Daedalus
Here at Camicos, you can be free, at least.
Back on that island, we were prisoners
at the request of the King: no way out.
But amazingly we found our way out,
and flew as fast as our feet would carry us.
Wings? No, you misunderstand ‘flight’.
We were on the run, after all. Continue reading
Ariadne
It was amazing luck, to get that clue.
Threading between the darkened outer rooms
he sought escape, the bull’s head in his arms.
The bass was thumping as the blood within.
She, grateful for assistance, guided him
outwards, his half-drunk feet still holding true.
They bounced it past the guards. So they were free:
(not Crete but Mykonos) though the summer’s heat
and adrenalin made the whole street a haze. Continue reading
Key Phrases
As one door opens, another closes. Bad things
come to those who wait. Time hales all wounds.
The world’s our oyster, sickly, most
of it unpalatable, waste.
He was the apple of her eye, rotten to the core;
she a peach, a stone for a heart. A real dead wire. Continue reading
Fell
The inhabitants of Samarah saw the tower on fire
and Carathis and Vathek sacrificed them. Light
guided them to where no fire was found.
Ivory’s great but is no match for steel.
Stone, even better. Blow the tower down.
Anthony Royal designed Canary Wharf. Continue reading
The Cashpoint
Transactions common passing strange.
Such buttons pressed may yield so much.
Coterminal a gift exchange.
Reciprocal presents as such.
Such buttons pressed may yield so much, Continue reading
Carthage
Dismissed as propaganda, it was true
that Carthaginians sacrificed the youth
to please and mollify the gods they knew,
but most did not believe it true, because
they did not want to think our ancestors
capable of such atrocities. Continue reading
The Mediums
It took a week for us to stop hearing the voices.
Although they had been our constant companions
for years by then, a steady stream of chatter,
it reached the point where they became unbearable.
Each message had become a death to us. Just a little
to start with, soft like the twitter of birds,
not too intrusive perhaps, but then more insistent
by the day, slowly overwhelming, until
our own voices, thoughts, were lost to theirs.
Eventually, it was us or them. They became Continue reading
