Tell That to Your Unsightly Build-Up of Tartar by Barney Ashton-Bullock

caustic, balletic bitchings emerge

from a calloused ballast of hoopla tongue

wrapped too long ‘round the roughness of words;

invectives, imperatives, interrogational,

bitter, bragging, brou-ha-ha,

kick-down, whiplash and ‘la-de-dah’

butter may not melt, but it can curdle to a stench

and, then, you deny that what we heard

was what you meant

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Barney Ashton-Bullock is widely published in cult poetry journals. His latest poetry pamphlet ‘Café Kaput!’ is published by Broken Sleep Books. He is the poet/librettist in the ‘Andy Bell is Torsten’ queer music-theatre-poetry collective and narrates his own verse on various Downes Braide Association albums. Twitter: @barney_poetry