Month: Jun 2016
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Being a Bit Backwards with Miz Quickly
Slips It’s all so odd, they thought, as if I were wasted scenery. Their failed passion. I was scuttled there for a while, my own narrative movement, and they looked at me like a foreign religion. You find that there’s nowhere to hide in an array of silence, like when Mum hid away all my…
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A Meter for dVerse
A Morning Walk on West Pier We walked the pier, that early day, Young boys with lines that begged for fish. We watched the pier splitting waves, Fair dawn so bright and dewy wide. To float a while on morning mists, Its gentle sighs and rippled swell, If just to lift its jealous veil. …
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Miz Quickly Celebrates Bloomsday
Bloomsday I’d triumphed over that hill, the one I could never manage when the weather welded my joints, and now I stood there in a cold squint of low setting sun. Directly south was Spain. East was France. West was home – but it’s a distance too far no matter how far away west is – there’s nothing…
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Collins Sestet for Poetic Bloomings
A Tale Without Title I’m held by the call of doves. Do they know the risks of love? Oh the stories doves could tell, the loss, the sorrow that befell a tender heart, a stoney fit, but that’s the nature of it. Cool-hearted, crystal kiss, love fell into dusk from skies above, his arms entwined…
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Recipe Swap with Miz Quickly
I. Not Quite Summer We launched into those days like uninterrupted pages, iced the sky blueberry and jalapeño hot, dipped our spoons into molten fudge on ice cream. And we were just warming up. II. Pickled No matter how you slice it it’s still a cucumber, and I feel as white and tender as those…
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A Little Bit of Drab-Peculiar for Miz Quickly
Miz Quickly is counting down from 7 (this is 6) until she closes shop, calls early doors, and goes fishing. Or plays baseball, possibly. I don’t think she’ll be using a bicycle though; Fred has it, and he’s disappeared into a low horizon. Anyway, the Miz wants drab. Peculiar. Mundane. I give you a paper…
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Dreaming with Miz Quickly
A Tin Wind Rattled I disown these homeless dreams, these friendless and wandering merry bands plucking at my broken strings. And whose familiar voice rings lost — those words, noisy as a tin wind rattled. Dreams — a fractured beauty scenting a broken night. And then its final moments fade, scatter mute as stones. To…
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dVerse Quadrille #11
Bound to Mine Steal a moment from this mad procession, lie with sunbeams; long, slender as fingers. Come and steal away on mossy green and wreaths of ivy. Bind your desires to mine like perfume, like your morning-scented robe, and we’ll spill this world on weedy rocks. Poetic Form: Quadrille (44 words including the…
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Less Than 20 Questions for Miz Quickly
It’s a Very Short Duration I’m like a tiller. I’ve learnt to live with stones, keep a course of steps to climb, my personally chiselled architecture, the pain makes me feel alive, and I dig my boots in for the duration. I chat with the neighbours, “How are you?” I say — good manners are…
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A Weekful of Haiku
I. Sun-bleached on the line Sheets fly like a sparrow’s wing We sleep deep tonight II. The day is restless A pace gripping at both legs Puffing steam and smoke III. Young love and young flesh I watch them growing older My eyes, rimmed with soot IV. Workers. Soldiers. Ants. Wasps and bees in hollowed…
It's Still Life 