I did everything he asked of me. Modest in all my dealings, I killed no-one slept with no man’s wife, spoke truth and thought on heaven. Then he said “Sell everything you have and give it to the poor.” A blow across the face could not have hurt me more. My life of cautious virtueContinue reading “The young man of great wealth”
Author Archives: Ian Stuart
My Time
written in Tippex on a broken house tile stamped out on a blank sheet of snow drawn by a finger on some foggy window scribbled in the back of an exercise book whispered in the darkness of a flickering cinema turned into a song by Ed Sheeran printed on T shirts, birthday cards, pencil casesContinue reading “My Time”
Junkyard
Down the dusty, data-blown back streetsof my computer’s hard drive liesthe dumping ground – the placewhere failed poems go to die,and fragments too, which make me feelembarrassed or ashamed –lines leading nowhere, overgrownwith lush, excessive, choking adjectives;a rusting heap ofContinue reading “Junkyard”
The Fetler
Buffalo shoulders and thighs like oak trees,
In the Beginning
God had a helicopter view
MH17
They fell out of the clouds like stones, smashing the sunflower fields, splitting, spilling on the hard summer roads. Their lives fell with them – letters, clothing, photographs, sunscreen, lipsticks, bags of sweets, passports to witness who they were and what they had become. They will not rise up, bones whole, flesh healed, brushing petalsContinue reading “MH17”
A transport of delight
When I was four I fell in love with trams. I loved the shape – a double decker cigar the glossy cherry-and-cream paint job the trapeze on top to catch electricity from the wires. IContinue reading “A transport of delight”
A new start ?
I haven’t been on WordPress for a long time and I’ll tell you why. To start with, I was ill. Every bone in my body ached and went on aching. And I was tired. I would go to bed at 6.30pm and wake up (after a bad night) at ten o’clock the following morning andContinue reading “A new start ?”
Haunted
Sometimes my longlost girlfriends come to haunt me.They steal into my dreams but never stay.They just drop in to see if I’m still happy.When I say “Yes” they smile and fade away. Kitty- cheekbones, legs, moved like a racehorse,county voice, a smouldering, sensual stare,is now a granny doing an OU coursewith dodgy hips and saltContinue reading “Haunted”
“Smuggler hides iguanas in wooden leg”
I would have got away with itbut for the noise –claws scratching at the woodthose gentle, coughing soundsiguanas make. “One moment, sir!”I knew that I was done for.” If you could come this way…” In my skivvies, standing on one leg,I watched him spring the secret trapdoor-out the tumbled, all my little darlings,skittering across theContinue reading ““Smuggler hides iguanas in wooden leg””
A Terrible Fear of Cheese 