Before the profit of the prophet,
He tried to fit into a prophecy,
Living like furniture wrapped in plastic,
Always waiting, never too honest.

As a kid, barefoot on the stone,
Toes split rocks he called his own.
Didn’t matter, he never kept score,
Tears skipped like pebbles, lost on the shore.

Teenage nights taught him to choke,
Lungs full of secrets, lungs full of smoke.
Coughs hidden deep in a pedestrian bush,
Dreams of riches, but so broke on a hush.

Exhaust from his mouth, he claimed the street,
Pretending that silence was something complete.
But silence was clothing, handed down rough,
Trauma sewn tightly, never enough.

Now he walks past mannequins, frozen in glass,
Faces like lessons too heavy to pass.
Breathing was something he learned to fake—
Lungs filled with pressure he couldn’t escape.

So he asks in the dark, was he living at all?
Or just holding the smoke longer than them all.

This stone from back then:

look, without my memory --


it is just a stone.

the expanse of hallway outside my hotel door
seems to go on forever
the space seems to embody an otherworldly feeling
between our world and some other
indescribable place
is it comforting or claustrophobic?
I used to visit our small town mall
when I was young, it was bustling with life
it had a movie theater
with endearingly tacky Electra-Dye carpets,
an arcade, and a Borders bookstore.
years passed, and the place became a husk.
movie theaters are on the decline,
and the bookstore went bankrupt.
malls are shutting down all over the world
due to the popularity of online shopping
and digital streaming.
movie theater architecture no longer looks like
an odyssey into space,
but a hotel lobby with neutral colors.
humanity left it all behind.
we gave these spaces life with our humanity.
the liminal spaces were alive with the
frenetic energy of living.
they were meant to be inhabited.
I visited our local mall.
there were only a few other people.
it felt like I wasn't supposed to see it that way— devoid of life, devoid of the meaning
humanity described it.
it became a relic of the past.
I wandered the hallways
and saw the movie posters they displayed.
the showings were from seasons before,
and they were peeling off the walls.
it felt like I was left behind too.
liminal zones are really the state in between
the past and the present,
nostalgia and the modern age.
the walls were just walls.
the carpets just carpets.
but my memories gave it meaning.
if birth is the beginning and death is the end
life is the liminal space.

The world under the paving slabs may seem a world away but on my way to church, I saw a half completed excavation and I imagined the unearthing of some past settlement, maybe the discovery of a long buried society holding centuries of secrets of living with more dependence on the earth and less addiction to man crafted pleasures which would die the day we lost power.

I blinked and found myself shovel in hand, ankle deep in dirt and feverishly sinking the curved blade into the yellow and black clay, desperate to find a remnant of simpler times when a living was within most men's grasp at the cost of blisters and back strain, when digging was manual labour and a honest days work was done with at the end of the day and the unfinished work was left for the morning and not taken anywhere near home, where there was something near a worklife balance and neighbours were family and family were neighbours for better or for worse and, more often than not, worse, where budgets were tightened and a new hole was punched into your belt, with your hand me downs held to be your right not your punishment and if you didn't finish your plate you must be ailing or maybe angling for a day off school, where you queued for warm milk or for the tuck shop at playtime if you had thruppence to share with your sister before you ran a game of bulldog or kiss chase depending on your anxiety level, quick before the bell and queue again to sit in your allocated place based on your end of year exam result which always resulted in relegation to the back row bad influencer and never next to the girl who's cheek you had just missed, but you see her face reflected in the TV that got wheeled in for BBC Schools while the old guy dared you to show any suggestion of individual thought and secretly hoped you gave him cause to wield his size 14 plimsoll.

So I turn the edge of the shovel and refill the hole, I re intur what was good and buried, I intern the past where it belongs, returning to ground level where my spirit bubble bobbles for a moment while I find my balance knowing this is where I am what I've become - with my past giving me foundation not non-negotiable identification, and a reason to build not to burrow.

And so I turn round the corner into tomorrow to find what's next, acknowledging my debts and grateful for all that made me me - no regrets.

I felt your skin
strip away from me-
you said you’d be right back-
as you slipped into foreign bodies,
lips soft with easy dinners,
who forgot the lightbulb burning out,
the lid left rattling on the counter,
a suit of pots dented, stacked,
steam lifting from a rust-ringed drain.

That studio in the Texas Riviera
was never meant to last-
brown carpet, AC rattling,
bass beating through drywall,
neon from the Whataburger sign
bleeding through blinds.
We were two beautiful accidents
in a month-to-month, always paid late,
your sweat a spell pressed into my skin,
ankles grinding on parking lot gravel,
the road outside a forgotten promise.

And when you smiled I held you
like a chipped glass,
rim still sharp enough to cut.
The ember died against porcelain,
the glitter was swept with the crumbs.
Your armor slumped in the pantry corner,
rusted tins, lids unfastened.
You walked away, naked and ordinary,
the light left buzzing in the kitchen-
outside, asphalt slicked with oil-sheen,
my body, also, dissolved
into the shimmer of the road.

It just happens, I

forget something important --


that I do know well.

I'm roaring towards the sun,
in an aluminum bubble.

My spirit, lacks wings, to fly
but there's a spoiler,
fitted, to the silvery minivan's frame.

So, we drive down the day...
coldly harmonious,
as it glitters back,
in mild flashes.

Memory, is stagnant;
flecks of it shine, back, at me--
capsules, of captured thought,
suspended movement...

the world, itself, becomes gelatinous.

The park, where I almost--
the long-absent faces,
of growing boys, and girls,
concealing toothy monsters.
Unsung heroes, and wandering bards...

Freezing sidewalks,
slanting homes...

places I knew, so well;

they stand, still,
and appear to register
no change, and no difference.

Christ, with his pale, pinned arms,
and pain-stricken face,
gazes down, on all these sins

a placid totem,
on his marbled cross...

an overgrown snowdrop,
crying mildly,

into polluted grasses, below.

A sweet song, emits
from surrounding speakers
and it becomes tangled,
in its own chords.

It breaks, in my throat,
like tinted glass...

and suddenly,
my eyes, are full,
of flooding,
unshed tears.

Their sorrow, needles
at sore, spent cheeks.

The rain, which pinks, soft clay

is hard, and salted,
and as it beats down, onto my skin,

I can feel the sunlight working
its gentle,
tumble-dry magic,

and finessing them clean, again.

I turn my face, away
to stare out, silent,
through the unbroken window.

I'm sobbing, harder, now,
and I have no idea,
how I started...

or why,
it won't stop...

but still, the rain,
rolls down shaky gutters;
unrepentant,
and unrepressed.

The wild weeds, of the garden,
are well-fed, indeed

yet overwatered,
beneath leaky clouds,

and graying seams.

Up here on the hill

where grandma came so often --


times flow together.