March 1995 — Kenya A Fateful Decision I’d been in Africa for nine weeks; two very eventful months. In that relatively short time, I’d already undergone a multitude of emotions, enjoying some incredible highlights and experiencing a range of unfortunate escapades. I’d started in Kenya, flying out to Nairobi on a one-way ticket with a vague plan, a guidebook, and not much else. It wasn’t my first time backpacking in the dev...

They say that war is hell, it is. It’s a hell I unwittingly chose. I was fifteen at the time. I lived in a little known northern town in England. Not much happened in my town. The men went to work down the mines, the women stayed at home. It was all quite simple really; I could tell you all about it on a single page. Then the war came and everything changed. I watched as the men went off to war, my father included. They t...

  Shock rushes through your very bones  To rise and fall like waves of a restless sea  Plunging your heart deep into the cavity of an abyss  Where all those go – that are amiss   You succumb to feeling numb  The present now out of place  No trace  No hint  Not a single glint  From what once felt so real   A tangible being  To touch  To smell  To hear  … Now you feel   As they persist to exist in your mind  You accept in v...

No one can know any of what I’m about to tell, but still, I’m putting it out there. I can’t help myself, either in action or with placing dots out in the open where they can easily be connected if one were so inclined to link those dots together. Maybe I want to be caught; on some level, this must be true. If I am caught then I’m sure that’ll be that, I’ll be toast... Brown bread, either at the hands of my captures, the l...

“Your parents are crazy.  Did they really tell you that?”  Patricia said and laughed at her best friend. “Yes,” Amy said. She felt defensive at her friend’s mocking attitude.  “Come on. You expect me to believe that your parents made up a whole person to make you and your brother behave?”  Amy shook her head and thought, not for the first time, she wished she hadn’t told Patricia. They were friends, but sometimes, like no...

It was around 10 p.m. when a lone car careened down the empty rural road, engine growling, disrupting the peace of a lonely night. Its headlights ploughed through the darkness ahead as it angrily chewed up the centre lines along the road, then spewed them out in the rear, back into the nothingness trailing in its wake. Reggie Morton sat in the driver’s seat of the Corolla, leaning forward, his fingers closed so tightly ar...

The dull "pop" rings muffled in my ears as Thor's hammer sends my body flying through the air, landing in the dirt near my vehicle. I try to sit up, ears ringing, as Jonesy bends to shake me. "Ma'am! Ma'am", he says. I see his parched lips move but don't hear the words over the humming in my head. I realize someone has just turned my body inside out as I lean forward, half-slumped over, with one eye failing to open. The r...

They had encouraging, cosy names, like The Gnashing Jaws of Death, Terminator, and Oblivion. “If you go in, don’t let go of your paddle! Swim left, away from the wall,” yelled the instructor as we approached. This one was called Morning Glory. Paddling furiously, we entered the rapid, launched into space, and... Bounce! I was in the water. Sucked down, and surrounded by a seething mass, I struggled vainly against a force,...

The Miami sun is a friend of mine. Dappling off the pool's surface in the early morning, the sun creates playful, refracted, writhing patterns on the surface. The rippling patterns shifting in size and shape bring me a little joy. I wait quietly, knowingly, for sunscreen-covered, bikini-clad teenage girls to fill the pool area with boys, giggles, and estrogen. Eventually, their parents will arrive with the day's heat. The...

The smell of freshly cut grass on a bright and warm summer’s day may sound like a nice thing to experience, but unfortunately for me it generally isn't. My hay fever gets so bad that medication to relieve its symptoms doesn't help me out all that much. Having just passed a field where the grass was still being cut has me sneezing uncontrollably. I am sure my red, itching, watery eyes have me looking smashingly well. Speak...

I am slumped in a chair, staring at my newest painting. For over twenty-four hours I have been awake, painting in a near-trance for more than half that time. The painting portrays a scene not far from my studio, a shallow bay on Lake Madeline. A woman emerges naked from the water. An overturned canoe floats nearby. The woman’s name is Lily. Memories flood in. ***** Thunder rumbled in the distance. I glanced towards the so...

Lonely:With his good hand, Tom raised his glass and drank deeply. Blergh! He thought, making a face. Raspberry Vodka. It was all they had. All he could find in the house, all the other drinks and alcohol being wasted on the mourners at Cheryl's wake. He'd found the raspberry vodka in Sue's room, stashed under her bed. He didn't know what had possessed him to check there, but a thought at the back of his head struck him wh...

What seek ye? What dreams do you chase? New latitudes, a new meridian? This daily life is too quotidian? So real that it turns out surreal? No midnight love shares your embrace? The king has masked his tyrant’s face. You put yourself in Hamlet’s place? Take it to the limit? And Beyond?Or instead, Could you be dead? Could it be you died one summer day? Summertime blue and sandy, Autumn windy and gold. Died and left those s...

"A Dark Matter"(Raanana, October 4, 2018) I see you everywhere I goYou follow me even into the bedroomAnd crawl into bed beside meEntering my dreams.You are the dark sun shining your dark photons,Your shadows are my only light.You are every age you've ever been,You are the idea of youJust after I discovered I was pregnant,You are this thing growing in my bellyNow, this homunculus bursting from my wombSuckling my breast,An...

Though you cannot hold me, I'm with you anyway; God had special plans for me, I got my wings today.   I did not want to leave you, but no longer could I stay; My time on Earth was over and I had to go away.   I'll be watching over you, do not be dismayed; I'm safely up in Heaven, I got my wings today.   I love you very dearly, in so very many ways; We'll be reunited when you get your wings someday.