I visited an old acquaintance, a performance poet who had left the city some years before, and moved to the wilds of the north. Our friendship had always been tentative and slightly awkward, in that I had little respect for his work, and he, I knew, felt the same about mine. Still, after many years … Continue reading Automated Houses
Category: Dream
Snakes
We headed to the outskirts of the city to buy snakes, travelling by train to a dirt track beside a busy road. We saw them uncoiling by a long ditch that ran along the dark fields: long black snakes, muscular and flexuous, some of them two or three metres in length. Headlights picked up the … Continue reading Snakes
Chapel
In that dream, I walk through the woods near my childhood home, along the road towards my grandparents' house, a narrow, circuitous route over the railway lines, where I cycled regularly to find new places to play, idle and adventurous through those days of exquisite freedom. In the dream, it always dusk, long shadows cast … Continue reading Chapel
Dream of the Heart
It occupied me for many years, it continues to occupy me, for reasons I don't really understand. At the time, I worked in a restaurant, washing dishes and clearing out scraps of boiled meat and vegetables, the steamy waste of the kitchen. After work, I would cycle back through the late city, and it seems … Continue reading Dream of the Heart
Camden Dream
I tried to lose The Monk out past the lock, through the corridors of the market and the old horse hospital, where the smells of rising damp mixed with sandalwood incense and sausage fat. We headed out across the backstreets. The Monk liked to trump me with his experiences of Camden: pointing out a squat … Continue reading Camden Dream
Long-Dead Friend
I saw the sister of a long-dead friend in the alleyways behind the market. She stood underneath the awning of a fish-stall, ice melting around her feet, her reflection beaded on the bland eyes of red mullet, tilapia and grouper. We had known each other when very young, and I still remembered her as a … Continue reading Long-Dead Friend
The Frostman
Last night I dreamed of the Frostman again. I sat at a bank of desks in an open-plan office, talking to someone seated next to me. We had been making a joke, when the Frostman appeared: a pale, disheveled man, white stubble washing along his cheek like mica dust. He wore a long white cat, … Continue reading The Frostman
Absence Club 