I just posted “Luna” (Part 1) for my short story “Dark Matters”. #fantasy

https://my.w.tt/lWV16Vj8iN

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Human Metonymy: A Tour Guide through I and II – Nashville Review

An appropriately stark poem I stumbled across by JULIA KOLCHINSKY DASBACH, via Frontier Poetry

https://as.vanderbilt.edu/nashvillereview/archives/14048

Bad Seed

A new painting in progress. And while I juggle with a few writing projects, Nick (of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds notoriety) is giving me a bit of much needed meditation…

I’m going to try and leave this one partially undone, as it’s not a commission and I can just please myself (much like the one behind… being painted on an old internal door, my new favourite surface). 

Artwise I’d already made the decision to just paint for myself, as the fiction writing will invariably have to be tampered with by others, and that’s fine, I’m happy with that. It’s something that requires me to be at the mercy of outside forces. Beta readers, editors, publishers. The market. And I’m prepared for that, but only because I still have something that nobody can touch and I don’t have to care if anybody else likes it, or ‘gets’ it. No artist ‘statement’ required… Not for this kid 

Not these darker, hidden things

The above-titled poem appeared in The City Fox magazine a while back, pages 14-15. A beautifully illustrated issue which I hope you’ll enjoy 🌸

Illustrations by Laura Bennett  

“Lacklustre” beautifully evocative. A visionary young talent

http://selfportraitmag.org/2018/01/15/under-influence-brian-bett/

Atelier

It’s raining quicksilver blankets speaking of whimsy but I know what they are thinking as I, slowly drawn into the clouds drifting over my little nest of wood and glass

and scraps of fabric

wish my wings visible, insolent children pleased to escape the confines of my eyes from which memories trail ghostly fingertips across the rolling sky like fine wool put to the skein so easy to turn a mind like the mourning billow of sheets on a craggy moor

where the fire’s lit

heralding damp winter days to come when you’re not quite ready for all that yet. Not willing to resign yourself when

the beauty is still too resonant to slip like eels into the melange of melancholia’s weave and become embroiled in far away glances and gauzy sighs, so maybe

I should take down that painting

hanging there and finally commit those remaining trails of paint to its questioning fibres or maybe I should just lay in the pools of bright colour forming little skins on the palette, I am not quite sure

never

quite

sure

and perhaps that is what it is to exist on a day like this

https://twitter.com/openculture/status/952346406638923777?ref_src=twcamp%5Eshare%7Ctwsrc%5Eios%7Ctwgr%5Eorg.wordpress.WordPressShare

Cover Story: ‘Census’

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/75687-cover-story-census.html?utm_source=Publishers+Weekly&utm_campaign=5be706dd4e-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_01_12&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0bb2959cbb-5be706dd4e-304888989

Does God wear socks?

Just look at him laid out there like some

long lost God in nothing, not even socks all

perfect and alone in his ebbing

contemplation while I look on wishing I

could slither into his sphere

of thought, a silk scarf drawn

over his back with no painted red

nails to score my notch or leave

the slightest trace of desire that

drips from freshly washed

hair and thighs with not the faintest

aroma of how a woman wants.

 

No

 

let me just watch like a secret and breathe

the moment into myth

(painting ‘Patroclus’ by Jacques Louis David, 1748-1825)

Lovers of Valdaro

Come lay with me

and sing with your eyes

 

detach yourself from the lure of false sages

 

touch my fingertips

before

we

fall

 

before science catalogues the formula of God

before another century falls to dust

 

Come lay with me

hold my hand to the light