How strangely she moved
between shadow and light
in the thin hollow air
wingless and eyeless
on the edge, the very edge,
of death.

I watched her hang
cruelly in the sky
wondering then and now
why she was smiling.

As the seconds passed
each more thunderous than
the last, she faded,
skin disappearing from bone
muscle separating from tendon
her genitalia
a darkening hole.

In the end, only her sigh
remained to remind me
of her short, uncomfortable life
completed in the coldness
of incomplete night.

1.
The darkness fled before me
While I stayed in the light
The black covering both land and sea
Destroying sight.
Basking in the heat, burning in the sun
We toasted the darkness, once it had gone.

God had said, wringing out his curls, ‘let there be light’,
Clearly, the dark came first.
But god floundered at night
And darkness he thunderingly accursed.
It was sent temporarily away
While god fashioned ‘Day’.

Yet, the dark was firstborn
The preferred planned child
And visually undernourished and presciently worn
Was the expected, the ideal, not the reviled;
Day was only a change of mind
God, the twister, making us see when we are blind.



2.
It was of an infinite hue, purple not black
Deepening towards the centre, consuming everything
A materialisation of Lacan’s Lack
Without substance, pleasure or pain.
It delved in and out in senseless monotony
Heightening sensation here, there performing a lobotomy.

At times, it reflected me and then it reflected you
Assembling features, and reassembling,
But never with every ****** nuance true
It shuffled several, naturally dissembling,
Unable to be fixed. It pretended to be human,
But like you and me, it shuffled like a golem.

Flying away it came back with equal velocity
Opening its imagined maw
Emitting as it approached tongues of electricity
Through time it tore.
Past and future congealed into a putty-like mass
Dying with the light, it disappeared up my ***

Loping down at Winter
the raven
ravishes the light,
broad black beating wings spread
feeding on
tiny hidden corpses-its beak
hades' daggers pummelling the frost.

Afraid of the rifle fire, he had

Crouched all day in the dirt,

A dull fellow at the best of times.

Ricocheting bullets bolted to the air

Surfing the wind, screaming

Abuse like ill-disciplined relatives

Arriving for an impromptu visit.

One shattered his head-there it was,

There were its remnants-

Greasy insubstantial grey matter that

Contained his soul.  

An end to drinks in the pub

The love of his wife

The smiles of his children

Holidays in Benidorm with the In-Laws

Paella by the swimming pool.

One bullet, not even new, put an end to a contented life.

His life, he’d been frequently told,

Was a stepping stone to

Something better. His growing religious convictions

Taught him about the different levels

Of god.

The innocent child, sacrificial man, distant father,

Steadfast sister and mother.

It taught him not to lust after his pretty neighbours,

Man or woman, nor to daydream

Of unlikely trysts with all the inherent dangers

Involved but to expend his energies

In religious ecstasy instead

Agonising inwardly over the beatitude

And the internal landscape of the soul.

By the time he was forty, he reckoned

He’d got a raw deal. No money, no career,

No friends, just a lot of ****** prayers.


They put her coffin gently in

And he cried, watching it disappear

Unable to think of heaven.

He was not consoled now

By thoughts of

Infinite life.

The slow sounding of a repetitious tune

Amongst cloudy vistas of

Over egged benevolence.


He’d missed the boat, through

Worshipping too much. A rotund

Middle-aged man

With a sagging mind, brown teeth

And old fashioned clothes.

All he had now were his church

And his mother’s dying friends.


He threw dust over his mother’s grave

And walked softly away.

Recollections by the window

darkness at the door,

a spent cigarette,

a dried up memory bank-

a laptop lying purposefully in the grass.



in between the moment is the event



The wood is riven by foxes

whimpering with cloven paws

the newly accommodated ******

rakes up a new home

the water vole scurries into the infested water



in between the moment is the event


reproduced in the computer

action and moment have ceased,

action and intent no longer connected

time and thought perpetually adjusted



hollow rain signifies emptiness

a blank screen eternity.

A cold wind blew
when the light went.
An accumulation of warmth
came from copse and hill,
cheap spawned and self created,
as the night renewed.
He walked home, careless of his stumbling steps,
and softly threw his bags to the
floor, demons on the hearth-rug,
coiling snakes and insects everywhere.

It was all behind him now.
A sullen fist of half-remembered regret,
the weather-laden wood carrying his dreams
in each silver flaked leaf.

A half-remembered face, an
age destroyed beauty.
It was time to go now!
Time to go!


The frost enthralled clouds interlocked
when time slowed,
leaving half dead leaves languishing or intermittently
crashing to the ground.
Few left or returned,
combating time.


A half-remembered life
spun from seconds.
Sad voices in half-remembered intervals.