Artwork Bushland River—more detail, full artwork and technical description below.
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And if there were a quiet garden,
cosy and safe, in some forgotten
postcode where time trickles like honey,
and where I might pause and know,
not that my struggles were in vain,
Artwork Incarnate on the Inside—more detail, full artwork and technical description below.
The Summer of the Seventeenth Heatwave
“… then the waterfowl,
in silent affirmation,
chose me as their leader …
“… and in the summer
of the seventeenth heatwave,
I followed my dreams to where
the flowers bloom after dark …
Chair Exhibition now on at Articulate Project Space. Images show detail of artworks generated with my Visual Evolution Engine. Natural textures enhanced by AI’s Stable Diffusion: the approach makes little use of prompts & relies on ControlNet.
Here is the full text of Going Back—
Seeking the faraway
lighthouse in
self-sufficient
adoration.
Infatuations, adapted from full poem here—
When the world was flat,
I was lost in a dream
that was not my own,
in a mistaken reality.
Grander Compass (abridged above). Full poem here—
This we do, we humans—
we imagine a grander compass,
a glorious context for the quotidian
around us: passages to the underworld,
gateways to the lost monuments
of paradise.
Latest news: Texture of Silence illustrations have made the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Longlist for Best Artwork.
The waves that once washed along
O’Connell Street have taken the bus
south to Cronulla. Although they paid
their fare, the other passengers
complained loudly, and not a few
disembarked.
Poetry The Everwind and artwork x 4 from the Beyond AI Project, powered by the Visual Evolution Engine.
Coming soon, “Texture of Silence.” Info below.
Long ago, there were castles
carved of ice in the frozen South.
Auroral fireworks flowered
from their ramparts,
and rained liquid silverlight
into shadows to equalise
the darkness.
My story “The Beautiful Horizon” in The Purpose of Reality: Solar has been shortlisted for the 2022 Aurealis Awards in the Fantasy Short Story Category. Info about The Purpose of Reality collections below.
They’ve built a block of apartments
across the street, all the way along.
My neighbors over there had to vacate,
but I heard a little wailing
beneath the motors’ roar
when the night machines
ground their houses to gravel.
In my youth, I pored over arcane
manuscripts, in the vain belief
that I could comprehend
their mysteries.
He won a prize at the Marimbondo Circus,
proxime accessit, said that he treasured it,
more or less.
Compasses and crossroads
confused him, and he couldn’t tell
the narrator from the narratee.
The skyward myths, the poppy-field poets,
have vanished, the inexpressible
has evanesced above the tar pits
like the long-lost Brachiosauridae,
and in the cities, all that’s left is
Amazon and online dreams.
The Purpose of Reality illustrated short story and poetry collections from Meerkat Press, with pretty fair reviews from Publishers Weekly and the like, now available on Amazon and at other outlets, click for details including reviews.
“It’s time to write in the first person,”
he declared, “no more
of the inconsequential,
the vaporous, the bland quotidian.”
The Purpose of Reality illustrated short story and poetry volumes from Meerkat Press, with fair reviews from Publishers Weekly and the like, now available on Amazon and at other outlets, click for details including reviews.
Beyond the glass, the water birds
are gliding on the rails of rain,
and, for a moment,
their distant pattering melody
recalls a semblance
of another chance
at hopefulness—even with
the knowing that it’s far too late
for all of that.
The Purpose of Reality, illustrated short stories and poetry from Meerkat Press. They’ve had some pretty fair reviews from Publishers Weekly and the like. Now available to order on Amazon, and at other outlets. Purchase, review, and other info here.
Location, location, location,
the realtor’s dream of sifting
through the time stream’s rows
of single bed room nights
in the company of shades and shadows,
and never lost in someone else’s thoughts.
The rain was running late, still pattering
on the muddy puddles of the city sky,
and the street was smeared with cloud
star-ridden with mercury lamps—
a world as dreary as long-lost
infatuation, as a friend’s anger,
as empty jealousy.
Like a moth attracted
to the flickers of fluorescent lights,
I chose a frayed café where
my dairy-whitened instant coffee
with artificial sweetener
—all its chemical delights—
put me in the writing mood.