Napowrimo 2020 Day 8 - Stagecraft
08 Apr 2020 Category: poetry
What is going on? I ask the
walls every sixteen minutes.
The plasterboard doesn’t reply
but without checking headlines
I know clouds are being pulled
across the sky on invisible
ropes. Right on cue, rain is
directed through pipes to fall.
Powered by vast hidden engines,
the waves are continuing their
metronome beat upon the sand.
Blooms are raised from trapdoors
and some complex set of gears,
ball bearings and levers is causing
our planet to spin forward and new
universes to be created every second.
...
Napowrimo 2020 day 7- No Trespassers Allowed
07 Apr 2020 Category: poetry
As one, blades of grass sharpen,
becoming fields of swaying razors.
Dock leaves turn away in shame,
permitting nettle gangs to rule.
Branches weave themselves together,
contorting the pathway into knots.
Even the stream, usually so gentle,
screams vile curses as it cascades.
What are you doing here, the forest
asks, after everything you’ve done?
Prompt was “Blades of grass” From Lemondaisypoetry on Instagram and I immediately went for a bad pun, then built the rest from there
Napowrimo 2020 day 6- Symmetry
06 Apr 2020 Category: poetry
Marigolds bloom geometrically,
thriving under this square sun.
Dodecagon pupils dilate.
Today’s prompt from Amy Kay poetry was to write a Collum Lune, a form I was unfamiliar with before. It’s fun! Like a less rigid haiku.
Napowrimo 2020 day 5 - Simulated
05 Apr 2020 Category: poetry
Seemingly infinite, the night sky
is the most consistent falsehood.
The moon is nothing more than
a hologram, the stars just dead
pixels in the screen constructed
millennia ago to keep us placid.
Reality is narrated to us daily.
Your thoughts are not your own.
You are code blind, lost within
a procedurally generated lie.
Look to the glitches. The single
side of the moon, the vanishing
stars, memories of new places.
You say I’m not making sense,
that you are worried about me,
not knowing...
Napowrimo 2020 Day 4- Erosion
04 Apr 2020 Category: poetry
On this day, a room darkened by a flash,
unfamiliar faces are made abstract by
developing camera technology. One
is probably mine, now a stranger.
Each cell of my body has died
and been reborn in the years since.
I have cleaned grey shavings of my
skin from shelves with a yellow cloth.
I am nothing more than a sand storm
thrown together by accidental currents,
thinking itself to be unified as most
of the cloud is forced forward by winds,
whilst specks drift and drop like snow onto
...
Napowrimo 2020 Day 4- Erosion
04 Apr 2020 Category: poetry
On this day, a room darkened by a flash,
unfamiliar faces are made abstract by
developing camera technology. One
is probably mine, now a stranger.
Each cell of my body has died
and been reborn in the years since.
I have cleaned grey shavings of my
skin from shelves with a yellow cloth.
I am nothing more than a sand storm
thrown together by accidental currents,
thinking itself to be unified as most
of the cloud is forced forward by winds,
whilst specks drift and drop like snow onto
...
Napowrimo 2020 Day 3 - Peas
03 Apr 2020 Category: poetry
It’s still magic.
The emergence
of green from
damp soil, adder
head coiling up,
before unfurling,
saluting the sun.
We transplant small
miracles outside,
cross our fingers,
hope they survive.
Four weeks scatter
like dandelion seeds.
No new shoots grasp
bamboo for support.
Slugs circle, waiting.
Without warning, a glut of blessings,
sweet excess, shock of sudden pods,
hiding the orbs of light within.
We eat them raw, tongues rejoicing.
The wind blows colder.
We split dried husks,
store spherical spells
...
NaPowriMo 2020 Day 2 - 'I only went to a psychic for an ego boost'
02 Apr 2020 Category: poetry
Lost to the comfort of burnt sage
and bergamot, I do not remember
entering or paying so I arrive
to myself already sat in silks.
The woman I thought a wood carving,
bows with patience, hands shaking,
branches in the breeze. My questions
about how I got here evaporate
and merge, forgotten, into smoke.
Without looking down at her deck,
she draws the five of pentacles
the tower, the ten of swords.
The curved lines on her face
grow deeper. I realise I have
forgotten how to breathe.
Remembering...
Free Books
01 Apr 2020 Category: publications
I've made a couple of my self published books free to download.
There's Amber Stars: One Night of Stories, which is my first book of linked stories and Remain Vigilant which is two one act plays in the same world. Lost in April Fog, my Napowrimo poems from 2018 was free before but I've offered direct links and removed the need to go through the shop. All are in PDF, Mobi (for Kindles) and ePub (for everything else).
All the books have now been changed to Creative Commons licences so feel free to distribute and remix...
NaPoWriMo 2020 Day 1- The People
01 Apr 2020 Category: poetry
We the spin, the shimmer.
We the sway, the light,
the contagion and the cure
We the anointing and
sometimes the penance.
We the living cosmos.
We who stockpile flocks
of wings in our hearts
and galaxies in our eyes.
We the sun on the river
in the morning. We, barely
glimpsed, we the golden
and the gentle, we the
shine and the reflection.
We the rare, the cruel
and the wonderful. We
the infinite and the brief.
We who have been searching
for millennia, in...
The Oracle
31 Mar 2020 Category: poetry
Forgive me, I have lost my lexicon
of the future. Now I search the tangled
entropy of brambles and bindweed.
Nothing useful emerges, only woodlice.
Clouds no longer spell out predictions,
don’t merge or drift into forgotten faces
or arrows, indicating the way forward.
These tea leaves do not show patterns,
just transmit random letters through
flecks settling in cups, stewed static.
I scry daily but my mind is a broken
telescope array. Like every person
now I stumble forward in ignorance.
I ask the stars for guidance. No reply.
Quick thoughts on editing
30 Mar 2020 Category: writing
From Warren Ellis’ excellent newsletter1
The trick is never to let yourself believe it is pouring fully formed from your fingers into a submittable file. It’s all roughs. It’s layering. It’s starting with the six lines you had, that you foolishly believe constitute “an idea,” and editing them and adding to them and sculpting them and building on them and then realising it’s shit and saving that version, renaming the file and starting again, going back to where you went wrong and rewriting, until you feel like you have the shape of something that might...
Whirl
25 Mar 2020 Category: erasure poetry
From a review of Shabaka and the Ancestors in Crack magazine.
Resonance
24 Mar 2020 Category: poetry
I joined a Facebook group 1 which has daily prompts. This one was written in response to the prompt: “How do you click: Write a poem filled with noise” poem.
It’s the first day of lockdown, a week of social distancing and I feel this is representative of me missing the buzz and hum of humans in general.
Resonance
Days pass with the click of keys,
the confused mumblings of the wind,
unseen neighbours speaking, phrases
occasionally diffusing through walls.
Underneath, I still hear an echo-
many voices merged into a chorus.
...
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