Poetry & art Darklight: full artwork and technical description below.
The dream began with a melody,
an unsteady pulse.
Time was a pale mist,
a lazy shoal of raindrops.
I journeyed to another world,
and night gave way to sunlight
that trickled like honey.
What We May Learn of Truth and Flowers—full artwork and technical description below. Coming in 2026, The Origins of Time.
What We May Learn of Truth and Flowers
On a quiet summer morning,
you told me that you’d fallen
in love with someone else.
Artwork Solar Creation 2—full artwork and technical description below. Coming in 2026, The Origins of Time.
Selena
There are those who would
strip her secrets away, leaving
only dry and dusty bones.
Others seek an illusionary stranger
who never inhabited her body.
Artwork Burning Summer Flux—more detail, full artwork, and technical description below. Coming in 2026, The Origins of Time.
Time Passing
Madeleine had painted her ceiling
black, splashed it with stars
and a waning crescent moon.
Artwork Bushland River—more detail, full artwork and technical description below.
Conditional
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,
I cannot comprehend the thinking of others,
their symbolics and demarcations,
dressed in their effete stigmata,
flowing in Babel’s river
to the sea.
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.
I read a little of “Howe to Writte”
by someone called Blade Walker:
Do not write about yourself,
you might scribble regrettable revelations:
poisonous reflections of venomous memory,
elaborations of fears unfounded,
of solitude without solace.
Three irreconcilable pieces.
I’ve spent a lifetime being who I’m not,
yet my stigmata cannot be disguised—
nervous mannerisms, and
a dash of desperation in the eyes.
Previously on Blade Walker: The earth is inhabited by extraterrestrials, and humans are mostly confined to sanctuaries. Blade Walker and Alícia Arrepio were eating mangoes by a river when a sinkhole opened and spread. Here is the first instalment and here, the second instalment.
A buzzing sound rose
from the newly formed crevasse,
and a swarm of giant wasps emerged.
Previously on Blade Walker: Blade Walker and Alícia Arrepio were eating mangoes by a river when a sinkhole opened nearby and a factory disappeared into it.
“When I’m waiting for the bus
at the railway station,
I often wonder what’s hiding
in the ground beneath my feet.
“When I’m walking the dog
with my yo-yo as well.
“Most of the time, actually.”
Alícia nodded.
“You’re human, aren’t you?”
The midday insects buzzed in the gum trees,
and invisible heat refracted distant waterfowl.
With the scenery out of the way,
I approached a stranger seated
at the water’s edge.
“I’ve come to warn you.
The river’s flow is orthogonal
between its shores,
and its cloudy blue is beyond
all that is natural.
The clock in the kitchen ticks
inexorably, until the battery’s flat,
undirected, purposeless in time.
Causality suspends us
at the neck
of our hourglass.