Casting Runes

What price the steaming goat entrails

Coiling on a dusty Roman street?

The clouded mysticism of a crystal ball

Peered into for some future comfort?

The divination of ancient Gods

To tell us where our slouching bodies go?

The smoke and mirrors of

fortune teller, crystal-gazer, spaewife, seer,

soothsayer, sibyl, clairvoyant, prophet,

oracle, augu...

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The Mandrake Curse

I spied the purple mandrake flowers

Sitting in their nest of green

And foolishly looked to rip them

From the earth they serenely sat upon

And everywhere a shriek echoed

Across the woods and leafy vales

and to my weary eyes I saw

The bulbous body resurrected

A face demonic in its glare

For being torn from fitful slumber

Wizened arms of k...

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Grit

I cannot say for certain where I’m ‘from’

beyond the day I crawled into this world

and that’s the way I like it, truth be told,

to shape my own existence from the start.

That blond boy there with freckles and basin cut,

a shy one, wearing simple NHS specs,

in clothes bought big so he could grow

to fill them on a diet of Yorkshire pud.

An artist’s bent...

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