the same.

You take faith, power,
And vast sexual repression
And you twist it like a beer cap
Into a kid’s mouths
Use your fortune to let those corpses fester
Lest the truth gets out
But God has his eyes on you
And everything you fucking do.

In Sunderland,
Kids were molested in Catholic schools
In front of their whole class
And nothing was done
Because when an atrocity is repeated
It is deemed normal.
Kids saw their friends
Molested publicly
And muttered Hail Marys
As if saying “thank god that’s not me”.

Fucking the kids up
Fortune feints the cover up
The Bible says pedophilia
Is the worst sin of them all
But half of these vicars
Haven’t read the Bible at all.
The clergy sitting in circles of guilty silence
Counting the rosaries of their sexual violence
But God has his eyes on you
And everything you do
And these kids think they’re going to Hell
But there are spaces saved just for you.

When rosaries become chains,
Kids lose their faith.
This isn’t worship
It is fucking inhumane
And I’d love to know
Just what our father would say.

Twenty Eight Brides

Everyday is a white wedding and
These pills are white as brides,
They sit in a silver casket
Beckoning, beckoning,
A siren’s call, the songs they sing
Send me scratching up the wall,
Reluctance and withdrawal
Coincide into an internal brawl
Bleeding finger nails
And jewels of sweat make a crown,
I crawl towards my brides
And their songs and their gowns,
Put one in my mouth to calm me down
And with twenty seven brides left
I know, I know, I know
I will do this all over again.
These are my remedies,
Black out the toxic memories
That sent me spiralling down into
A mental tragedy.
Try my best to pull away
But I know within two days
I will be back to kiss another white bride.

Without them I am kicking down the doors
To my own insanity.
Said my best friend was like my rapist
In angry profanity
Spat in his face
Charged him with vanity.
Shut the world out,
My own family is full of killers,
Brides burn my mind to cinders

A med is meant to help with my head
But instead I’m thinking I’m better off dead
My mind is left in shreds I’m tied down to my bed
By a Ghost as cruel as lead
He broke my heart
I jumped out my window
And broke my leg
I take my meds
Then the sky is turns red
The ghost is back and
I remember that he said
Your life is on a string
And I hold the blade and thread.

If I am married to my medication,
Then my wedding is red.
All twenty Eight of them
Put blades in my stomach
And rip me to shreds,
They are the reason I bled.
Letting go of medication is
Is to let go of sirens,
They promise you the world
But they give you just violence,
Soon, the voices go silent
And you know you can make it through this.

Six Things You Never Knew About the Queer Kid

Number one:
This queer kid liked books,
Video games, superheroes and believes in God.
But straight people took these hobbies off of him,
Gave him musical theatre and a makeup brush
And put in a box with labels branded on.
The normalisation of heterosexuality
In the media took his closet doors
And replaced it with a wall.
A wall, with “born sick”
Spray painted on.
He wore clothes that did not fit,
Were not his taste,
In that box he stayed.
With so many straight people in the media
How can you feel normal?

Number two:
His schoolmates bullied him
For being gay before they even knew what
Being gay was.
They spat abuse at him,
As if in a foreign tongue,
Too naive and too damn young
To really understands that society branded me
Before I was aged 13.

Number three:
He becomes an object.
When he gets his first job
People will spend his first shift-
Not getting to know him-
But speculating if he was gay
Or just bad at being a boy,
Turns out he’s both.
A straight girl wrote a label that said
“gay best friend”
And choked him to death with it,
Bad at sports but then bad at theatre,
He can’t fight but he can’t dance either,
Bad at being straight worse at being gay
Attached to a cliche with too much weight
He knows he wasn’t meant to be made this way.

Number four:
He loses his masculinity and his dignity
When he finds a boyfriend.
He snaps the twigs of his sexual confidence
Takes half his virginity and ploughs straight through him
Though he always thought victims were meant to be women,
Sexual confusion, body dysphoria and post trauma
Fuel a suicide attempt that the police say was for attention
As if the broken queer boy was too gay for depression.
His soul becomes a corpse
But he’s still alive
His eyes are ghosts
And his body is a haunted house
That just won’t fall down
He gets lost in his own body
And in the bloodstains of his bedsheets
His wrists itch and razors won’t scratch
The promise of love came with a catch
And his rapist won’t give him his virginity back.

Number five:
We are not wet wipes,
We use makeup as warpaint
And leave the house fear stained.
That’s not lipstick, it’s blood.
This isn’t nail polish, I’ve just been walked on.
I wasn’t wearing eyeshadow but they put these bruises on
With fists and words
This is a straight man’s world.
Anne Widcombe says
Scientists could find a cure for being gay
But if I am diseased I will die this way.

Number six:
It is only when he left high-school he understood himself.
This queer kid likes books
But hates reading about straight couples.
This queer kid believes in God
As much as God believed in him,
Last time I tried to die I got half way to heaven
But God told me to turn around:
He said, “Hell has no place for you,
And the world still needs queer kids like you,
Your work is unfinished
Your book is unwritten
Your friends are unloved
Without you with them.
And if you die now
The world will never change”
And my noose fell loose
And I was back again.

Six things you never knew about the queer kid:
1) he reads about queer people, because he likes feeling represented.
2) he was bullied in highschool but learnt to not resent it, he needed it.
3) being objectified made him realise he was alive.
4) victims are not seen and not believed when they are queer, victimhood is part of being gay to the world.
5) the world is not ready for queer people.
6) queer people are valid, regardless.

Her Tender Slice

Sugar, butter, flour, water, icing, chocolate cream, eggs, milk, vanilla essence, bake for forty five minutes, find his mouth.

The soft fabrics of her apron
Find her waist like hands,
He’s angry at her again:
It’s always when he’s hungry.
Sugar, her man likes cocaine.
Butter, he comes home angry,
She apologises for
Nothing.
Flour, hold onto the foundations
Of his powder temper.
Water, she asks him to sober up,
Icing, he hits her,
Bruises decorate her body.
Chocolate cream,
He holds her,
Eggs and milk,
He eats her tender slice,
He says he’s sorry,
Vanilla essence, or the essence of love
Or something like love or
If love is a cake then why does she bake muffins
That she can run with?
If love is baking
Why is she a waitress,
Her partner a patron taking
More than she gave him.
He says he’s sorry, he cries, they kiss,
Bake for forty five minutes in his mouth.
His hands mould her, she is little,
Whisky on his breath,
She gets lost in his lips.

How to bake a cake:
Sugar, coke, butter, sorry, flour, I love you, his hands, his mouth, her silence.

God and I

God and I haven’t spoken in some time,
Because last time I did
He bid me reply.
I said to him: “God, my father, king of all things true,
My mind is dark with uncertainty
And there are questions I must ask you.

Have you seen that man
With his pride
And in his hand a child bride?
Do you not care
That with a stare
The girl was ensnared?

Hundreds of my queer sisters
Have their rights snatched away
And hundreds of my queer brothers
Are stoned for being gay.
You know this, my lord,
What do you have to say?

And what about I,
Oh lord of mine?
When I was under
The man who was my world
I spread my lips to pray
And God said not a word.

After everything I’ve done to myself
Can I really be forgiven?
Why is it the crimes of cruel men
Stay hidden?
Dormant?
Like the victims are unimportant?

Because I was first abused
When I was just eleven
And when I tried to kill myself
You sent me tears from heaven
But do you look down on me like a pillar of salt?

Am I just your servant, a pervert, who never lived with the sex that was in his assault.

Would you take back
Everything I’ve been through?
And if this is just a test
How could Job forgive you?

Because Adam, Kain and Abel
They’re all fine but Eve,
Eve lost her fucking mind
When the snake took her in Eden
Trauma struck her blind-
How many Eve’s do you know?
How many snakes did you let slip
Because you deemed the lives of men too important?

Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
If you knew what your sons did
You would not love them the same.
How many angels lose their wings
Until you feel ashamed?
Hell, lead us not into blindness
And deliver us from men.
Amen.

And then,
God heard these words, and the world,
And he turned.
God has heard my prayer,
And he said not a word.

Banquo Syndrome

If my lover worships light
Then I am sunshine.
Heed this warning
And keep the morning
On your side.

If I was a lover of men
He must have been a king, then.
Served him,
Praised him
And kissed his rings of red.

My lover had every coin in my bank
And every finger on my hand.
My lover was loveless
Like a war is doveless
And I followed his cruel commands.

If I were a mirror
Then there are none for my lover.
Smashed glass,
The time will pass
And he and his crimes will be tethered.

He will see my face in his lover’s;
Mine, and no one others.
In his reflection, my face
See my ghost everyday
And every time he will shudder.

I will haunt him ’til the day he dies,
And he will die for every tear I have cried.
I need not for any justice
For while this world has an “us”
I will haunt him until it is only I.

Like a Dog

The door swings open,
His master is illuminated
By the light of the outside
Appearing as a broadshouldered,
Six foot brute.

In the shadow of his shoulders
In the dark room, a dog is tied up.
His jaws bound, legs brittle,
Open wounds and despairing eyes.
His tail with his joy: cut.

He is untied,
He kisses his master’s feet
He pants, begging for water.
He receives none, is whipped for crying. Once,
He bit back,
But the hammer hit harder.

He worshipped his master,
Not out of love nor fear
But mercy. Mercy, mercy tasted
Sweeter than water to a dying dog.
Mercy, he would die for
And he did. Mercy in his last breath
After he could no longer take another blow.

As he laid in his final beating
He wondered if a dog
As insignificant and unloved as him
Would go to heaven,
If he would be remembered
Or his master punished.
He thought not- he thought wrong.

The mutt became a martyr
And a million mourned for him.
When he reached heaven,
God took him by the paw
And showed him a hand.
Not a mut: but a man.
Not a master, but a father.
A father, who after his love left them
Hated her creation.
A Sadist, who saw his lovers eyes
In his child and like a dog
Tied up his son and left him
In the dark empty room.

Here is the reality:
A son is what his father makes of him.
And though he only killed a dog
There is still no greater sin.

The Arsonist

And as the smoke swallowed the stars
The flame burnt through the dark;
The night alive
With the arsonist’s fire.

Over flowers and grass in her front garden she stumbled
As the blood orange and golden house behind her crumbled.
Her honey-dark skin left laced with ash
Grey rain intertwines with her hair and atop her eyelash.

She had to kill him: that father of hers,
For the abuse she endured for sixteen long years.
It never mattered, to her, that her mother was inside,
She watched each attack: she too deserved to die.

Her father, her lover
And her sister was another,
But she believed her fathers lies,
Thought the bastard all wise.

Daddy was everything to her:
Father, lover, king, abuser.
He’d buy her toys, lace and leather
Kissed her goodnight and a future together.

Each slap was a spark and each kiss, a flame.
He stepped on her neck and kissed her again.
Her mother, like a mistress, all she did was stand by
And from the other room she could hear her baby cry.

Yet the arsonist did not stir,
She did not say a word.
Her demons spoke for her: with each time her legs spread
Another voice whispered in her head.

Not a broken home; but a home from hell
With each little rape a secret she would never tell.
And as she walks from her house and each flame cracks
The night hides the eyes of the girl who just snapped.

Her sister, afraid, curled in the corner.
Her father, aflame, spinning like a dancer.
And her mother, a fall, a charred corpse,
These are the bodies her father’s sins brought.

Beautiful, Amazing Him

Thorn scars up his arms
Seem red like rose roots:
He came from these,
Blossomed into someone new:
Oh beautiful, amazing him!

He doesn’t think to cut the grass
For his body is a garden,
Eden never looked so pure
As when a bruised boy
Loves his wounds, his stretch marks,
Brown flowers, the belly he grows
When he eats and the spittle on his lips
When he laughs, oh, beautiful,
Amazing him.

If he could learn to hate himself,
He could also learn to love himself.
Even if he hates himself,
He must always learn to be himself
Since what would the world be
Without broken-beautiful boys?
He needs no love: he has his own
In this garden he has grown, oh beautiful, amazing
Him.

Stutter

I, I, I can’t,
I can’t, I can’t
Heave these words
From black memories
To ink on a slate
When I see his eyes through the ink
Staring from the page.

I wish I could but
My memories are
Pandora’s box
I must keep it shut
I must, I must
Even if I never know
I must. Though the box bangs
And shakes and leaks blood from the lid,
Keep that thing closed
I’d rather not know the pain it brings.

Burn, burn, these memories burn.
Though no marks on my skin
There are scars within
They bleed and ooze and burn.
The cuts tear when I think,
And now I have learnt
That it is better to be mindless
Than to burn, with a brain kissed by trauma.

The lights! The lights!
Shut out the fucking lights!
No more I I I I I stutter, I can take no more
As panic shakes my soul I am a marionette
And the past yanks and twists my strings:
Memories grabs my tongue in their nails.
All this time I, I, have been blinded,
I, by the lights
I, I left behind.