one by one they enter the front room, remove their shoes and take up in sofas and armchairs, they shake off the shale, clinker and mudstone in their teeth. Rowen. Sexburga. Boudica busy exploding out of her territory by farting over the biscuits, her hare snoring loudly in the folds…

From beneath a single word it came, Expanding from that burning, brightest thought. It ever grows and yet remains the same, Never to be felt and never caught. Slip it through an hourglass with some sand, Watch it on a sundial, or on a wall. Hear it coming forwards with…

Bumper to bumper, ten fat rows of tin caravans’ all-you-can-eat asses brandish neon unwelcome signs: NO MEN ALLOWED.                      Lilac dahlias flourish from beneath each wheel                     Paths painted with faint lines like yellow brick connect the doors                    and bold, out-of-tune hums to Mariah Carey windsurf the clean air daily.                                         Nightly the buff girls stand guard…

i was called in at nights (close during the day? don’t be silly)threading alleys with undesirableflag-bearers of jack and jameson gargling threshold sleepers for the betterment of commerce i was called in to renovatepostmodern patchupstemporally blurringthe bygone with the near-flungtaking a hammer to heritage for the betterment of commerce make me whole    creaked…

For Freddy AltmannBorn: 9 October, 1896Died: 14 March, 1903 of DiptheriaBuried at Linwood Cemetery, Glenwood Springs, Co. You and I both saw six years old.A grey mud filled your throat the day you died.I walked too many steps into a fold. The place I found was foul and terrible, coldin…

A monster, from the humans and the gods, Born into a line of royal blood, Its features are grotesque and wild and odd Its origins are vile. Its cold childhood Is locked within a maze of giant stones. Taught to kill for food and sport, and hence It rages through…

Two paths to the cemetery on the hill,one chewed to stones by rain and age,one steep and smooth as raven’s bill. I had to choose, so it goes, still,flowers and undergrowth, a trail haunted by sage,two paths to the cemetery on the hill. Old dog by my side rushes to…

At school, we’d be jubilant when the TV was wheeled in. Hungry for a Night of the LongKnives, feather-brained Braunor learning how to salute with two fingers.  If the teacher was two minutes late, we knew.Heard the metal scrape and screech along the concrete floor, Hearts imploding like a neglected buzz bomb.  …

It was the end of the worldbut we did not know it.Scientists had been replacedby enchanters and magicians,and priests of the light foughtthose of the dark arts. All had been put in place,all the verses spoken,all the potions stirred.We thought we had it in hand;everything seemed normal,except the silence. First…

A jumble of artefactsburied beneath the scarred earthsurround my desiccated form.Amulets of claycracked and splinteredlie embedded in the ridges of my palm. Shafts of air swirl,as a dust-encrusted shovelpeels off a hundred centuries of dirtfrom my lava-sculpted brow.An orange orb of lightexplores the rough architecture of my graveilluminating my bony…