And

a poem to be paired with With And, another word – verboten in excess, the Creative Writing Rules would warn. And then another thing And, and, And, and. Dandy and, Like but, not to be ushered in at sentence starts. And so for years, and carefully was placed or erased. But now the rules are

Having accomplished

There is that lull Where you can’t unhook from sinkhole hours lost to nothing with nothing to show for it. Having completed no task, cursory to dos eating, basics, coffees, two evening closes in and mad-desperate panic of IS THIS ALL YOU LEAVE? will be your watching gong of dervish disappointment. 17/05/2020 —With a book

Another correct map

From the tube station, exit left to the High Road. Pass the fruit and veg stand. They are already selling daffodils and the asparagus looks fresh. Turn up the High Road, cross, and cross, to where the bicycles stand. Stop. Turn ahead. Wait for a break In traffic. (I have seen people and cyclists hit.)

Three poems to end the year

i 8:58PM write poems x1 x1 x1 I wrote on my week’s to-dos. It’s 8:58PM on SUNDAY. The radiator’s cranking up; Counting down to the bedtime routine. This isn’t a poem: it’s a snapshot. ii. write poems x1 x1 The idea was to help me See each output as a ‘1’; As a single entity

Outside the day was perfection

Watching the bees Here are the words of the blazing day and the once beautiful arrangements. It was heady, was it not? The arrival of this brightest of days. Outside the day was perfection. Here a few few bees in the garden hid under clumps of cut grass. Why are they tucking themselves away? Or

Fenstone’s Flower

Another short story from the hip. Fenstone’s Flower Fenstone was in his favourite pottering spot for a not quite warm, though there be some sunlight day. He had finished washing the Saturday breakfast crockery and cutlery, scraping down the plates of scrambled egg residue and croissant crumbs. This was Peggy and Fenstone’s Saturday morning treat

Black coats, black pavements, black umbrellas, the rain

“Kirchner 1913 Street, Berlin“. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. John Keats wrote his famous ode ‘To Autumn‘ on the 19th of September 1819. This partially inspired my poem posted this time last year. (This year, we are enjoying a generous bolt of extended warmth. The colder snap is still to come.) “Autumn’s ripened harvest store” offers

Collapse

Its last pulse was the echo of an interior draught. Some time ago the sluggish monopod had taken its leave. Beached on the concrete path the brown shell has no way of putting itself at safety. The unseeing crunch the barren passageways underfoot. — The above poem is about an abandoned snail shell like the

The Visit, or The Arrival of the Thing

There is a well-known Afrikaans short story Die Gog (The Thing) about an unidentified creature nursed and doted upon by a couple. The thing (die gog) is kept in a box, feed and protected. Eventually the couple’s mutual obsession destroys their relationship. This serves as an imagined prelude to the un-dramatic domestic tragedy of Die

Such is clinging mind

There’s that thing, that topic that gnaws away in an alleyway of your mind. Perhaps it’s the last acrimonious discussion you had with a lover or the overdraft on your bank account, or maybe it’s a work project that didn’t unfold as planned or your child’s school report. “In an alleyway of thought” considers such matters that the clinging