For each judges according to their truth;
And, accordingly, every truth affords a judgement.

And if you are in any doubt as to your ability,
To effect a change upon this world,
Look no further than a pool of rock water,
Disturbed by a single drop of rain.

Now imagine a torrent.

'My life is over, it’s completely over!'
My granddaughter sobs inconsolably into my best linen handkerchief.
‘I’ve made s-o-oo many mistakes. Why can’t things be the way they used to be?’
She clutches at my gnarled liver-spotted hand, with its swollen joints, and old gold.
‘You do understand, don't you, Nana?'

They wear their bodies inside-out, some are ashes but few are dust. Vacant orbits, oblivious to the incoming tide and the percussive artillery from the heavily fortified positions on Rue de la Mort, view the world with equanimity. Their bloodied stillness at odds with the surrounding tumult.

It’s at times like these - pinned down behind a burnt-out vehicle, the sand skipping around me with the phut-phut-phut of spent rounds - that I envy them their final freedom. Not that all deaths are as elegant and instantaneous as a well aimed bullet to the head.

It is a fleeting thought, hardly even that, a whispering somewhere in the background of my consciousness, like listening to a low-tuned wireless. And with victory as with defeat - with the ear-ringing silence - the whisperings become louder and more persistent.

Right, left; up, down; stop, wait; walk, run; sink, swim; live, die. Some pray to survive, other’s yearn for the sweetspot, the one shot ****. Regardless, there is no doubt that we who remain will fight on for weeks, for years, for decades and continue to live the uncertainty of the living - sweating bullets until kingdom ****** come.

Handcuffed politely to the bedpost of his inspiration,
he is optimistic that this time the limits
of self-imposed constraint will be breached, if not brutalised entirely.
~
‘Don Quixote’ - a whimper of metaphor;
‘DoN QuiXoTE’ - a rush of chiming vowels;
’DON QUIXOTE’ - a panic of ecstatic prosody.
~
Ignoring his aching wrists
and with imagination unfettered,
he reaches for paper and pen, and begins.

Love travels sideways,
Down dark alleys,
Along winding country lanes;

Arrives late,
Hesitates too long,
Leaves early;

A journey to take,
A destination unmapped,
An invitation to linger when we least expect it.

[Enter Marco, a young Milanese courtier.]
It is he, is it not, whose honeyed barbs drip with sweet condescension, and whose kisses taint fair Bianca’s lips with similar speech? Behold, how he frames her vision to reflect his own and directs her preferences accordingly.

Fie, I have been April’s fool in believing Antonio my ally. His encouragement was as sweetmeats to a greedy child; but I have chipped a tooth on that candy-coated morsel and found its centre to be flavoured with deceit.

My cousin Bianca, whose name speaks directly to her nature, whose light once made shadows dance for joy; how extinguished she appears now. For as Antonio sparkles and splutters at her side, her brilliance flickers and fades.

Lo, how he has seeded his untruths within her honest heart. His lies smuggled like contraband, his blandishments the articles of his trade. God’s wounds! Such a purveyor of frippery and falsehood I have never met the equal of.

It is high time to confront this sneak thief in his lurking-hole and to uncloak his creeping connivance. I shall bottle my rival’s words and choose carefully the occasion for their uncorking; then pour for the crowd a rich liquor of ripe requital.

“I would rather be a pessimist who wears optimistic underwear - French knickers, please, in rose-pink satin;
Than a greyscale optimist wearing overboiled cotton."

“Men have never failed to disappointment me, which is why I always wear petticoats of the softest vintage silk. Just to remind me of what hope feels like against the skin.”

Let October’s fool fall
With the autumn dusk;
A cornfield tatterdemalion
With terrible teeth
And broomstick hands.
High on the hill,
Encircled by dancing children
And harvest lovers,
Jack’s pumpkin blazes
As yellow as prairie gold
Under the ghostly lantern moon.

For as the curtain rises,
So too the curtain falls,
No accolades, no entourage,
No 'Brava!', no applause.

An unrehearsed performance,
By a monodramatist,
A solo show, a pantomime,
An improvised burlesque.

Critics stand in groups debating,
The value of my work,
They gossip in the aisles,
The playhouse now a kirk.

My eulogy their invention,
My obituary the prize,
The best review I've ever had,
A mix of humour and soft lies.

I have played the loving daughter,
The honest aunt *****,
The independent sister,
The true and loyal friend.

The sympathetic neighbour,
I have played the errant niece,
The mentor, guide, and confidant,
The ***** and the tease.

In truth, I am a diva,
Living mostly in her head,
But this remains unmentioned,
In a tribute to the dead.

Once rose bouquets beribboned,
From the greatest and the good,
Now a solitary arrangement,
On a coffin made of wood.

For as the curtain rises,
So too the curtain falls,
No accolades, no entourage,
No garlands, no applause.

But wait, I see my error,
As indeed these things exist,
But not for me to comment on,
Nor as I would have wished.

For my aspect is fair frozen,
I cannot turn the page,
My performance has now ended,
And I have left the stage.

Sleep hides behind her gossamer veil,
Like a ****** bride on her wedding day;
The centre of attention, unfashionably late,
And blushing with a promise as yet undelivered.

'Actually, my friend in Taranaki makes the stars. I combine them with my own elements and string them into garlands,' wrote Makery. There was an element of apology about her words. As if she’d been rumbled. As if someone had confirmed the voice of self-doubt that whispered in her ear, 'Who do you think you are, calling yourself an artisan?'

Stringing things together is applied artistry - whether it be words, Scandi-style stars, or fairytale mushrooms threaded on candy coloured twine. We are all hunter-gatherers who construct our creations from discovered elements. Some transmute received knowledge into constructed knowledge. Others beachcomb lexica for found syncretic treasures. All aspire to contribute to the infinite compendium of human self-expression, to create something which says, 'This is who I am.' With the silent addendum, 'I hope you like it.'

Beyond the shanty town of Midtendrift, where the moneylenders ply their trade among the aimless and avaristic, lie the ice prairies of Ensomfelt. The region is a barren wasteland whose boundaries are flanked to the west by the bottomless crevasse of Issorg and to the east by Lake Hjertestorm.

Those who come to wander this no-man’s-land may find that they disappear from the earth for a time - from themselves, and from the memory of others. Relying only on intuition to guide them, they pass this way unseen, their weary feet making shallow graves in the freshly fallen snow.

The rocky outcrop at Engeldrøm marks the gateway to the in-countries. Nestled beneath the foothills of Mount Håp, this is the place to which souls lost to the world of ego and ambition return to take up their torch and remember.

During the long northern winter, the sky above Håp is an expanse of indigo ocean punctuated with an infinity of lamplights. Among these lanterns which float free of the earth, the North Star shines the brightest. It is here that you will find your journey’s end and a treasure trove of truth, forged in fire and sealed in ice.

The light is dim, but I'm accustomed to working in the dark. Besides, it's safer this way. My eyes are not what they used to be, but it has become second nature to me - the pull of the needle, the tension in the thread.  

I stitched my first collar when I was six years' old, sitting on my grandmother's knee in the parlour of the old house at Innsbruck. ‘Isaac,’ she used to say, ‘you have your father's gift. Use it well.’

Ah, Papa, if you could see me now. Such expectations you had for my talent, but I assure you that the occasion for invisible seams and fine beadwork is over. Nowadays I work with a different fabric. A cloth perforated with ****** fire and riddled with shrapnel. The wounds - forgive me - resemble red Venetian silk embedded with black pearls; the bone like the baleen strictures of a dowager's corset. And the red dye runs. God help me, how it runs.

As I work, Papa, I imagine that you are standing in the shadows, your frayed sewing tape draped around your neck. I am praised for my quick hands and my ability to embroider life into abbreviated limbs. And I pray that you are not too disappointed in what I have become.

Talking wounds leaves me forever at the mercy of my pain.

‘But I am precious.’ says Pain.
‘Only I truly understand you.’
‘What would you do without me?’

Know myself for who I am and not for the label you would have me wear.

We burrow where they lie, our fallen brothers. Old sweats and fledgling crow bags, both. In death as in life, they have our back…and so we plough on into the abyss by the light of a caged phosphorus flare, hot metal spraying the midnight hour like some vengeful fay’s buckshot.

A human scaffold supports us for the distance of four miles. That’s Piccadilly to Hampstead; Circus to Heath. The length of a lifetime…of  hundreds of lifetimes. In the winter when the rains come and the trenches run like a quartermaster’s latrine, the soil sloughs away to reveal the ossuary within. It is then that I, in my now customary delirium, imagine that I can reach out to shake their hand again.

dear bill,

so sweet of you
to leave behind
a paper jot
for me to find

for ev’ry breakfast
lunch and tea
gone missing since
you married me;

- however -

such wilfulness
I do condemn
each crust and crumb,
each stone and stem,

each potluck plum
purloined at night
to satisfy
your appetite;

this doctor’s wife
has had her fill
of poetry
and bitter pills,

and crumpled drafts
in juicy scrawl
appended to
the icebox door;

your words do not
a meal make
how many more
must I forsake

- meals, that is -

before your page
is fit for press
and I can sup
on more…not less

love, floss

ps dinner’s in the oven, probably