blackjack-davey
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COSMIC ARBORETUM
The café in the village square was once a well-known haunt of agitators who, in my youth, scribbled polemics on the backs of menus. They were mopped...
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Highly Strung
The prologue to my novel about musical paralysis and congenital idiocy in a the Schwarz family. But are prologues old hat and is the heightened gothic register worse than someone tapping on your prostate? The most informed critique will be rewarded with a one to one dinner invite and up to three pints of real ale or one spritzer and a scotch egg...
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Window Boxes
The course of a love affair charted through desire, despair and window boxes. Maeve Binchy on ritalin
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Beavercreek red-edit
Today Beavercreek seems thin on dreams. Wholesome dreams. Perhaps the residue of all those unhappy childhoods clings to the Mermaid fountain with her...
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White Light
I arrive before work, walk past the bandaged faces, the consulting room where crisps and cartons of grapes are laid out on the examination bed –...
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'Torture porn' is the slang
Posted on Tue, 27 Oct 2015
'Torture porn' is the slang term for horror movies likes Elias Roth's Hostel where a group of students are, well, tortured and that is the movie's focus. I suppose your story's focus is the torture and the redemptive quality, the narrator's guilt...
Read full commentPosted in Penance
The timeless, the enduring
Posted on Tue, 27 Oct 2015
The timeless, the enduring sense of loss, and the everyday objects-- the faded blue ball in the pond, the sense of continuity but of very little comfort-- you still walk the dog, the initials are carved on the bench and the blue ball continues to...
Read full commentPosted in Baobabs and Bedouins
I like the detail, the
Posted on Wed, 16 Sep 2015
I like the detail, the technial lingo-- The Pots and the description of dancing for a client like unclogging a toilet. i was unclear about the touching/ not touching rule. Soft and gentle is okay but then you say no touching... The narrator has...
Read full commentPosted in Muddy Heels: Chapter 1
caustic portraiture with the
Posted on Sat, 12 Sep 2015
caustic portraiture with the unwavering herring gull gaze of the poet, what an insight and what lovely fresh carrion for the reader
isn't there a video of you and Scratch on You tube knocking back babychams at the Ramada Holiday Inn...
Read full commentPosted in A Marriage
pared down and precise
Posted on Wed, 01 Oct 2014
pared down and precise
great study of the mind probing the limits and limitations of its boundaries and beliefs and the need for reassurance-- an actual voice, the squeeze of a real hand
Lord Nothingness will grow unchecked
...
Read full commentPosted in godstruck
i really enjoyed reading this
Posted on Mon, 01 Sep 2014
i really enjoyed reading this poem, being stuck inside the mind set of the perpetrator as Vera says the peevish self-justification, the sense of martyrdom what he has to endure and a little whiff of self-pity, poor me! my arm hurts from...
Read full commentPosted in SMACK - (edited)
a great last verse and a
Posted on Wed, 06 Aug 2014
The lights going out seems to suggest a sliding scale from war and awful disasters to the snuffing out of a single candle, and in our humanity we will always be touched by that candle rather than the big power cut.
A great last...
Read full commentPosted in When the Lights Went Out
I love the idea of the
Posted on Sun, 27 Jul 2014
I love the idea of the electric lights in winter, the orange glow and the tanning lamps and the shedding of dead skin (suggestion of UV treatment for skin disorder?)... staying indoors in a larval state, pupating in your flat until you're ready...
Read full commentPosted in Tanning Booths in the Dead of Winter
This is my favourite sort of
Posted on Tue, 24 Jun 2014
This is my favourite sort of poem: an unusual insight, a strange perspective and lots of mystery. The cranes are powerful brooding figures, I particularly like the idea of a single limb and sinew... the machines are regulating our lives,...
Read full commentPosted in The Language of Cranes
You leave us on a cliffhanger
Posted on Fri, 11 Apr 2014
You leave us on a cliffhanger with the eyes locking and the Lancia purring in the trees. Made me think that the interloper was a ghost
Really liked the sensuality, the alfresco open-air sex, the age-gap, the sudden stop when the footstep...
Read full commentPosted in Families are like fungus
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