Cherrypicked stories

on Yorks/Lancs race relations

You lie there innocent As my thumb springs red Hurts like hell But not enough to be plastered The kind of wound that needs air to heal

This story has it's origins in a request from a woman I have never met, never spoken to, and don't even know really exists. She called herself Katrinia and asked, no insisted, that I tell her the story behind a poem I have posted on this site and others (FJWSMB). Over a two-week period last August I wrote and emailed it to her in bits. It came to about 18,000 words. Since then I have expanded it, encouraged by friends on ABC and elsewhere. The most recent reader has bullied me in the last week to post the story on this site. As it now extends to a little under 50,000 words and is growing weekly, I hesitatingly agreed to post it in sensible chapters of approximately 3000 each. It has been written in 'first person', and mainly in journal style. The reason for this is that it was my intention to get all the relevant details and incidents logged, and then re-write it in 'third person' with more descriptive text and dialogue. The rather persuasive argument inflicted on me was more than I could withstand. It is still 'work in progress' and may eventually end up as I intended.

A lover spurned.

First, faint scrawls of night's black spell collect in this line of trees, Woods' entrance a shadow O : my path, familiar, changes as a chant must...

Unrequited Love

a family that eats together....

Sticks and stones may break my bones but only God can hurt me by not being here because I don't believe when I most need to believe in more than...

Must stop reading things into labels.