One Guy Fawkes' Night - which will add only some vague, meagre and purely incidental, albeit handy, visual and historical, romantic poetics to this otherwise quite ordinary detailing of a boy, a girl, a guest, a cat and heroin addiction - I discovered a tiny shadow at the front door. It mouthed its black miaow, … Continue reading Apricity.
Finally, Crazy Jeannie and Pleasant Terry got married again. Fair play to them. But, somewhere, somehow, along the way, in exchanging names twice, they confused each other’s nicknames, so that he, at last, found her, pleasant, and she, him, eventually, crazy. The actual details of how, or why, this confusion occurred are obscure. That’s … Continue reading An Unexpected Butterfly.
The wind picked up & the air became wet & in-between trying to light the cigarette, the boy, turning this way & that, trying to catch the flame, started on some convoluted tale about how he had lost his girlfriend, got thrown out of his flat, & about how someone had stolen his hair clippers. … Continue reading Liam & Stan & Oliver.
I went to the bathroom and fished a couple of cans from the bath. When I came back Dizzy was chatting to a woman who also had an eye patch. I gave him a beer and went outside. Little Annie was on the patio with a blond boy in a tee shirt that read Bob … Continue reading Leaving The Pirate Party.
"Aye, coffin nails," she says regarding the spread of used cigarettes collected on the table before her. Her dreadlocks are corralled on top of her small head with a knotted tie-dye rag. She wears a lot of tie-dye. She laughs and the tips of hair prance on her shoulders like waxen ponies. She drums her … Continue reading Blanket For A Bairn.
Some years later. He pulls the peacoat collar up over his ears and, head down, takes heel to the bottom of the street. Folk still whisper as he passes, but less so these days. They grow old, they float away, they die. He lives with the memories of that night; the sky more white star … Continue reading The Lookout.
