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.
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.
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 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.
Previously on Blade Walker: the earth is inhabited by extraterrestrials, and humans are an endangered species. Blade Walker (human) and Alícia (alien) have been freed from mind-controlling insects by an electromagnet in Rick’s scrapyard. The previous episode is here.
Alícia was always herself,
and now I was me again as well,
following my path of faux pas.
But I wasn’t a shallow as I used to be,
because I had a secret.
To be consumed by her freezing flame,
hot as dry ice, an unrenounceable
illiterate desire that drove
my past and drives my future.
All I see, all I hear, all I touch,
all around me is the realm of Jaci.
Fragile as a ghost, I drifted
on a moonlit beach
in the Shoal Haven,
oblivious to the obvious.
A message was written in the sand,
cursive, but not by any hand.
The Architecture of the Sea,
a short course on the shore,
taught by a moray eel.