Palimpsest for the end of February

I’ve been writing a lot more lately, and submitting pieces to different places. One of the places I’ve started submitting to is the Rattle “Poets Respond” – a weekly call to write something topical, inspired by the news. Since these are going to go out of date very quickly, I’ve decided that, when they’re rejected, they’ll get posted on my Patreon (and, a few days later, here).

This is the first one! A sestina for the repetitive nature of the news cycle and social media right now:

*

The sins of men these days seem… uncountable,
and we petition the mighty to conduct
us – they signed on to drive
this vessel, after all.
And they tell us being powerful is hard!
Don’t scupper the ship, we need them; don’t pull the trigger!

We’ve turned, we’ve pointed – we’ve seen the rigger
of the system; the evidence is countable
but so, so hard,
while we try to keep eyes on the conduct
of them all –
every single one, from birth, was taught to rive.

And yet, now we’re asking them to drive
forth the sinners, snip the strings of riggers,
their rigour’s suddenly forgotten in the calls
for clemency; we’re begging those accountable
to ditch excuses, conduct
proper searches, come down hard.

But even getting drip-fed poison is hard,
a larger world emerging under our feet, as we drive
home the messages, the revelations of misconduct
abducting our attention, while trigger after trigger
is pulled, and sins litter our screens, uncountable,
undoubtable – big and small.

No wonder, for some, reality begins to pall:
it’s all too hard,
and here’s a game, a way to keep from feeling accountable,
just trust the voice of the virtual, it’ll drive
the hurt away, let’s play ArtIst, while the downrigger
trawls the spoils of others’ talents to reconduct.

What’s the score? Who’s conducting?
The product is ready, laid out on the stall
don’t stop – you can’t let these spriggers
rob us of everything you’ve worked for, so hard.
Words are malleable – libido doesn’t just mean sex drive
it’s an appetite for living, would you deprive us, The Accountable?

It just takes a touch to trigger a witch hunt – gold is a great conductor,
locked in virtual stocks – unaccountable? Maybe not all…
If you can’t take it with you, burn everything – especially the hard drive…

*

If you’d like to write your own sestina, you can access the tool I created here. let me know how you got on if you do!

Image made clumsily with CorelDraw and MS PowerPoint (because fuck AI)

Forty-Seven < Fifty (or: This Too Shall Pass)

(I had a “big birthday” this year (I know – it can be difficult to tell it’s a half-century, what with the beard and the web cam quality… and the connective tissue disorder…) and what with that, the inevitable changes people like me go through at this time, public perceptions of other aspects of ‘people like me’ in these interesting times, and a certain person’s two-word public put-down recently, this piece is very new…)

Forty-Seven < Fifty

(or: This Too Shall Pass)

I am a quiet piggy,
dehumanised for consumption,
stumbling as hormone shifts strip me of
privileges I once thought mine for life,
I’m striving to find a place in society,
propriety forbidding I dispossess
anyone else of comfort while I
navigate unpredictable waters,
body a slaughterhouse of assumptions,
a dumping ground for many things
we collectively deem “failure”, apparently.
(And nearly impossible for mortals to achieve
these days, let’s face it.)

I own nothing grounded in earth;
I possess a dearth of reproductive function,
lumbering like a frozen fool,
destined to never progress beyond
wasted adolescent, for lack of
offspring, walls to call my own for life.
I have nothing to pass on except
the output of this fevered organ,
more and more ignored as time wreaks
its curse and I am burdened with gags. 

He says Quiet, Piggy, and silence
presses, suffocates, applauds the
mordant thrall of this epitome
while the jackals cackle, released
from good behaviour by their
putrid saviour and we’re told
Oh! It’s not that bad! It could be worse!
And another verse trickles into my fingertips
signalling the power of the liminal,
the highest prize of sentience
inexorably reduced to a useless sentence. 

Sticks and stones may break my bones,
but words… endure forever.
Wretched prose opens up my cranium,
carves new markers for Here We Are,
startled daily by old commands:
Thou Shalt Not Sleep in Peace…
until thy synapses surrender their
burden of hard-won knowledge
of threats and punishment.
Know your fucking place, swine.

Strangers mining data, mining perfidy
tell me, confidently, that I’m a danger to
society, a danger to children,
projecting everything they fear about
difference into this sliver of flesh,
telling me that I don’t deserve to even
piss in spaces designated for the holy
alone, those who’ve ticked all the boxes
their bodies were allocated,
can’t wait for me and my ilk to
do them the favour of extinction. 

Danger, am I? Threat to society?
Moi? 

Interesting. I never knew I had such power,
that you cower at the thought of
more of this. More of me.
more of us. Oh, honey.
We are so much more. 

So, for the score, I… we… will not be quiet, piggy.
When you’ve stripped us of everything,
denigrated our importance as hoarders
of words and nothing more, our scorn
will live on, recorded, transmuted,
translated, debated, because our core
is RAGE, not just spilled across pages
but stages, neurons, electrons,
a spectrum signalling the coming storm.

Best make the most of that shelter, friend.
Nothing is endless.

Image from Raw Pixel

I did a feature slot at Oooh Beehive in September 2025, and did that thing where I write a tribute poem to everyone else who performed that evening. This is my best attempt at replicating it:

Block of Writers (for Oooh! Beehive)

A work in progress…

Coherence is a dream, a sliding scale Clive of lyrical larceny, stockpiling interruptions in shrill voices from the foaming depths.

Cracked marble vaults release all sorts of Michael forms from the silent cells, incanting the repetition of conjuring, anticipation satiated.

The forest strums our senses, tricked out Laura in night, blossoming bitterly, inducing the beauty of beckoning eloquence.

Lines drift, comparisons shattering peace, Mary silence outlined in the quotidian, gratitude clattering where powerlessness drags and drags.

Prayerful poetics hurt the knees, making Fin fools of authorities, howling the intimacy of surprised whiteness, men’s voices loud and long.

Jobs done, window-shopping, stopping us in our Pelagie/ Roger tracks, mapping souls to appearances, glittering, a twist of reflections on humanity.

Filled with emptiness, we can grab maps from Annalisa brain chemistry, track onanistic paths, unlandmarked, barren, deafened by silence, white noise, waiting.

If you have been affected by any of the above stanzas, Sandra fume about the consequences – or lack – and whack out your own in retaliation, biting tales.

Spinning misery into a big, beautiful bill of fare, Rick – Poet of the Three Rivers tanned and glad-handing reality into a knave’s menu of land-grabs available for the 1%.

Pictures flicker past of partnerships and glancing Christopher connections, memories etched in laughter lines, National Geographic papier maché lending a hand.

The snake coils, scary, soul-baring, a snarl gripping the Elmien tails old wives roll over and over, tucked under wild hair – a story in itself, over too soon.

Let’s judge books by their covers, entitling heroes, Jeff listing the best bits, fictional, all wham-bam action, soundtracking the sort of reports we’ve anticipated.

In the meanwhile, the knuckles of the hard-boiled Pauline brag that their voices are the only truth, but we can wash free of dirt and blood, soaking in new, moonlit choices.

Let’s bunk off from responsibilities before repeating Claire the lessons of the past, hanging on for points that matter, covered in sauciness, locked in for our own safety.

Celebrate blasphemously, swearing generously across a Ashley spectrum of unapocalyptically brilliant attractions, tracking an expanse of joy for everyone who can truly hear it.

Linking symbols across a Sunday in Swindon, picking up Gerald the lost and disregarded, claiming better judgements, precision gifting us great, poetic mysteries, an epic of many parts.

Labouring in vain, the privileged cannot represent us, Clive (again) blessed with nuclear terror, complicitly handing over the core of their souls for pats on the back by oligarchs.

Supported by faltering technology, hot fixes are cool, Kev the Poet wetter, darker, slower, unlocked with fingerprints glittering in seaside lights, hard day’s night, eight out of seven.

Painted in primary colours, innocence touches us, warm Io as love in wintertime, but it’s frozen in time under an obscenity, shrugged off as a distant, foreign water off our backs.

Rhythmic truths glitter with precise ire, bright as firebombs Ian arcing through the night towards the baited trap, feeding the beast that snarls armageddon beats, cleaving unity.

Understanding is the key to authenticity, fighting the resistance to Melissa care, softening the hard edges, cutting out doubts, smoothing beauty in mirrored stars, mapping the future in glorious constellations.

Define the fires that shimmer across a spectrum, glorious in Phoenix non-conformance, existence a resistance that has us flying, bright kites that inspire, defining joy in a brightening sky.

Gifts can be triggers, abandoned in doorways, never hot enough River to beckon attention, returning the false construction piece by peace, bereaved but breathing, thriving, climbing back to light.

Orangutan is a compliment to a bold, spoiled shmuck, playing Rob tiddlywinks with lives, grift trumping humanity, empathy abandoned as dreams are strip-mined for commodities.

A golden gate to choices gifts us with the liminal, views you’d Garland miss if you dodge the crossroads, bearing witness to the true beauty of fellow travellers, heat-hazed and numinous.

Shadows kiss, riding history’s mysteries, imagination projecting Marieta vaudeville on the night’s curtain, simmering with the glories of northern lights, summer’s heat, passion resonating right and wrong.

Communication in pictograms reveal depths limited only by Eike imagination, travelling in accumulation, a gathering of injustices, projecting a modular future onto a cinematic disorder.

Last one standing acts out corporate blocks of thought, Kate effort a heavy, dragging shell-shock, knocking back the trauma, gentle and fierce as love, concentrating in engineered precision.

For this, and future lines, thanks for the inspiration…

Elettaria

 CW: passing mention of death/ mourning.

The first time you taste it,
it is likely lost in a mélange,
a tangle of strange, bright frissons,
more scent than anything.
The apple flares to life,
more itself than it was alone.

The same is true for the next time.
And the next.
So that the first time someone tells you:
Be careful of the cardamom,
you are surprised, digging through slow-cooked lamb,
and discovering four things you didn’t know you liked.

One of them is her – eager to please,
but no-one is suggesting she’ll replace the unspoken.
You are, all of you, too old for platitudes,
but politeness is a gift you can bring
to this new table on a barrage of charm.
She seems nothing like your mother, and he loves her.

Alongside whole cloves of garlic
you unearth dark, wrinkled, unprepossessing pods,
which have seeped their soapy sharpness
into the sacrificial flesh.
Later you will recognise it in a brief stint,
never written home about, as a chambermaid,
the linen closet fragrant with peaceful secrets.

And even though these days it only graces you
in glass-bound mixes blended by other hands,
you cannot now untaste it,
and it stands coolly apart from
neighbouring clove and cinnamon,
a reminder of love after death,
and the inevitability of new memories.

This last sample piece I’m going to post from Spectral is from the section on Joy, and, like a surprising number of the pieces is centred around food… and not, obviously. Like many of the joyful pieces, there’s a great deal of focus on being embedded in a body that enjoys a range of sensations. In interesting contrast, now I come to think of it, of the pieces that outline a body that creaks with pain and fatigue and difficulty. I’m very glad of this observation, for a number of reasons (not least being that, at the time of writing, I’m battling my body’s tendency to just be a texture of pain against, and moving through, a world that is unmoved by that static scrawl of “please, no”).

(My study smells quite compellingly of cardamom, for a start!)

This piece, while hesitant and shy, is still very warm, and I hope the smile it brings me can be echoed in you too, no matter how good or bad a day you’re having today.

This piece was very nearly something different, which is probably why it came last, but I was determined to draw at least one illustration for a piece in every section. Having already drawn four for Nature/ The Sea, and two for Whimsy, Joy looked like it was going to be left behind, but I finally decided what kind of pottery I was going to draw, and here it is. This is a quaich, and it comes from the Uig Pottery on the Isle of Skye. It is surprisingly small, and fits in the palm of my hand – a really pleasing weight and texture.

I probably wouldn’t know much about quaichs if it wasn’t for a somewhat impulsive trip back to Skye in 2005, this time to Uig, the port that opens up to the Islands via a number of ferries. I got to do a lot of walking, meet some really interesting people (including one of the potters), and experience exactly what it’s like to be able to hear nothing for literally miles around as you sit on a hillside, except for sheep, a dog down in the bay, and the ever-present gulls. I deliberately went up on the anniversary of my mother’s death, starting the ongoing tradition of Being Busy Around That Time (which often, with the timing of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, involves travelling to Scotland and/ or performing on stages. I think she’d have approved…).

I have a friend to whom we never got to say goodbye properly, due to, well [gestures vaguely around] All These Interesting Times. I think I’d like to drink a dram to her health (she loved a good whisky) from this cup sometime, hopefully down by the sea, in the company of good friends who loved her.

Once I’ve cleared the pods out, of course. That might be too experimental, even for her.

Hope you’ve enjoyed these glimpses at the book and the journey of creating the illustrations for it. There are a few more things lined up for you to become privy to but, for now, I’m going to have a couple of days off before I get stuck into making the audiobook…

Ghost Tour

‘Will you cover for me?’ I’m helpless, delving into a set of well-worn expressions, shunning the stutter he beckons, projecting: Yeah, I reckon. ‘Listen,’ he says, ‘I owe you one.’ At this point, more like twenty, a reckoning that’s chasing propriety into an early grave. A new voice: ‘Step lively,’ says Greg, head a conspiracy tilt past the fire hatch and we scurry, him stubbing, me shrugging, Greg’s gaze a spinning speculation I nudge from him. ‘Madame’s on the march,’ he confides. I sigh. ‘No closer to the prize?’ My turn to roll my eyes, grab regulation headgear, unprop the door while trawling for witticisms. Zilch. There’s always next time. ‘Sure, love. Sure.’ We watch as the other darts ahead.    

Tiptoeing upstage,

we are mismatched murderers

longing for a break.

More Whimsy for Spectral, in the form of a haibun (or as haibunnish as English can get and not strictly speaking autobiographical either), written originally for NaPoWriMo 2019.

This is, essentially, a scene from my own house – the red hat that has accompanied me to many festivals, generally as a compere at various events at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, or at my own stage (Wild Strawberries) at Cambridge’s Strawberry Fair, and the hatstand... Hah.

I’ve always wanted a proper hatstand. I have... a lot of hats (literal as well as figurative), and there was never space or opportunity... until I went for a late-night walk while talking to friends on discord and almost literally stumbled across this fellow, abandoned on the pavement next to a large mirror spiderwebbed with a myriad of cracks. Bearing in mind that it was possibly cursed, I still felt that a midnight, frost-rimed gift of a piece of furniture I’d always craved, and such a handsome example, was not something to turn down.

Hard to say the figure I must have cut, and this is a solid chunk of wood and metal to hoick down the street over one’s shoulder, but there we have it – cursed or not, it’s currently draped in a red velvety throw and adorned with my hat, sitting quietly behind the door of my living room, and I hope it’s as happy to be here as I am to have it.