From South of the Göta River

where the lilac sky was punctuated

with scissor-shaped smoke plumes

from the factories in the distance.

From the old town where I found

a warm spot between the narrow houses

and stood there until I felt lighter of heart

and mood.

From the young mother on the slow train

somewhere between Sweden and Norway

breastfeeding and softly singing

to her son.

From the ferry port where I held

my worldly possessions; a piece of bread,

a pair of socks, a pocket full of coins,

a passport.

From the snow banks along the edge

of the tracks where I couldn’t tell

the difference between an elk

and a moose.

From the snow piled so high

and as far as the eye could see

that I couldn’t tell if it was water

or land beneath.

From the girl in the café window

that looked like a beautiful actress

and made me stop dead in my tracks

and feel ashamed.

From the train station with the camera

slung over my shoulder and my hat

over one eye like an ancient dream

of a Boston night.

#poetry

Cassiopeia weeps under the weight of dreams,

the shimmering eyes of the dead,

or of those who simply refused to be born.

’Neath a spider-web of stars,

an empty hammock will twitch in the breeze,

a gentle shift in the glorious patchwork of time.

A thousand years from now there will be seen,

hearts turned to dust, myth,

constellations reborn.

Just a rearrangement of souls, time,

lights snuffed out, arrows snapped,

flags torn and tattered.

A gift for Grace, the paper is plain, folded,

you finger the bow, twirl it,

but she has already left.

#poetry

It’s every half-formed and quickly swallowed declaration of love.

It’s when Patti Smith made grown men cry in Barcelona.

It’s every dark, deserted cinema screen.

It’s every last cigarette. And the one after that.

It’s every chill-dawn drug hangover.

Every wine-stained map.

Every jazz night standing too close to the speaker.

It’s every €17 beer in Norway not regretted.

It’s drinking absinthe with strangers in New Orleans.

It’s every night spent sleeping outside.

Every 5am airport coffee.

Every word wrought from nothingness and put down again.

It’s waiting for hours outside Galleria dell’Accademia to see Michelangelo’s David.

It’s herbes de Provence.

It’s un caffè per favore at the counter like a local.

It’s the huff of the lions warming themselves by the campfire.

It’s the stars in Africa.

It’s every ticket turnstile ever careened through that has led you here.

To this moment. To exactly where you need to be. How amazing is that.

It’s all the things I took for granted and will do again someday.

But to be honest I’ll probably just want some peace and quiet.

#poetry

Years from now children gather in these woods. In fives or sixes they emerge from the trees like fairy-tale phantoms. They burn their fingers and throats with their first illicit cigarettes, roughly rolled with pinches of tobacco pocketed from their fathers’ pouches. These tiny smokers gather in the woods and delight in scaring each other with macabre tales. A ghost story here, a murder there. Blood-thirsty beasts of all kinds.

Once, a bear crept down from the mountains and fed on all the children in the neighbouring village. The bear, however, did not savour heads and left these as ghastly souvenirs in various prominent places. Once, a boy fell through the ice and when they found him a year later his eyes were still open inside his coffin of ice.

The children shiver and hunch their shoulders into their coats.

“That’s nothing”, says one. “Did you ever see the pale girl?” says he, “The one that never speaks.”

The children nod as one and huddle closer. One coughs and hugs himself.

“The girl”, continues the storyteller “can be seen in these woods on clear nights.” “Sometimes she walks the water’s edge…she never says a single word, only walks over the rocks leaving footprints of blood.”

“I touched one once…it was still sticky in the morning.”

“Show us then”, says another.

“I can’t…its gone now.”

Eyes roll and eyebrows rise and fall in the dark.

“Oh no”, another says, “The ghost-girl definitely speaks, for once my uncle heard her…he was collecting water by the creek one night and he saw her through the trees.”

“What did she look like?”

“She was dressed all in white.”

“Did he see her scar?”

“No it was too dark…and anyway you can only see it on a full moon.”

“What did she say?” The audience plead.

“She was screaming ‘Revenge! Revenge!’, but she was laughing…and she wouldn’t stop”

“What did your uncle do?”

“When he came back he went to bed and just quit talking. My aunt said he didn’t talk for three days. She even gave him a slap, but he still didn’t talk”

A few giggle and then stop. No-one is sure where to look.

Now they are hurrying home, back through trees and over rocks. They rub sage on their sleeves to mask the smell of smoke. Once their friends are out of sight, their pace quickens to a run.

That night they will dream. They will dream of witches and bears, boys frozen in ice. But mostly they will dream of the girl. Of the pitter-patter of feet as she flits along the water’s edge leaving footprints of blood. Of her banshee-wail that sends birds from the trees and grown men hurrying back to porches. They will wake in the night, but it is just the wind they hear.

#fiction

Under cover of darkness the three men hurried through litter-strewn streets that smelled of the night’s recent rain.  The clouds hummed with the threat of electricity and violence.  

Randall Hindley, Cornelius Coombs and Ephraim Gowdy made it onto the flatboat out of New Orleans with soot in their eyes, cash in their pockets and the smell of Chinese spice in their hair and on their clothes.  Between his knees, Hindley clutched a burlap sack that held the dead weight of two pistols.  

The other passengers ask nothing and offer nothing in return.  The only agreement that exists is a complicit silence between the weary travellers.  The boat creaks under the weight of an assortment of humanity as it floats slowly upriver; German, Dutch, French, Chinese.  Men with speech like song.  The boat stops here and there along the river to distribute wooden crates and bundles and take others on board.  The passengers smoke constantly and spit overboard.  At night they lay cramped and snoring beneath a star-lit sky and only the ripple of the water tells them that they are in fact moving.  

On the second day a man fell overboard.  Within seconds he was twenty feet from the craft.  He broke the surface one last time, before disappearing, never to be seen again.  Nobody said anything.

Four nights later, under a broken fingernail of moon, they alight in Baton Rouge.  Here they find work on the Mississippi river, loading and unloading at trading posts, or toiling on plantations.  They sleep at night in a shack on the bank, built high up on stilts.  They fall asleep covered in grime, weary from honest employment, only the sound of crickets for company.  They trade tobacco and other sundries with settlers along the river.  From there they head east to Biloxi.    

The going is hard and the dust from the road clings to their clothes and faces.  In Biloxi they agree amongst themselves to steal some horses.  They confer there will be no killing here.  Not whilst we’re still in Louisiana.  We need to keep our heads down.

It is agreed that Hindley will do the deed.  They lay low in the gathering dusk and wait for their chance.  Hindley is gone for fifteen minutes and just as the other two are becoming agitated, they hear the whinny of horses at the edge of an outbuilding behind the barn.

Any trouble?  

None whatsoever.

They see Hindley’s luminescent green eyes laugh and dance in the darkness.

In the morning there will be seen a sticky trail of bloody footprints now coated with a layer of dust.

They head inland upon the stolen horses, one for each of them.  They sleep where they can – barns, caves, in pine forests, and under stars.  They ball their coats beneath their heads and pull their hats over their eyes.  

They water the horses and treat them kindly.  When their money is low, they steal chickens to kill and roast at camp.

If they meet other company they communicate only with their eyes.  

In four months they find themselves in Atlanta.  In a bar fight Hindley is shot in the thigh and stabbed in the shoulder.  Coombs and Gowdy get him to a hotel and find a doctor to tend to the wounds.  They return to the street and await closing time and the cover of darkness.  By the time they return to the hotel eight men will be dead or dying.

#fiction