Odds On Loser

To most people he was known as TFM, The Fruit Machine or Fruit, for a reason he did not find particularly amusing — he had one arm, he was a one-armed bandit. Ha ha. He lost the absent limb on a bank job when an automatic timer dropped a rather heavy vault door sooner than [...]

Pain

The pain of unreciprocated love
Is something that everyone knows once and
Fits this deep wounded soul just like a glove,
Holding the pierced heart in the bleeding hand.
In the end we all have to choose to die
Or find someone else we can crucify,
Forget your gender and render the sky
A new colour in your burgeoning eye –
You can [...]

Over The Disease

He swears to himself that he will
Not let the curse of a cancerous growth
Consume the power of a sacred oath:
Determination will defeat the hill,
Overcome the tumour that seeks to kill
Faculties, mental and physical, both,
His shortened span never allows for sloth
And he struggles on still though he is ill –
Certain others would throw him in [...]

14 Lines

Every single set of fourteen lines
In an eloquent form of verse enshrines
The message I’d wanted to put across:
That is why I truly love the sonnet –
I’d place the weight of my love upon it;
A structured form, the words, can truly emboss.
A successful sonnet defines
Its themes while following traditonal signs.
I write these lines for Shakespeare’s great [...]

A Field Of Poppies

Two shadows, elongated as the sun moved lower in the sky, stretched across a field where the blooms, that mirrored the sunset sky with their colouring, grew. One of the two took all of it in with a photographer’s eye, seeing exactly how best to frame this scene and what it might convey. His companion [...]

Undine

A poured habitat
turned out of a tank,
a liquid blanket unfolded,
ripples of a creation
from a raindrop heart.
An aqueous physique,
a fountain-head.
Crystalline aspect of the trinity:
steam,
ice,
water;
this world’s a tributary of him,
he is the water table.
A spring.

Oil

The moon tugs this lazy black tide,
feathers are made invalid.
A disaster empties the skies,
man’s construction spews fire.
Pollution is a dark cloud:
throats are stripped,
lungs peeled.
A foundation of ash,
Deep melanin vales –
a spillage of shadows.

Submarine

A tablet of liquefied ice,
cool in a hollow,
licking the lip
of its recess.
a toe explores,
a body falls
under
a head bobs,
legs propel,
arms pull.
A sliver of light
flicks away
under a coat of mirrors.
Beneath the current,
tasting diluted air,
we discover an alien world.

A House Of Lies

Throw away your mind
And stow your head,
Forget the so-called truths you find –
Truth is already dead!
This is a house of lies,
Myriad eyes.
Falsehood
Stains the wood,
Lies brood
In the food –
There is no trace
Of your face
Left in your portrait,
That is a rendition of hate
And this is your fate.
All the skeletons wait
In closets shut,
You sense it in your gut,
But [...]

Responsibility Claimed

The triggered revelation of death
Opened their eyes,
Tongues of shrapnel burnt with truth –
Knives through butter spreading realisation.
The peeled physiques of vulnerability
Screaming injustice,
Innocent eyes melted in sockets.
Instantaneous initiation into the most
Inexclusive club around:
The dead.
The car flickered with a yolk of flame,
Its shell cracked,
The body inside lifeless –
He’d been told to drive or his family died,
His smeared [...]