A calm expanse, the body, broken and still, floating, an immense surface, vast and mighty. No alliance between man and ocean.
Outside on a spread of lawn, behind the fishpond. Dinner with Grandfather. Tender pepper thighs and a splash of water, a table of reminded wisdom. Pockets of cropped …
Spring has sprung, and new blossoms burst. Hungered by the lack of fuel, the compost heap beckons from across the garden, angry steam rising from its core of …
Stilettos and hard black shoes, clack-clack, they walk the Christmas pavement. City dwellers and workers rushing to the tube, or pubs for warmth and bitters and peanuts in …
The pictures taught him respectability. One of a young Jewish girl, with tattered stripes and the yellow ‘Judenstern’. Another of broken bones and ash cloud plumes above chimney …
The brothel was cold, and the numbness of her panting, was cold, but inviting – Unhappiness and self-pity. And then asleep, her snoring pleasurable, gentle in the murky …
On a Sunday, in the early evening,and I hear this couple,screaming their heads off,and I’m over six foot and I’m looking through hedgerows, through blossoms, purples and pinks …
It’s not easy avoiding them, on a dark path, in the early morning. Try in vain, the lack of light, but it all ends in tears. Hidden shapes, …
Perverse drought, powerless, swelling in your barns. Fruit and produce, blight and mildew. And on the land, the cattle fall. Frustration, sworn to soil and dust, the sand …
Across the Russian wastes towards Leningrad and Moscow. Across the flats, the galloping horses thunder on, the Empress pressing with God-Speed from Riga before the snow and fur …
My fingers touch dry strokes from a brush on a canvas from last year. So delicately you worked that piece. The landscape – brilliant greens and soft browns, …
Taut line of thin manila, rope creaking, on dusty rafters swinging. In your shame. Forty years of dead weight, then like a pendulum still. It was three days …
His nine year old loved the nursery, and climbing trees and her books. History and flowers and trains – And she loved her father. And he thought of her as he buffed his black …
In a dirty, dingy dive, in a dire haze of old memories, I sit with Uncle Patrick; dead quiet as always with a Campari and Soda to soothe …
[For Kari Jeppesen] – Johnny Cash on the Jukebox – Walk the Line. In a truck stop with bloodshot eyes, and all-night drivers, and builders in blue jeans …
Amplified sounds from a short-circuiting buzzer echo through a quiet hallway; a salvo of bursts ringing out into the lonely darkness. She’s on time – the primal craving of love and want racing headlong towards …
Foot pedal and cymbals, the beat, the kettle drum, and the girl and the hi-hat solo. Good looking men watch her deliver from the shadows. Are you Jack? …
Women seeking men. Blue font on dirty paper, the Classifieds. Wanted – Good looking, well built man to make gorgeous blonde, 29, happy again. Tina, Mandy, Brandi or …
He dressed eccentrically at the most – striped trousers and a top hat bowler. And a long coat and gaudy shirt. His eyeglasses would swing on a chain, …
Her boots, and her laces tethered, and her shawl sloppy around tired shoulders. Always a sequence, always the same, but not today. In the distance, a frozen lake. …
Did you just die, I can’t hear you anymore. Frantic, out of control, you buzzed your last while trying to escape, the blinding light that tempts you to …
Pastel shades, gold and scarlet, splendid in the evening light, the cleanest shades. The room, largely decorative with plumes of grey and black and blue. They called it …
That beautiful, blue gas, up it a notch and make it hot, let them dance erratically on a cushion of searing oil. Demon capers, pompous anchovies, salty dogs, …
Marked cards and letters, filling the top drawer in a polished credenza. Two years, correspondence and poems and notes of love and want. He remembered the gate to …
[For Kari Jeppesen] – I watched you die, little bird, how you squirmed, the crazy cat plucking you gracefully from your aborted flight, crimson spurting, eyes rolling loosely …
Clothes pegs: in a line, on a line. Little dancing people moving to and fro, backwards and forwards, this way and that. Elegant and charming, graceful in silk …
They move and glide in droves outside the passage brothel, through the alleyway, to their mud nests. He watches her floral skirt, twenty minutes – how she lingers …
