On the writing process. (2008)

Sit on the hard wooden chair, stare at the cluttered desk and the blank page. Pick up a pencil. Hold it, hovering, above the paper, considering the right word. The perfect word to begin the story. Realise that the pencil is not perfectly sharp. It is adequate, but not optimum. Root through stacks of paper and drawers full of junk for a sharpener. Find it hidden in a jar of odds and ends. Get up, go to the bin, sharpen the pencil to a deadly point.

Return slowly to the chair. Sit down. The paper is still blank. Create something brilliant. You are not good enough. Nothing you write will ever be perfect. Your words are clichés; nothing original or insightful could come from a mind as weak as yours.

Snap the pencil in half and throw the splintered parts across the room. They bounce off the walls leaving graphite grey impact marks. Stand slowly again and stumble to the bed. Lay down your ungainly body, curl up and stare at nothing and think of nothing. Blank and empty. You are nothing.


This is part one of a possibly endless endeavour to spam you all with my old writing efforts. I found my old hard drive, you see, and it’s endlessly fascinating in a narcissistic kind of way.

On the writing process. (2008)

Hell is neither fire nor brimstone

However much I invest in learning alchemy

or elemental magic,

It isn’t there

Sulphur has its own fire in the soul

Elements make this world

No devils


Hell ain’t other people neither

Though they be a bunch o fuckers


Your who is not a where

you aint aware

of this

and you aint a fire

you int

you int no thing

tho you aint nothing

more the pity



is here

Hell is the heart come barking

cluckin for dope years after the habit

howlin at the moon


hell is you

hell is being yourself

hell is where you are


hell is your useless bastard self

set alone

in the dark

For Pippa (A poem by the wonderful Kyle Norbury)




Laughing in the face of the dark gloomy reality,

Wit with the might to conquer the high and mighty,





You carelessly sinful nun,

Intensely real and non-pretentious like a female Bukowski,


A gothic black comedy butterfly fluttering high above through the rain,


For you’re proper fucking ace at poetry!




For Pippa (A poem by the wonderful Kyle Norbury)

NaPoWriMo 6


Look at her
They judge.
On her phone, the antisocial bitch
She should be acting like a normal person and making small talk on public transport
Like we do
I may be mentally ill but I’m not the kind that finds solace in strangers
I have the privilege of selecting my audience
The privilege of insight and inborn fear and being able to know
That I’m supposed to leave the general public alone
We’re an insular people let’s keep it that way, that’s what their straight-ahead gazes say.
So instead i watch em
Trapped together, still alone
And write notes about em on my phone.


Check out the whole of my NaPoWriMo effort, starting here.

NaPoWriMo 6

5. It slithers in at 4am.

Spine serpentine snakes coils flicks rigid
crawls through skin this
sweated penance crawls
into the heart

Remember the difference between arteries and veins:
veins go ve(IN) towards the centre of you
trying in vain to send a message of warmth to the core

Skin is permeable paper membrane
pierced by the faint glimmer of stars
the sharp ends of the moon’s whetted sickle
hundreds of hypodermics
Pierced by need
coiling kundlini rising from its fetid nest at base of spine
mouth agape fangs snagged on raw nerves
constricting crushing stomach ribs lungs liver to
grey pulp
from which it has sucked the stagnant blood

Serpent tongue flicks forked into thoughts
adrenal glands spasm faced with
horror. hardwired. primal.
A predator is close,
you are hunted
Wide-eyed prey
twitch like a rabbit. Break-
Dart free of your body, if you can –

O serpent of starvation, you will never be fulfilled



5. It slithers in at 4am.