Poetry, Prose, Creative Writing

This page contains excerpts and clippings of my creative writing, poetry and prose. Please get in contact for full text and to commission work (standard fee applies).

A Safe Space

Wondering apace
Looking for a place
A safe space

Don't want to stop
But I need to
get off
A long shot

Feels Like Water

Coarse sand, reeded bank
Worthy substance not astounded
by the ripples of reaction.
Their gaze enchanted, long grasses
claw back the glass with a calm
desperation.

Wishing only passive observance, the
same stone dislodged in clumsy
footstep.
Reality loosehold - I must stoop and
replace my effect.

Wait - see yet the method of meaning.
Spiralling leaf. Did you not fall
from the tree with Ernest endeavour.
Be not you trapped.
Move forward inevitability of change.

Aspiration envelopes.
Pulled forward in fragile floating,
searching for the strength of tide,
finding profundity in solitary silence.
Deadened senses carried lightly on
liquid skin.

Cupped in a flowing kindness but
achingly empty.

Life force finds effecting rhythm
'neath the beauty of rippling freedom.
Once shed of passive flow,
not yet so fragile, but affected in
careful footstep - move onward.

Inside

The space is dark
and very small.
Not much bigger than the
crouching figure,
cowering inside.

Four walls touch a
brutally bare skin.
Shivering
next to their oppression
searching for meaning
in unforgiving hardness.

Cold.
Damp.
Disembodied Silence.
Bereft.

A mind reels inside its
imprisoned place,
clawing at memory,
at time and space and reason,
desperately searching
for silent order.

There is only
fear
White noise
hopeless chaos

and you.

Why?

If Peace is Silence
And Silence is Agony
And Agony is War
Why?

As I sit on the bus this morning; Perspectives on a crisis (excerpt)

As I sit on the bus this morning, enduring the long trundle trundle trundle in to work. Gazing through the drizzle washed steamed windows into the blinking haze of red and amber, London morning traffic, I wonder how she is.

Is she huddled close with her children, wrapped in the material that is now the only stained remnant of a life once safe, hiding their warmth from harsh Saharan winds? As my chest feels heavy with another city cold, is hers heavy with campfire smoke this morning after a night sleeping close to the embers – no home now, just this patch of scorched earth shared by others from theirs and similar villages, sheltering soulless from the horrors of beyond.

Fairy Steps (excerpt)

... Robin sat, guiltily breathing having spoilt their game and now jealous to have been left out of the new one. Concentrating on breathing, she began the familiar protocol of focusing on a point far away in the room; the ornate chest of drawers on the far wall, hidden between bookcases and what looked to be an old kitchen hatch. Oh, how interesting it looked, with draws pulled out in steps toward the ceiling. Strange, the secret symmetry of this picture, hardly noticeable in an otherwise book-lined room. Why were the draws pulled out in this way? As she concentrated, something began to change...