Missing Zero

“For most sufferers  — there is hope; for me there seemed none in this life. I had been singled from women to be cursed above all others of whom I had ever heard.” So writes Alexander Hamilton’s grandniece Julia Schuyler in her confessional novel Brockley Moor, published anonymously, in New York, in 1874. The eldest child of the Bernie Madoff of his day, Julia had good reason to feel…

Reason divorced from reality. Wit’s end. The base of the tree of life –Malkuth. The dense physical vibration that creates the illusion of the material world we are trapped in. Here I sit. Another rejection letter received. Another inch past the edge of reality… Qabalistically speaking, my anxieties are deeply rooted — there be dragons here! The Magickal Tarot deck

It took my mother 12 days to die In the hospice. On the penultimate day I found her Asleep, only the radio was on And I listened a little awed To a programme about Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, I sat down In the plastic visitor’s chair And really listened to my mother Snoring, maybe for the first time And the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, she only had one more day Left to live and I had…

While catching up with a fellow blogger today (The Holistic Wayfarer), I started to complain about my general ongoing lack of inspiration to write anything currently, when my mind went off on a weird tangent, as it is frequently wont to do.

I then posted some silly remark about my sitting in Ernest Hemingway’s favorite writing chair. Immediately after which I dimly recalled once reading how…

relax this is a poem not a test believe me you can’t fail there is no quiz at the end no subtext or obscure hidden meaning to wrestle with just this brief exchange of words between us

don’t tell anybody about this place the woman said but I can’t resist the temptation a vision of paradise heaven on earth in her eyes a place to rest the body mind spirit safe haven beneath clear blue skies

saving time from what? what unspeakable evil is it that besets time that it needs rescuing so?

time-saving aids are promised us as lifelines to a better life

but what if I should prove unworthy and time should perish on my watch?

I can’t exactly confess to having been afflicted with writer’s block this past year. For instead it’s truer to say I had instead given up on being a writer altogether.

Ironically, however, the circumstances leading to my complete abandonment of my craft, I believe, make for an interesting enough story on reflection.

After having seen my debut novel sink beneath the waves of global indifference, I…

1. To find solace in words, when the myriad injustices and inequities of the world begin to weigh too heavily on my mind

2. To seek escape from the monotonous inner-monologue of anxieties and woes I plague myself with during times of forced idleness

3. Because I am a narcissist and therefore like to show off shamelessly

4. For, as an incurable optimist, I still cling to the slim hope that with…

A man in textured cotton trousers stood in the doorway, wearing a heavy smile. The man, not the door, that is. Gravity aggrieved him evidently. The drooping corners of his half-grinning, half-grimacing mouth sagged after the same fashion as the tired bow of his shoulders.

He could well have come straight on from a local funeral. The pall of a pallbearer hung around him. Palpably so. All around…

when the scientists have proved to their satisfaction all that we see, including us as well as infinite space-time and everything in it is a hologram projected from the rim of the cosmos—as many feel will soon be the case—what then will when the…

perched on its crossbar of wood the crow chokes on a vowel waiting the same as every day for a sight it never did see before biding time till a new day breaks while all the time growing weary from nothing different to report other than the somber croak it…

there is no poetry coursing through my veins when I first stare at the blank page the grip of inspiration yet to take a hold of me and that time come when I should feel again like a wolf ensnared in a steel trap for instead at first I taste the familiar…

continental drift creates a consciousness shift where nations are formed along geographical borders the human species disperses like an implosion in reverse all corners crammed with our shared dna but then out come the sums of long embittered division sour…

All initiation calls for a sacrifice the bloodier and more brutal the better the subincision of the penis or the knocking out of the two front teeth if survived, would guarantee one’s acceptance as an adult worthy of the name. However, in our modern world…

“love it, leave it and love it some more…” implores the torch-song singer singing her song of old world heartache this siren of a faded bakelite age her grip on the microphone like she’s got a fistful of her dirty lover’s spine the band on their break leav…

I’ve been crying out and searching for your ghost all these twenty-five years or more along dead-end streets with changed names and the outpouring of sorrow it did elicit to remind others of your fate has made me carry a pariah’s shame every step of the…