Charlie Baylis is from Nottingham, England. He is the Poetry Editor of Review 31 and Assistant Editor of Broken Sleep Books. He has published two pamphlets Elizabeth (Agave Press) and hilda doolittle´s carl jung t-shirt (Erbacce). His poetry has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and once for the Forward Prize. He spends his spare time completely adrift of reality.
Charlie's poetic statement: "God bless Laurence Berridge!"
vertigo
can you help me cut the crap
can you help me clear the cache
i want to snap off some parts of my memory
(help me) undress the brackets
vertigo like masturbating on a luxury sofa
vertigo like a long finger placed slowly on a lipstick lip
or flicking the toes off phonological discourse
undoing bad bad neural works while i wax
brazilian german thrust/ split saxons fucked up on xanax rome
the western hemisphere has regressed since the fall of carthage
chelsey comes close to coming on her white glove, it slaps
my ass/ her ass/ interstellar parallax
i hate to bring up the cactus
but it needs watering
welcome to new york
find the one you want and fuck
the lights out the moon glows silver in acid rain
sex starts to drip when you hit thirty
thousand slip on my face burn my money
dip flip whip taylor swift and ryan adams
snogging slick lips to the same sick n y beat
blue genes spiralling jfk inside my lungs
the more you tell me the less i listen
cheers for the vandalized statue
the empty bag of ‘potato chips’
i came into manhatten on the m
a star has exploded over jamaica
shattering into a million little cracks of light
i have forty in my pocket
actually i call them ‘crisps’
you could care less = i could care more
if only i had the guts to question
the words in my mouth
as your mouth moves
meeting my mouth’s moves
all the sounds we hear are shimmering:
welcome to new york
delphine bathes in the moonlight
delphine hits off on the first note, off
on the black and white cover of vogue, off
with her jumper, her bra, her black and white knickers, off
we fuck on the bonnet of her black and white car
the car her daddy stole, off
with the poppy head delphine yells
beethoven plays at the wrong rpm
almost a nightmare
i leave my legs above her legs
in the rearview
if delphine enters a black lake
i do not have to tell you the moon is white
nor if i have painted the windows of my mind
should you ask the colour - it is immaterial
delphine bathes in the moonlight
i slice peaches sticky peach juice on my hands
making a mess of my magic
tricks. i do not have any magic tricks
in the dark we gaze into the solar system
she undoes every button on my blouse
to be closer to me
so she can see what is inside me
by which i mean
starlight.
lose your illusion
after hlb
h told me happiness was a monochrome kite
blowing in the cartoon breeze between tennis racket strings
an illusion we lose printed on the back of a postcard
inaccurately stamped, addressed to the wrong x
she drew me a comic crocodile with a crocus in her mouth
she advised me to take pride in what i do, in what i do
i asked her why, why i, a living lego axle ego blow, why should i?
i only bought her book because my x stalked her facebook
befriending strangers ‘for my benefit’ - i didn’t even have facebook
i’d give up on my x but the world kept her interesting
her poems loaded with candyfloss fluffing up my rubbish bin
odd moments of clarity like lana del rey fucked on speed
tearing down sunset boulevard in the prose-poem dawn
where the window blinds are lit up by a gorgeous light
the boats in the harbour tinkle in the words she wrote
low clouds drizzling yellows on arthur rimbaud rainbows
back off bitch, don’t you cry, you ain’t the first
her fame waved in my face like an eternal flame
on the point of being put out, forever
charlie, isn’t forever
we kissed farewell in the petals of november rain
i didn’t care that nobody in new york knew my name
I didn’t care for her arts journal
i just liked the blue of her eyes
i told h it can be hard to hold on to illusions
if words are scarce
if there is nothing sacred left to hold
she smiled
she never said goodbye
pink ink
wave goodbye to the future
you bore me to shreds, you self-regarding
piece of shit
i’d rather listen to a whale masturbate
than hear you holding forth about a book
you haven’t read
hey it’s 2018 (who knew!)
wipe your arse with lined paper, 72 times,
ya hey! second collection
