by Colin Dardis 

Why I watch American Wrestling

It’s rarely worth staying up to 2am

to watch live American wrestling,

but I do it anyway.

For feck’s sake, I could easily

change channels with just a few

electrical impulses to my fingers,

and my eyes would be bathing in

cheap titillation from live phone-sex

gyrating fleshbots.

Minus the phone-sex

because it’s silenced out

and you need to pay

one-fifty a minute for the groans.

At least the boobs and ass are free.

As well as the cheers and roars

from the American crowds,

viewing muscled men in tight shorts

prance about.

Maybe that’s why I watch it instead

of softcore porn:

I enjoy a soundtrack.

Or maybe I just prefer

the hard stuff.

Flat

Tyre needing pumped:

no valve to find,

no mouth to blow,

no air to cushion

the weight one must travel with.

Push those pedals with bleeding feet;

every flat revolution

doesn’t get you far,

Rubber treads too close to the rim,

and now buckled spokes

rut and score

making travel

a weary

near impossible exercise

To A Supporter

No protest or brave defiance there:

just the drunken fall

of her piss on a cenotaph

followed by a sexual act.

You applauded this wildness,

and yes, we didn’t support the war,

but there is no glory here

in supporting idiocy;

and if you respect my right to disagree

with the words you type

do you mind if I come over

and piss of your keyboard?

Dualism

With a Cartesian knife 
I detach your mind from your body 
and only yearn for one; 
unable to tell which is the better half, 
tonight I am unsure. 

On previous days, 
I thought with my mind 
and wanted yours to rub against, 
expected the resulting friction 
to fire off creative sparks. 

Or I ran with my body 
and sought out your flesh; 
this experiment was as much 
an examination of my own skin 
as it was on yours. 

Right now, 
I feel there will never be a union, 
as my mind and body 
will not allow 
us to come together.

Best Viewed From Behind

You said you were an open girl, 
legs open to free your mind, 
from behind 
or whatever worked on any chosen night. 

But with your ass in the air, 
and your face to the pillow, 
your view of the world 
isn’t much to see.

Biog:

Born at the tail end of the seventies in Northern Ireland, Colin Dardis is a poet, artist, and sometimes musician. He edits Speech Therapy, an online zine focusing on poetry from Ireland and beyond. He is also the co-ordinator of Make Yourself Heard, an open mike poetry night. His first collection, ‘left of soul’ is available via lulu.com.

Colin’s work has been previously published in 34^th Parallel, Fire, Stimulus Respond, Fuselit, Decanto, Revival, Blazevox, Gutter Eloquence and elsewhere.

His poem ‘Perhaps’, won the EditRed.Com 2006 Writer’s Choice Award for Poetry.