I thought I would post some samples of one or two things I've been writing of late. The Editor of
Dog Horn Publishing asked if I had anything for them and I spent part of my winter writing The Serpent Rose. It's a strange story, part fact, part friction, laced with lunacy, vampires and insight... stuff like :
"Inhale the root’s blood, a
rain of bodies like a fall of soot
break upon the ground – out
there I hear them, they are the echoes of the golden masked priests and women
gripping their mother figurines. Frantically they frigg themselves with marble
phallus’ to placate the angry mother, to halt her shaking womb… I can fucking
taste their evanescence in the night, their molecules taint my tongue.
I lay there awake, my eyes
clutch the darkness. There is no moon. I lay there and my hand strays to her
side of the bed. She shrugs me off, irritating fly. By now I should know
better. By now I should not cross the line. I am sorry for caress, hungered by
my longing like a spike in the heart.
Closing my eyes I memorise her
form, I can picture her working the tables, the way she balances the steaming
plates of saganaki, hota, mousaka and carafes
of white wine like a pro. Her muscles
are silken, she moves with a fluidity, grace and poise.
with a
smile that blinds cupids
(binds fools to islands)
(floating in the sky)
where they do not belong!
A rift between us filled with
cats, the wind sour through the eaves. Remembering the moment I fell through
her eyes. Raised on a rock of ledges above the ocean of sighs and screams, carve
a tunnel to retreat the many faces that gawk down from moons and stars.
I reached the caverns heart -
deep, dark some fossilised womb
curled like foetus, dreamt
like Brutus, occultus lupinus
to stick out the sun
again and again
so I might lord above
the ocean’s screaming fire
I thought I could sacrifice
myself to you that I might surrender my beliefs upon your altar but the
mountain cracked beneath me, the ocean wave bellowed my name
and the serpent rose withered
in your name I thought in due course a gift for a gift
but now you waltz from my
touch
stick
me like a voodoo doll full of
tiny holes
I tumble to my allotted
quarters
crushed
serpent like"
The story weaves around the main character, Dan, who arrives on a volcanic island called Ioussa. He falls for a woman and becomes a resident, and his life begins to get very, very strange. The idea of the book was to provide a heady mix of prose, poetry and straight writing to create something a little different than the run of the mill genre fiction that packs the shop shelves.
