Category: Identity

Opening Chapter Dec 2001

This is something I wrote in 2001, that’s nearly twenty-one years ago as I write this. It’s either genius or a piece of shit. I suppose it could even be both.

You decide! (or not, I don’t care)

Continue reading “Opening Chapter Dec 2001”

A lazy writer?

What it is see, is that I’m a lazy writer. No, it’s true, I know that I could work much harder and craft every sentence, every paragraph, every chapter, every verse, every simile or metaphor into something that is entirely professional and rock solid. No, I could, I really could do it – every time.

Thing is, I don’t.

Why is that?

More importantly, does it matter?

And, in any case, lazy people deserve to have their voices heard too. After all, there are a lot of them about. Yeah, I know, there are a lot more people who don’t have the skills or experience to write well, whose voices are never heard, and it’s not their fault, so you could say, so what if your voice is unheard, for every one of you, lazy writers, there are a million others who will never have their voices heard and it’s not even their fault, it’s not their choice, they just don’t have the option. They may even be illiterate through no fault of their own.

But you do, you do have the choice, and the opportunities and still you produce sub-standard work simply because you’re lazy.. And don’t try and say that you have produced millions of words, published novels, short stories, poetry, articles, opinion pieces, musings and whatever else. They are lazy words. A million lazy words are less than equivalent to a thousand well-crafted.

You could say all that couldn’t you? But, what the hell, I still say that even lazy writers deserve their voices heard or at least out there in the ethers of life in the twenty-first century.

You don’t have to listen you know.

A deliberate poem – Brown Black Birds

I wrote this poem yesterday while sitting in my car in a car park in Cardiff. It took around 15 minutes to write and another 2 minutes to record after reading it through.

The original text was not edited and neither was the recording, but I was tempted.

Sometimes the raw unedited material has something special about it that should be preserved.

Here’s the audio recording.

and here’s the original text

A Deliberate Poem – Brown Black Birds

A blackbird, a finch
pecking, feeding
This is their Eden
Other birds
Chirping
as they watch
from the green leaf-laden
branches
Another blackbird
perched on a chimney pot
You don’t normally see them
up there
Maybe it’s a big starling
or a small jackdaw
It’s a bird anyway
A fat brown blackbird
a collection of worms
dripping
from its beak
It’s a car park
in an inner city suburb
where people suffer
from drugs and poverty
from ignorance and brutality
from neglect and abuse
from the greed
from the selfishness
from the well-rewarded
jailors
via each other
while the blackbirds
and the finches
and the starlings
and the jackdaws
and the brown black birds
chirrup in their paradise

Table 9

19:15-Chapter

TABLE 9

It’s kinda tucked away at the side of the Café-Bar near the entrance to the Art Gallery

Table 9

A place to look

to assess

to judge

and comment


There’s a woman with her daughter slurping on soup and munching on salad and drinking diet cola


A family with two parental figures

one presents as a man

the other a woman

They are at a long canteen-style table with 5 kids

Aged from two to ten

by the look of them

(later you realise that there are three people who are presenting as parents and just 4 kids and you realise that whatever narrative you are imposing is full of your own perspective and is not a universal fact)

Their table is laden with drinks, some alcoholic, and café-style plates of food

They have screens with games


“It’s not cheap cheese”

says a young man

delivering a plate

to a solitary middle-aged woman who must have complained about the price


I’m eating dirty vegan fries – a special order they said – and a pint of some German beer, that cost me thirteen pounds


And thinking about the fish and chips I bought in 1964 for one shilling and three old pennies

before decimalisation and before, long before, I became a vegan 30 years later

but now it’s 2022

and things have changed

as they do

always


And my friend, who works here and greeted me on my arrival 30 minutes ago told me about how he came to consciousness earlier today in the void and thought for a second that there had been a nuclear war

These vegan dirty fries are difficult to eat because the melted vegan cheese sticks them together in clumps

And when you spear one with your fork it brings half a dozen of its closest friends with it to your mouth

So you have to separate them with your fingers and stuff them in or eat too many at once

so you look around the café-bar to make sure no-one is watching you being a messy dick and then you realise, it doesn’t matter it’s not real because there probably has been a nuclear war and you probably are in the void dreaming of what might have been

And your friend, the one who woke up in the original void has disappeared and you realise that you are a dot the size of a neutrino in a universe the size of . . . . . . the universe

and it really doesn’t matter – even though it really does

Message to mes

This is a message to all the mes in all the parallel universes

It’s me

You are the light

You are the love

always

and

forever

The Younger Generation

I am a member of the younger generation and I always will be

you are too

I’ll never be old

that’s what the 60’s did

for me

and for you

Beware

Beware of people

who sit alone

in the café-bars of arts centres drinking something like a pint, or a cup of tea and they’re writing in a notebook or a paper pad or on the touchscreen of an ipad (type thing), and they look up now and again and scan the room

Beware of them

They are writing about you

Skin and Bones – New Novel available now

Skin is a taxi driver, Bones is a Detective Inspector. They hate each other but both operate on the same patch, the large ex-industrial town of Elchurch on the South Coast of Wales. A young woman is found dead and they are both drawn into the investigation. But all is not what it seems as the brothers separately and together deal with the consequences of the murder.

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