Morning Thoughts

Summer doesn’t come round again
Because no two summers are the same.
If you’re waiting for love to revisit
The parks and sofas and cars,
They’re gone – under concrete,
Crushed and melted down, landfill.

No, summer won’t come round again,
Look forward to the unborn,
Look backward to the long gone.
In winter, don’t wish your life away.
There will be another season
For you, there will be a new day.

*

The mile-high club is grounded.
Sand dunes on that beach are in tier four.
There are cobwebs in the public toilets.
(Mind you, there always were.)
The back row of the flicks is nixed.
Wake up little Susy, it’s over, we’re dead.

*

You can look at it one of two ways.
You can say there’s sodden paper
On the ground
Or
Sunlight shines on one side
Of the weed-grown back lane
Behind the shopping parade.

A smell of paint thinner is in the breeze
And the corner of an outdated poster
On a gable billboard
Opens like a door.

Day of the Flying Leaves / Autumn Rain

Our supple living green has turned to paper.
Rusty, soon-to-be shadows wander around.
The rushing south-westerly is a friend,
saying anyway it’s time to blow this town.

*

Autumn rain darkens terracotta tiles
to match the rotting leaves, tones down
white eaves, redbrick walls and gables,
soaking pavements from beige to brown.

Even the clouds, leading my way
at dusk, back down this road in Harrow,
kiss goodbye to pearlescent yesterdays,
thinking, echoing only woodsmoke.

The London Silence and Other Stories – a new edition

Cover (front/back)*

I have made a revised edition of my short story collection available as an Amazon independently published paperback and also for Kindle. I’m not a fan of Amazon as a business for certain reasons but I’m glad their service enables this new publication. Here is my Amazon author page.

* Photos: Night scene, Shoreditch/Cobbled street, Dublin by Stephen Moran

Who’s Afraid of the Cold East Wind?

18/9/2020: Featured in the City Lit Writing Department poetry performance showcase

Gone mad here counting*

Over the past sixteen years, I have been instrumental in publishing 139 short stories by 113 writers, not counting myself, from Bosnia, Canada, China, England, India, Ireland, Nepal, New Zealand, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Russia, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, USA and Wales.

The last few were online and the rest were in 11 anthologies. I also co-edited two anthologies of poetry. Sales have been very poor but the writers I picked have gone on to win all the major prizes for short stories [and, more importantly, continue to be lovely people. Ed.]

Link: Index of contributors to the New Short Stories book series and Story of the Month

* With a nod to The Onion Eaters by J.P. Donleavy