fireworks in the street (hamburg, 19 months apart)

watching cargo ships dock on the river elbe. the smell of the city.  staying in stefan’s apartment on zeiseweg. his homemade rye bread with malt spread. his husband ralf’s attempt at humour. sitting reading my book in jungfernsteig. drinking the german beers. nothing has changed much in hamburg since I was last here

but then, fireworks throw...

Read and leave comments (0)

i imagined your kiss five hundred and seventy-six miles from home

the curve of his cheek

the shape of his smile

left side of his forehead,

glittered.

i noticed him earlier that day walking alone down Juliusstraße

later, my blues caught his dark coal

our eyes met near midnight,

in the queue for the squat-cum-club off Schulterblatt

‘Hallo. Ich heiße Lee'

‘D...

Read and leave comments (0)

Faint Hum

In the upstairs room of The Railway Tavern, Ben chairs a discussion around a fictitious tale. With the author of Human, Animal present, Seth Insua deep dives me into intergenerational trauma and queer self-discovery. During the Q&A, a question is posed, “What memories do you not want to forget?’. In earshot of the Two Brewers just down Clapham High Street, I can hear the faint hu...

Read and leave comments (0)

This afternoon, as I listened to the raindrops leaving their mark, demanding to be taken seriously, I thought of you and your disgust at me buying us cigarillos as I didn’t know which way to take you or whether ‘us’ was a thing at all. I accosted your smile to such incredulous degree that it all seems now like it didn’t happen. And whilst the conversation this afternoon without you here stimulated...

Read and leave comments (0)

For years, the boy walked past the washwoman who lived by the village church and washed her rags in the street for all to see

Catching his glance, one day she said, ‘Dear boy, in time you will fall in love with the sound of a merman’s lullaby. The night star above the ancient oak will guide you to him’ 

Years past. Humming a merman’s lullaby, the boy, now nearing middle age, walked past...

Read and leave comments (0)

what if I told you that calmness is a part of the skin?

what if I told you that safety is embodied in a goodbye touch? 

what if I told you that kindness is wrapped in a part of the body? 

what if I told you that compassion is found in the hand? 

that beautiful almost cheek-like soft raised part 

of your skin between your thumb and your finger 

what if I showed you that I sti...

Read and leave comments (0)

as we lay stretched across your living room couch at 4am

in your oh so posh pad in putney,

i discovered that the musicals are where you find yourself,

where pierre angleterre comes alive

legs knotted into each others 

eyes murmuring to look at screen

blurry from too much of the alcohol 

they could hear you singing all way down street,

and yes, you have a powerfu...

Read and leave comments (0)

fracture

embracing london’s musicality

early saturday morning

the tube’s mighty roar

over ambient drone

on my pods,

of the rocky mountains

i recorded when

i lived in canada,

the sound of

the once daily

amtrak train pulling

up in banff

on its long

way to vancouver,

a sound i

will never forget

and that now

creates a fffffffrrr...

Read and leave comments (0)

the river as history

the river as palimpsest

the river as architect

the river as memory

          as ‘you cannot

the river as liminal

the river as lavender

the river as city

the river as illness

          as ’you cannot step into

bursting its banks

          prising us open

                   we are rivers

                      re-directing our...

Read and leave comments (0)

One day,
I will
buy you 
a bouquet 
of roses

Place a 
message inside 
Prick my
finger with 
a thorn
And write 
in blood:  

‘These roses, 
like you, 
stay beautiful
even after 
their last 
petals fall’.

Read and leave comments (0)

Climb the staircase of the outside fire escape
The only way to reach Margaret’s salon she ran out of her top floor flat kitchen 
Widows entertained with tea and gossip as cats clambered over their chairs 
taking residence on their laps 
Enjoying the company whilst having their fortnightly blue rinse 
 
Mum went to Margaret 
Her mum went to Margaret
Her mum went to Margaret 
 
Hair as tra...

Read and leave comments (0)

His beautiful body sculpted around sheets 

next to mine in cotton thread  

As sunlight at dawn pierced

the contours of his frame

His bedroom slowly coming into being

through the rising of the sun

A single clothes hanger sits on the doorknob of his wardrobe

I notice three picture frames, their imagery gradually coming into light 

Out of frame

Outside the box,

Read and leave comments (0)

bittersweet

I'm not bitter, I'm sweet

You were supposed to give it to me before I messed everything up

So I bought my own copy from that bookshop in Balham

Sat in the Sylvan Post in Forest Hill with rum and coke

 and started at the beginning

I imagined it was you reading it to me

I replaced my inner voice with yours

I wonder if we cried and laughed at the ...

Read and leave comments (0)

The Palace made of Crystal

That time we met there,

15 years ago,

after a few dates,

I saw you in a completely different light,

beautiful smile, smoking

Head turned, hair blowing in the wind,

I thought, ‘I think there is something here’

The Palace made of Memories

I liked the name of that station,

Crystal Palace, because the word ‘palace’

almost rhymes ...

Read and leave comments (0)

He knows not, his own affordances

He only knows, his own wildfire

And it won’t be tamed

A beautiful angel was about to be shot

in the stomach

He scripted the words in his mind

Again and again, over and over

In the middle of the night, for the last 6 months

endless edits of what he knew he had say

but how would those words feel embodied?

Out of mouth, into a...

Read and leave comments (0)

Gabriella

And even when she wasn’t there

as the life and soul who everyone loved,

She was, magpie-like

Always looking down on us

Gabriella, ‘strength’ in Hebrew

An Italian with broken English

And a broken sense of direction

She was, not pigeon-like, no formel

But she was as loyal as any she-wolf

Always looking out for us

I met her in Hackney, late Ni...

Read and leave comments (0)

Drawing is

I have always drawn for as long as I can remember

Drawing is my first artistic passion,

as it not just because I enjoy image making

but as a calming meditative process

Like Da Vinci who drew the body to help him understand,

I too learn using pencils in my hand

To slow reveal

Surface tension, fleshy, layers seep underneath

and reveal themse...

Read and leave comments (0)

One day, one day
We will sit on that bench 
under the lights 
Overlooking the river 
which you sweetly 
think is the sea

One day, one day
You will drown 
I will drown 
One day, one day 
I will drown you 
You will drown me
In happiness 
In smiling nuts
In pistachios 

That truck that’s travelled
all the way from Mexico 
on its way to the stores 
loaded with pistachios 
will cr...

Read and leave comments (0)

In Greek mythology, Leda and the Swan

is a story in which the god Zeus,

in the guise of a swan,

seduces Leda, a Spartan queen 

As a swan, Zeus falls into her arms

for protection from a pursuing eagle

Now, you may not believe me but,

taxidermy, dating and the art of seduction

go hand in hand with  the joy and torture of desire

I remember a first date, H...

Read and leave comments (1)

Out of frame

Outside the box

the feathers continue to 

fall

on cigarette ash

where the marks

Of love’s desire came and burnt

The softness and subtlety at which they

fall

silently are disturbed by the noise

Of the men simultaneously cumming

And they continue to

fall

onto the back

Of the male muscular torso frame

Read and leave comments (0)

We are caught,

caught in a stream of floating heads

Provocative faces preaching divisive politics

Spewing universalist values as well as those who meme these voices

Through a satiric vernacular

We live in a spectacularly tense age,

the complexities of speaking

bound up with far wider socio-cultural politics,

the question as to how to represent a voice,

to articulate a hu...

Read and leave comments (0)

All he wants to do is wrap his arms around him

But he must curtail the sanguine of his love 

There can be beauty

There can be sanguine

in enchevêtrement,

in complication and entanglement,

in mismatch and incongruity

Two opposing feelings

do not have to fit together,

It doesn't have to be a conflict

We created rupture

We prised open something

...

Read and leave comments (0)

Breaking from a

thirty-year habit

of only buying

medium thin green,

today, I bought

brown flavoured Rizla

Even though I

never use filters,

prefer it raw,

they don’t taste

quite as liquorice-y

on my own

than smoking liquorice

roll-ups with you

Neither that sweet

reverb after inhale

Nor comfort kiss

of eating liquorice

shoelac...

Read and leave comments (1)

I’ve done the heart

I’ve done the fist

What will I speak through next,

this poet-cum-ventriloquist?

It just sort of crept up on me

My bus ride to the station

Me buying of a flat white

Me fancying a man on the platform

All the people going about their business

It all seemed very normal

I had no reason to fight it

because I didn’t know that it was ther...

Read and leave comments (0)

My heart, she is a poetress
Goes back and forth and then some more
Thought she’d found beauty in his caress 
but beauty is far from what he saw 
 
Now let’s be frank here poetress
He’s blinded you, too blind to see 
He’s locked you in his mind fortress
That doesn’t sound like love to me 

But manipulation, more or less
By he you think can do no wrong 
He’s a slimy toad,a frog at best, 
...

Read and leave comments (0)

Centipede

Have you ever engaged in radical deep listening?

Do you listen to what’s crawling around your feet

but is making the loudest sound?

There is no sound as loud as silence

But the centipede is not silent

Listen carefully and he will deafen your drums

Why do we only hear

the loudest speaker with his mic?

The centipede is the one creating

the loudest sonic ...

Read and leave comments (0)

Tremors that he gives me confirm that 
the heart is a muscle
as mythical, as magical, as mysterious  
as a stitcher, tailor, clairvoyant, wordsmith
made manifest as a minotaur 
who cares for his brothers
A sage who is fuelled by compassion
Not seduced by illusions of fairweather friends

Even though we often 
stay up late swapping each others poems,
talking about a shared love of physic...

Read and leave comments (0)

Don’t lock yourself!

Unblock yourself!

Unlock yourself!

Shock yourself!

Speak, be outspoken!

A pint in my local, Christmas Day 1999

First time I looked over at Danny and thought ‘Damn, he is fine’

Playing pool with the lads, Danny-boy on my mind

Bent over the table, that peachy behind

His wife on the phone saying turkey is served

I quick brushed up against h...

Read and leave comments (0)

Even though we often stay up late swapping each others poems

and talking about a shared love of Geoffrey Chaucer,

 I’m still too embarrassed to ask him how to pronounce his name

Last night he gave me a lighter and told me I could keep it

Standard looking with no distinguishing features

unlike the way he carries himself in his lime green coat

which seems to consume his whole b...

Read and leave comments (0)

Image: Mum’s, Anne Campbell’s (nee Styles)  sewing kit circa 1959

The heart is a muscle

Caller:  Hello, is that Lee?

Me: Yes, speaking

Caller: Hello, I’m Paul calling from The Missing Bodies List

I am pleased to say that we think we may have found your heart

It was found outside shivering in the cold on the side of the road

by a late-night drinker. Broken ...

Read and leave comments (1)

Just going about your day 
Making a cup of tea 
You're at Tesco’s,
you're buying lettuce, 
‘Oh yeah’
A ball can drop very rapidly 

Certain times of the year
you feel more connected,
at the same time, 
sometimes,
just out of nowhere
 
The last couple of years  
he decided to go to work
Focus
To feel like his life 
hasn't been ripped apart
That memory of his life 
falling apart a...

Read and leave comments (1)

Just allowing it to be,

stop trying to intellectualise it

stop trying to find an answer, 

Or try to make rational sense of it

Futile.

It must make sense, 

everything and nothing makes sense

I hold myself to this standard

I regard myself a logical human being,

which I know is a contradiction

in and of itself

Humans are not logical

We are emotional

So why am I ...

Read and leave comments (0)

She just couldn't, 

She couldn't literally continue

Her whole life breaking down,

she’s had to build her whole life back up

And it's happened in such a painful,

but in such an incredible way 

that she could never have imagined, 

He has given her 

this incredible gift of her new life

But she wishes that he was with her 

He got the call, it happened

He was ...

Read and leave comments (0)

Humour is in my blood

Dr Campbell has a thesis,

a catalogue of comedic wordplay weapons to engage, disarm, highlight, defend, parry, attack and destroy

Heckler and poetress in camp and absurdity

Challenger, transgressor, subversive, rebel

Whether I’m Dr Campbell,

or Mademoiselle Camp-Belle,

humour is my disruptive and cathartic act

‘Even when you’re not using ...

Read and leave comments (0)

POW! WOW! WHAT’S THIS?!

Susan Broadhurst, author of Liminal Acts

writes that my work challenges what performance is

and at the same time interrogating liminality

meaning the ‘in-between’

For me, the window is a liminal threshold

that is neither private nor entirely public

When I was around 15 or 16,

I slept with a glass jar on a table by my bedside

Inside...

Read and leave comments (0)

She’s been getting away with it, repeatedly

She’s been walking in the rain just to get wet on purpose, repeatedly

She’s been forcing herself not to forget just to feel worse, repeatedly

She hates that mirror, it makes her feel so worthless, repeatedly

She’s an original sinner but when she’s with him, she couldn't care less, repeatedly

She thought she gave up falling in love a l...

Read and leave comments (0)

See, I thought I’d found my Tiana

A nice little smoochy snog,

behind that rock shaped like a toad

your kiss turned me into a frog

Not way it’s meant to be I thought,

was like that fable in reverse

Your kiss made this already prince

into a toad, your kiss was curse

And though your kiss was rather nice

and pleased as hell we did it did it

Opened my mouth to my...

Read and leave comments (0)

Surprised you’re not a footballer

You played a blinder tonight

Surprised you’re not a tailor

You stitched me up good and proper

Surprised you’re not a barber

You had me by the short and curlies

Surprise, surprise, mate,

you ain’t worth the agg.

Read and leave comments (0)

Collaboration is about being in the world

unless you want to be alone in the woods somewhere

And it is not about perfect unity,

collaboration is, as Tim Etchells suggests

about differences, collisions, incompatibilities

Are you ready to feel the embodiment of these terms?

Or are you feeling them already?

Friendly, convivial and equal collaboration,

is that possible...

Read and leave comments (0)

CREEPER

It just sort of crept up on me

The bus ride to the station

the buying of a flat white

the fancying of a man on the platform

the people going about their business

It all seemed very normal

I had no reason to fight it

because I didn’t know that it was there

Until I started having this feeling

and so, I butchered its body

Into pieces but as a whole...

Read and leave comments (1)

Thought is made manifest in the mark as a trace

but let me tell you about the trouble with traces

I rummage through life’s leftover marks

Traces from a previous exhibition

Text left on a wall,

plinths not yet been removed,

drawings now dumped in a corner as rubbish

I am for a poetry of embodied debris,

left in the aftermath

Speaking bodies caught

between memo...

Read and leave comments (1)

Image: Lee Campbell, ‘PITCH FACE’, pins and mixed media on canvas (2005) 

When I was young, JD and coke

Tried acting macho, what a joke

My friends knew that was mirrors smoke

‘Be yourself Lee, don’t cut him out!’

Whilst acting macho, breath it stink

Jack Daniels was my favourite drink

I gave right in to his wink wink

Lost all control, was on the brink

Control of...

Read and leave comments (0)