From womb to room

After they exit the parasitical inhabitance of your body, they take up residence upstairs. At night you think about them, in a way that is not possible when they are awake; demanding, provoking, embellishing your own existence with extraneous de-railing thoughts and feelings.

They are.... CHILDREN.

Progeny you have spawned, often started from a moments inattention to detail, like that pill, that condom, that retraction you meant to make... Now expanding the global domination of the planet by raucous humanity, they define your every waking moment differently - no longer a solo adventurer tip-toeing a fragile way. Instead, your family spread around you like wanton proof of illicit urges you didn't curb. This seething mass of growing flesh mutates its six arms, three heads, three mouths into three angelic expressions of delight unconfined. Who would not wish to share in the anarchy of irrepressible glee that is a pillowfight fuelled by late night rations of jammy toast?

Beware. Thats how they get you.

Legoland
The freshly beaten ragrug shucks up from her mini trainers.

Light from the tall window
illuminates sides of yellow bricks, red squares, green cubes
on the cobbled base board.
She places toys that don’t fit
- a horse, lopsided Tigger, a lions head with open jaws
his plastic orange chin resting on the purely rational board -
using her three years of experience.

The outsize bricks would hurt my hand.
It’s insistence on exact longitudes and latitudes would irk.
But in my garden
I would revel in unmatched colours
and sprouting tessellations of Gaudiesque proportions
that bloom forever unwatered.

I peer through her shielded eyes
- from optic nerve along neural pathways to the brain where I must be refused entry -
with my eyes, some thirty nine summers older
my hands craggy beside her vitality of thigh, her buoyancy of cheek
her darkly penetrating gaze under fringe.

Cats can’t do lego, as she removes the tower from a pit of fur,
but I can.

July 2006 with Tabitha

...Are we Human Starfish?

Starfish

The bed, a profundity, probed by toes

Immeasurable in grades of softness

Since toe tips lack subtlety

Of form; texture.

I lie indistinct as the lurk of Ophelia’s father

In wait - a lady in waiting

Spread-eagled for my Othello

Tell Iago I lie in the arms of Morpheus

If it should hasten him to my bed

Where, displayed

By retreating surf, the duvet

Uncovers my five-pronged

Opulence.

...Dr Seuss meets Margaret Atwood

I have now submitted books to two publishers via online submissions. That's www.transita.co.uk and www.librosinternational.com - the former publishes great new fiction by women, the latter is a new venture based here in Spain.

It's been a strange journey, even to get this far... from my first disastrous effort at a novel (called Subliminals - Sex and Death !! I may resuscussitate it one day but for now lets say it was a 'juvenile work' written at 21, freshly dropped out of university), to the current head count of 2 completed novels, 2 unfinished novels, 2 published articles in Canada, some music reviews and interviews for indie magazines in the UK, couple of articles on the web (not including my blog) one novella for 10 year olds, a box of short stories for small children, and two overflowing crates of poems. Oh, and I didn't include that poem published in Puffin Post when I was 13 and 3/4's...

It's hard to get GOOD feedback. I go to a writers group (Jalon Valley Writers, based in Alcalali) and distribute snippets of work to friends, but I kinda hoped this blog would generate feedback. Course it doesn't...yet. Not competing with the 6 million other regular bloggers in the UK. So if you're out there in Lapland trying to get your first novel published, or write regularly for a Mexican poetry 'n' porn magazine, or whatever, do drop in and say hi... its kinda lonely without you.

Coming soon...
An idea for a screenplay based on a future where America has become Hollywoodia in the south, and the Canadian Atheists in the north, and one huge bible belt encircles the globe. What happens when a god-fearing lass falls in love with an exiled atheist, who is fighting the global power of the Media...

Those Days

I loved your dainty biro-covered fists

The gentle tread of DM boots, no socks

No underwear, a subtle Mohican crest

Your re-runs of PIL’s appearance on the box

I lusted for a touch of your self-styled tattooed thigh

Curled childlike round mine, your builders vice

You arrived at 4am – I refused to cry

Over vomit in my sink, no sacrifice

Too base to prove, sans words, my love for you

I would wreck trains, split lips, and even dye

My pubic hair with bleach and ‘Opal Blue’

The bath, next day, stained like a bowl of sky

I hated your fear of phones and blood-red jeep

Parked in other roads, near Sloppy Joe’s

Where Anna worked with long-legged ease and chips

At your feigned indifference, or so I suppose

Your tranquil nature like relentless Mardi Gras

In Notting Hill at opening time near Al’s

The dealer you thought I hadn’t even sussed

After toilet duets left you like bosom pals

It’s high time rose-tinted memories expire

Love isn’t spreading honey on my bruises

Nor sharing your brothers whisky or dancing in vaults

The Catacombs blacker than a disc of Siouxsie’s

Nor absconding to fuck in a deserted house on floorboards

Although after Tequila and salt the feeling was fine

But I’ve thrown out the joss sticks, black candles and Gothic accoutrements

This sonnet’s nostalgia; my anonymous shrine.

(The sonnet is not a form that is played with much anymore, requiring as it does the discipline of iambic pentameter - here loosely applied.)

Big Ole Spaceships?

So the other evening instead of lazing around on the sofa, I got all inspired with a sci-fi idea. I've never written a space novel before, but I've read all the classic goodies (Clarke, Asimov, Dick, Heinlein, Lem, Le Guin etc) and the new guys like David Mitchell, Jeff Noon. I've even read Iain M Banks. And some of those trashy ones that have girls popping all out of their spacesuits at opportune moments. But really, the best ones have one simple idea that ricochets through the whole story and gives it zing...

I can't claim to have one of those. But I can envisage the trailer blurb that says "The Answer – to the Big Bang, space travel, the afterlife, and first contact..."

So what do I do with this idea? I've written a synopsis, drafted characters, researched my factual data (to do with Deep Space and new galaxies and current & future space exploration) and I'm ready. Do I start the opening chapters, go for a screenplay, or pitch the idea itself? Who do I talk to or google for?

Come on guys, gimmee some clues...