Microfiction Monday: #55 1 November 2010

Completely missed last week’s MM, for various unfortunate reasons, but here, with thanks as always to Susan at Stony River: A Writing Life, is my contribution anyway:

You judge by appearance. An easy mistake; I understand. But I get up each morning; believe I’ll dust my broom. And I have black cat bones.

Poem: Pre-Raphealite

Can live with it?
Can live without it.

The dress holds in folds of canvas painted
And scapes of land fill
The world outwith the vanishing point.

Watch while we walk
Across Festival Square in our future:
I’m not quite sure where I stand.

I know exactly who I am.

And he or she can grow with you
In splendour slaving through inevitable days.

With or without me,
Store up the beauty of the leaving years,
Until you know your eyes are right in seeing
Joy.

17 September 2003

Poem: 21st Century Leith

Every day I am weaving through stories,
Science fiction landscapes.

Couples argue on the sidewalks,
Old men sell tobacco,
And I step on through the people

Vaguely worried about the War
And whether summer comes
Now or never.

I’ve watched us walk
Past Chinese restuarants,

I’ve watched us stare
At mounted televisions
Perched high above us in the corner
As we spend sun-laid evenings
In a random local bar.

I’ve watched and I’ve wandered and I’ve seen:
We are the best we’ve ever been.

28 June 2003

Microfiction Monday: #53 18 October 2010

Each week, the devoted Susan at Stony River: A Writing Life gifts writers a picture to inspire a tale in 140 characters. Here’s my latest:

The Anchoress believed her bricked-up devotion would turn water into wine and feed five thousand. Her husband hoped her devotion was his.

Poem: Genius Loci

Sun sinks into concrete
Where history seeps deep:
Heat and history do not sleep
In stones where strangers meet,

Where strangers met.
This fabric holds and hosts
This gathering of ghosts,
This memory net

Wherein I roil and recall
Events and their recoil.
This concrete’s fertile soil
Records each rise and fall

Which fell into a sunrise
And startled itself alive.
The departures will arrive;
Still stone will turn hearts’ eyes.

22 May 2004

Microfiction Monday: #52 11 October 2010

Gosh, it’s Monday already! And time for Super-inspiring Susan at Stony River: A Writing Life to place before a us tale-firing pic in whose light we wrestle 140 characters. Here’s mine:

The suitcase rolls on wheels within wheels; wheels roll along parallel rails. The path I have followed follows me down the platform.

Photos: Folk In Leith 10

And here’s this week’s photos of random folk rambling 'round Leith. Since it’s Set Number 10, there’s a theme this week – colours! Titles under the example, and you can find out why I do this here.

Yellow; Grey; Purple; Black; Emerald; Pink; Blue; Tangerine; Turquoise; Red.

Microfiction Monday: #51 4 October 2010

Every Monday, the multi-talented Susan at Stony River: A Writing Life puts up a pic to spur all who want to to tell a tale within 140 characters. Anyone who wants then gets creating. This week I came up with this:

I had the gold hat and the robes, the lakes and the castles. I had the plumage and the riches. She held the reins of the flying horse.

Photos: Folk In Leith 09

Bit of a delay since my last batch, but here’s another few photos of random folk rambling 'round Leith. Titles under the example, and you can find out why I do this here.

Shades Of Normality; Work In Progress; We Are Open; Love Among The Ruins; Concern; Don't Mess With My Best Friend; Big Deal; You Lookin' At Me?; Father And Son; Joy.

Microfiction Monday: #50 27 September 2010

Every Monday, the splendid Susan at Stony River: A Writing Life posts a picture to inspire a tale within 140 characters. Anyone who wants then gets creating. Here's this week's illustration with my extrapolation:

Watching the tankers stroll up the Sound, recalling how slowly life passed and how fast. Technology changed quicker than my heart.

Photos: Folk In Leith 08

Here’s a further ten photos of random folk rambling 'round Leith. The titles are listed under the sample, and you can find out why I do this here.

The Reader; Onwards And Upwards; Running; Slow Dazzle; Silver; Walking Or Driving; Spectacles; Window Seat; Multi-tasking; Wisdom.

Photos: Folk In Leith 07

I've managed to post another batch of photos of random people rambling 'round Leith here. The titles are listed below the below example, and you can find out why I do this here.

Shellsuit Heroes; Unicef; Denim Hotpants; Solace; Wraparounds and Roses; Capital Menswear; Laminate; Homecoming; Scavenging; Me And My Shadow.

Microfiction Monday: #46 30 August 2010

Every Monday, the heroic Susan at Stony River: A Writing Life posts a picture to inspire a tale within 140 characters. We all who wish to then get typing. Here's this week's picture with my contribution:

Drugs shrink below the sky, girls can’t curve like pines curve, fame’s a gutter by the highway. Hell take Coolville, I’m heading to Belpre.

Photos: Gorgie Inhabitants

I missed putting up my usual selection of photos of Folk In Leith this week, for dull internet connection reasons. But amidst such troubles, I also had occasion to venture into Gorgie/Dalry and see how the other half live.

Much the same as us in Leith it turns out, though obviously rather less stylishly. So as way of scant compensation for lack of Leith photos, here be some Gorgie equivalents.

Note for non-Edinburgh dwellers: Leith and Gorgie sit at opposite ends of Princes Street, our main thoroughfare, and maintain a healthy rivalry. Football-wise, Leith has Hibs and Gorgie has Hearts, and everyone in either who has no interest in the footie knows exactly which side they’re on notwithstanding. Leith has the poetry and the art, and Gorgie has... well, something.

Bench; Skull; Fingernails; Ales & Lagers, Wines & Spirits; Swerve; Pink Top; Flyswatting; When Lights Flash; Proud Moustache; Out For The Paper

Poem: A Poet To An Artist (For Stephen Kingham)

Take these words and draw them out

in a long silver line across the page

with the languor of skin and the muscle of blood;
the light of stone and the gold
of the morning city in mist.

Take up ink and twist these echoes into eyes,
forge a further focus, blur typography,
nail glass rain on to your canvas,

create distractions to describe
the gentle knife of time;
describe destructions to create

these words undressed and open-mouthed.

23 March 2003

Microfiction Monday: #45 23 August 2010

Every Monday, super Susan at Stony River: A Writing Life adds an image to incite a story within 140 characters. Whoever wishes to then does what they will with said incitement. Here's this week's picture with my contribution:

Reading books, I find they merely outline what is inside and instead explore my outside; my movements and my garments. So I’m soulless.

Poem: Remembrance

An unhappy day.

A dot in the constellation of days,
And life goes on
Until the end and then who cares?

The unimaginable stretch of space,
The unimaginable stretch of time –
Imagine it.

Sit, slug-eyed and reminiscent,
Angry and/or depressed,

You’re just one more fragment of the world,
One more body drawing breath,

Until you don’t.

Do you do what you can, did you do what you could?

13 November 2006

Photos: Folk In Leith 06

I've now posted this week's batch of photos of random people rambling 'round Leith here. The titles are listed below the below example, and you can find out why I do this here.

Alhambra Buddies; Almost Home; Kebab Shop Break; Green Stripe; Role Model; Careering; The Spice Of Life; Plaid; Trio; Cloudy Girl

Microfiction Monday: #44 16 August 2010

Every Monday, the inspirational Susan at Stony River: A Writing Life provides an image to provoke a story within 140 characters. Whoever wishes to then does what they will with said provocation. Here's this week's photo with my contribution:

I, grounded in grass, stand guard in her garden. Behind me, oblivious to chivalry, Guinevere’s descendant shears hedges with electricity.

Poem: Beats

Jack Kerouac once looked out

From a body like mine:

Saw the curtains hanging
And heard the cars outside.

Jack put records on the gramophone,
Staring down at his own hands.

Jack held and changed opinions
Depending on his heart,

Which fluttered and decayed inside him
Like any other heart.

And any other heart
Beats like this and yet persists

In living, heartened.

21 July 2003

Photos: Folk In Leith 01 to 05

One of my ongoing projects is photographing my beloved Leith. A strand of this involves the random folk I pass in the street.

The aim – as far as an image can have an aim – is twofold.

Firstly, to snatch glances into the lives of those whose lives are so briefly passing through mine. Secondly, to document the history of the present moment in Leith.

Every week, normally on a Tuesday, I upload a further ten pictures to flickr. So far, five instalments are up, containing photos as listed below. Click on a link if you’re interested!

Folk In Leith 01

Girls Walk By Balfours; Old Friends In The Sunshine; Woman With Toddlers Outside Iceland; Bus Shelter - 130% More Visible Length; Plaster And Pampers; Laughing With A Friend; The Song Remains The Same; Eating A TESCO Sandwich; A Scotsman In The Rain; I Have A Cigarette And A Dog And I Need No More

Folk In Leith 02

Parallel Worlds; Making A Difference; Push Chair; Cash Machine; Woman With Dogs; Worker; Bird In Flight; The Kids Are Alright; The Bairns; Bus Stop

Folk In Leith 03

Scowl; Waterproof; Child Running; Scarlet; Families; We Want Your Gold!; Cyclists; Green Man; Smoking; Machismo

Folk In Leith 04

Beige Landscape; Dunwalkin'; Outside; Attitude; Under The Gaze Of Irvine Welsh; Echoes; Conversation; The Eyes Have It; Leaning; Park

Folk In Leith 05

Parking; New York; Sittiing; Generations; Cleansing; Girl In Scotmid; Bohemian; Observer; Mother And Daughter - Hair; Beautiful Woman

Microfiction Monday: #43 9 August 2010

Every Monday, the gracious Susan at Stony River: A Writing Life provides an image to inspire a story within 140 characters. Whoever wishes to then does what they will with said inspiration. Here's this week's photo with my resultant piece:

Clearing your possessions, now that you’re gone, I recall the postcard shop, the smell of the City. I remember wishing you were there.

Poem: The Shattering

We are bullets shattering through glass;
Frightening the speed we move at through the world
Proud of the small cracks we leave:

The velocity of our short span
Is nothing compared to our impact.

We hit and miss, kill or kiss,
Both at once. Each of us tiny bullets

Leaving tiny bulletholes in our hapless wakes.

But it’s only glass,
Only the world.

There’ll be other glass,
Other worlds,
After us.

So we have to focus on the cracks
We leave:

The cracks
That shattering
We create.

1 August 2010

Microfiction Monday: #42 2 August 2010

Every Monday, the lovely Susan at Stony River: A Writing Life provides a picture to inspire a story within 140 characters. Whoever wishes to then does what they will with said inspiration. Here's this week's photo with my resultant short tale:

Overgrown, my bones made of stone, I lie here and listen. The tour guide talks of the war in which I fell.