Wetlands Field

Sunny morning
Hawthorn and broom flowers
observant dogs.

AUC Tour

Sorry to spam everyone but I'm taking tea with Caroline Smailes at her BLOG today. Come and say hello, and try the Yunnan tea.

Sunny Garden

Lazy afternoon
Sunshine and good friends
and lots of dogs

Umpire's Box, Queen's Park

Umpires box
Green against the green.
Roller waits for summer.

Morning Mist

Morning mist
slips gentle as a lover
through Lebanese cedars.
I stroll past swings and roundabouts,
sullen in the growing light,
and remember the sky
rotating.

The Glashouse Cafe

Tea for me
Cigars for some
rain for all

Thoughts upon an Overgrown Grave on a Hillside

If it was left to me to tend a grave

laid within some lonely cemetery

where I, perhaps, walked with my dogs and gave

passing thought to those who died before me;

I would not decorate the weathered stone

with plastic bowls nor acrylic flowers

but instead, secure that I could dig down

to several feet and pass the hours

by constructing dreams of gardens once held

to be so quaint -- an Englishman’s delight

but not of mighty trees that rip and meld

the ancient stone with earth and block the light

of Heaven from your shady six-foot plot

but plant instead violas, ere you rot.

Side Gate, Queen's park

On my way home
the park in springtime
a slice of Heaven

Thomas Train

Thomas at rest
No passengers booked
for a lakeside tour.

Before the Soldiers Came

Do you remember the city
when it was young?
When factories claimed the suburbs
and the crows wore gasmasks;
grubbing in the trees
for the delicate prize
of a blackbird’s egg
or a piece of road kill.

I remember soot and coal
and father’s rifle on the hearth
and stealing bullets
to lay on the train tracks.
And Robbie Atkinson
coughing up blood
when we left him by the canal.

None so Blind

She had a vulpine set to her features
and a debonair posture as she talked
to the guests. “Are we not all beautiful creatures?”
she enquired as a newcomer walked
to the bar and opened a bottle of gin,
trampling the host’s tourniquet dreams with a twist
of lemon and a discursive argument laid, chin
uppermost, on the parquet floor. Alas, he missed
excising the saturnine smile by a fraction
of a constipated colloquy. “No
problem,” he said. “I’ll schedule a faction
of irritable surgeons to cut and sew
the doldrums in your mother’s soul.” The look
she gave him, priceless; his gift to her: a book.

Dog at my feet

Surrounded by song
and warmed by morning sun
dogs at my feet

A Bit of fun

I've not even finished writing it yet!

From the Bell Tower...

181 steps
but the view was worth
every one of them

Free to good home: The Outlaw Demon Wails

The Outlaw Demon Wails (Rachel Morgan 6)

NOTE: This is the SAME BOOK as Where Demons Dare (Rachel Morgan 6)
just under a different title. That's why I have a pristine copy.

One of the authors I read avidly is Kim Harrison. It's urban fantasy too, though a little different to An Ungodly Child.

I have a brand new copy of Kim Harrison's The Outlaw Demon Wails (Rachel Morgan 6)
to give away to a commenter. Obviously, it'd be nice if you'd plug An Ungodly Child on your blog but I'm not insisting on it. I'll send it anywhere in the world at my expense. I love Teryy Pratchett, and reading him was part of the process of creating my style of writing.

So please comment, tell your friends to comment, and tell them they should read me, too.

Winner to be picked at mid-day on Saturday 30th May

Last weeks winner of The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents was Cassandra. Please send me an address to send it :)

Lucifer’s Witness

I answered the door before she knocked –
a business suit in blue and grey;
a gay pink scarf carefully selected
to portray friendliness
and her friend,
who nodded and smiled.
I accepted a Watchtower
and a book on the life of David
and asked about Lucifer,
whereupon her friend shook her head
and she said.:
“It’s too late for that.”

Cathedral Steps

Old and new
cathedrals side by side.
The rain cares not.

lower photograph:
Andrew Paterson - Coventry cathedral photomontage
postcard from the tourist shop.

the transformation of paradise

in the transformation of paradise,
everything changes.
From the Byzantium splendour of the seven vigils
comes a mosaic
of consumerist eternity.
Sages and singing masters
write of molecular desire
and the penultimate artifice
of the ceaseless spiritual.

''Eternal Transition'
Watercolour and Pencil
3 ½" x 2 ½"
$25

Coventry - Cathedral

Squirrels in the park -
on the steps of a war memorial
open-air cathedral.

Cold Tea

He wished for peace
away from his wife’s soap operas,
the neighbourhood gossip,
the constant babysitting for children
who just wanted peace themselves.

He had his greenhouse
and his potting shed
full of cans of kerosene
and petrol for the mower he’d had forty years
and the tools he rubbed with an oily rag
on Sunday afternoons
as he listened to the radio four play.

They found him at six
when he didn’t come in
for his ham sandwich and jam tart.
He was sitting on his compost heap.
Alone with yesterday’s grass clippings
and the warm embrace of nettles.

''Nettle'
Watercolour and Pencil
3 ½" x 2 ½"
$25

Coventry - Carousel

No movement:
no coins are inserted
but the horses still smile.

Jasfoup

Demon of terror
has to have a break sometimes:
A pot of Earl Grey

''Jasfoup'
Watercolour and Pencil
3 ½" x 2 ½"
$25

Frederick's Cafe

Bright umbrellas
against a cloudy sky.
Patient dogs

A Mouthful of Tentacles

Part lobster he stares
from the edge of the Styx.
"What did I do?" he would ask
but for a mouthful
of tentacles

''A Mouthful of Tentacles'
Watercolour and Pencil
3 ½" x 2 ½"
$25

Walking to the Supermarket

Bright May blossoms
under a telegraph pole
umbrella

New pine cones
orange against
the Scots green

Steel fencing
penetrated by hedge parsley -
Weigela blooms