For time and time and time and time

I lay waiting

The Makers came and asked me

If I knew what to do

When the end of me was fixed

I said I fly

Fly to my destiny of the pattern

Now I am falling

The end of me a whole grey light

Burning steady

My destiny a pattern in my mind

My only one

Shapes of grey and brown and green

Are below me

I fly to match my mind to my world

Now I am falling

Tilt forward, t...

For one lurching moment Tarek shook with an impulse to get back onto the plane. The hot dry air was like a wall. The hot dry earth under his feet. Then. Shouting and his mother's tears washing his face. Now. Fingers teasing the cuff of his suit. Tarek Fathi, UNFPA Assistant Investment Officer. From Manchester, England. Not from not Al-Kufra, Libya. Not anymore.

The giant blue sky loomed over the ...

I live. Why do I live? The dead were better people than me. The dead had more to give. But it is me who survives. The dead were beautiful and kind. The dead had more intelligence. But it's me who is alive. Stumbling lost after the apocalypse

I am afraid of the life I hold. I don't know why it still burns inside me

The dead are all around me in the spaces they have left. The head that isn't on th...

The gate was secured with a weathered padlock the size of a fist. A hand painted sign told him that this was the Steeple Vineyard and that it was open weekdays, 9am till 5pm. But the paint was peeling and the gate shut. Beyond was a gravel track quickly lost in the vines. A walk wouldn't be so bad though. When the sun broke through the clouds it gave a flash of midsummer warmth. David was a big m...

It's half an hour's walk to Henry and Amelia's flat. You wanted an Uber but she wants to walk. The breeze is cool, a quiet night and quieter still with her silence. You try and keep rhythm with her steps. She notices things out of place. It draws her attention. If, god help you, you hesitate where she walks on, or walk on whilst she waits, then you are an impotent coward or a witless fool

At Henr...

It's the red of the legs. Like a scarlet flower. She wants it. Like a shattered ruby. When the light shines through them. Like blood on the screen. A hard droplet splashed and then frozen. A beautiful spider. She should show it to David

"Hey, I got this weird bug on my phone, like a real bug!", and they would laugh and David would lever it off with something and study it like a scientist

She k...

The map shows mile after mile of aimless streams, shapeless gradients, and tumbledown field boundaries. No tower. No landmark. Except here it is

"Some mad billionaire built a folly then?", I speak to it, eyeing the entrance in case anyone emerges. But there's just the wind and a grouse calling somewhere

The tower is in the middle of a peat bog where only those stupid enough to take a shortcut ac...

I adore you my love

Praise the heavens for sending you

And if you left my heart would rend in two

My hopes asunder

My love I adore

Your generous spirit of giving

And belief that life is for the living

You are glorious

So please accept my proposal

For a marriage that is blessed

And hopefully gone in a flash

For I dream of our betrothal

Followed by your death

So I get my hands on all your cash...

Vulcanised rubber strips

Between me and death's grip

Just a slip and

I'm dying in a gallows choke

Just a trip and

I smash into the valley below

Just a rip and

They haul me up crippled and broke

But it's for charity

So I laugh and I joke

About my impending bungee rope horror

And I hope

Hang on so tight to sweet bloody hope...

I'm holding a miracle cure

Twenty four red and yellow magic beans that rattle and jump

To be taken with food

Eat me and the cancerous growth shrinks away leaving you like the red queen

Victorious and undefeated

A fairytale where the giant is slain and the prince and princess wish

With a kiss for many more days

More days

To sit in that chair with the plastic mat

That stops the piss staini...