The Cathedral loomed like a giant’s tomb, its towering spire clawing at the storm-laden sky. Inside, Walter sat on the cold, splintering pew, his head bowed in mock piety. Around him, a sea of peasants huddled, their breath fogging the frigid air. From the pulpit, Father Anselm’s voice droned in harsh, alien Latin: _“Dominus dixit: servite dominis vestris sicut me.”_ Serve your lords as you would ...

‘That’s Tony’s son, I know it!’. This, surprisingly wasn’t the first time it’d happened at some big family or diaspora event. One of grandad’s old friends or acquaintances recognised me.

My face, was simply my dad’s face, which he in turn had inherited from grandad. A little clone, prone to defensiveness and with a knack for making complexed things. Or pulling everything in the house apart to the...

Flora took a deep breath. Deep enough that she could feel her nostrils flair into the little stiff, inviting roundels Alex found so cute. They were currently rather pink, going on red rimmed in the depths of winter.

She’d just gotten to Leopold cafe on Avenue De Tervueren, or is it Tervuerenlaan? Flora sat in a plywood corner stuffed with oversized cushions. Trendy, cozy, Gezellig. Agréable she t...

Perfect, and getting better by the day.

That’s the only way I can describe my life. It goes through these periods of sustained calm, steadily growing toward the ‘good’.

It hadn’t started so easily. The early years were far from a suburban dream, they were grass filled but urban. We came up in the intermittent chaos of a very large city.

Tumultuous, exciting and always things going on. Cultures ...

Yet we love

Despite rain, famine fire and flood

Distances over terrain

Space, time

Blood

From the time the flower buds

To when it sets its pollen free

Which settles in an ovary

That it may grow another tree

Plant, flower, fruit or seed

Love and life is all we need...

Whispering willows.

Trees full of corvids imitating human voices.

Cooing, talking spirits.

Ghosts made of shiny feathered mischief makers. Invisible under the purple sky.

I lay silently on the grass, fearless. Careless.

Because I know these little critters.

They come to me for bread and seeds in the mornings and say the same things as they do in the night.

I do not fear these flighty ghosts...

I hadn’t been home for years

Memories were all retained

All my tissues had had time to turnover

The bones that were made here at ‘home’

Had been reforged from foreign materials

As had my hair, skin and arterial tissues

Deep down I may have had the same old issues

Or new ones living atop the fossilised foundations of who I am. Was

Because afterall

You still fit in, and you get it, but do ...

If you were to somehow get close enough you’d see your face in the water droplet resting against the shiny black backdrop. A perfectly polished shoe.

Tens. Perhaps in the low hundreds of droplets formed slowly, growing round in the whispy rain.

Glass beads, slowly filling, until the surface tension breaks, causing them to roll in a thin glazed film down the patent black surface of a perfectly p...

Around brown bricked corners

Down rows of red houses

And art deco classics

Are hiding surprises

Brown plaques and blue ones

With names of great artists

From poets to writers, directors and flautists

The jovial, outgoing and insular autists

The dogs had their days

But they are our sources

Bram Stoker, Bob Marley

Brunel and his father

Kingdoms, Queendoms

Wars, love and laughter

Famous back th...

I really, nearly did a thousand things

Almost a thousand peasants

And a thousand kings

Close enough to brush my lips

And slip between my finger tips

From too outgoing to a recluse

Obtuse agoraphobic traits spontaneously gained in pain

Overt and outward, to sheltered its clear

Commandeer traits to gloss the fear

Oh so painfully nearly dear...