The dream strikes at 3:33am every night, always coming at the end of the first sleep cycle. It creates duvet

I am willing to archive the world lonely/ or in solitude withal a fish,/ To archive the finny-plaice/ means extract

Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness./ Samuel Beckett// Consciousness

‘Solitary confinement is too terrible a punishment to inflict on any/ human being, no matter what his crime.

Morning breaks with a sound/ of glass-gray fog cracking/ against sharp green/ magnolia leaves and

Sometimes, she thinks about biting his finger. Especially in the mornings, during that hour or two after dawn

In the clearing, hunters hidden behind/ bush-shelters dug a dozen duck decoys/ in deep mud, imitated their

Lost in a wild forest where rivers run/ At counter cadence, I cannot step/ Into the river of my dream. Each

“A Rake’s Progress”, Plate 7, 1763// Was the white-wigged actor prompting/ his text while he supported the rake’s

These days are not easy ones/ but, look,/ the garden, full of colour and life/ with my little one running through

I was not there the day you left/ But I knew you had gone before she told me.// I felt the void somewhere

Against the oncoming/ traffic I managed// to guide the snake/ out of the street and// up the curb, but/ I did not

The drowned man/ didn't die after/ he tried to walk/ on the water,/ he simply learned/ to breathe submerged.

There is an invisible hand/ which keeps nudging me/ into traffic so often now/ I'm beginning to wonder/ if

I could only see the bird/ because it was darker/ than the night/ I woke in, the repetitive song/ of its turning

The cleansing touch/ of falling snow/ on the land/ belies the chaos it causes/ to traffic and livelihoods,

clocks tick off concrete/ locked doors and gates graft hot/ slang of blood and bone/ valves clot God's true

The darkness wrapped me in,/ and choked me until I gasped to death./ This was the time when writing

When I look back to/ The past days of my life,/ I see my childhood waits/ In the last of a crowded row/

The earth that birthed you,/ You buried her under your very own feet,/ cracks rising from the blistering heat.../