Stephen Brian Brady

in the night-rain
driven from the river
'cross the railway-tracks
at traffic-lights
...

the last train to the stars
would leave on time
...

in Spring
on the rail
it's that love thing
the white plastics pale
...

it was a sticky situation
'Orange or Lemon? '

the marmalade cat at hotel-reception
...

such a journey
looking out from our carriage
on this train
...

the small birds
have gone
nervous and twitching together
...

out of a parallel universe he came
and from low -down in the wall
as though he was always there
and I was the intruder
...

Georgie I'm alive dot com.
George I wasn't dead
I sort of threshed around a bit
I may have even bled
...

The Pantomime Horse
in the theatre corral
is proving unbroken
a wayward cheval
...

can't stop this invasion
can't call it fear
can't say it's delusion
can't recall last-year
...

I could have drawn a line in the sand
projected it into the sky
and the cormorant bisects the south-westerly gale
twenty yards offshore
...

Adapted from Chretien de Troyes
'Le Conte du Graal le Roman de Percival
...

the snake whiles-away his summer afternoons
tempting girls with apples at his stall
...

the watchman
lifts
the back-cloth
of the night
...

At the end of the line
there's a swinging door
where short-wave radio won't reach
...

the volunteering kings and queens
enrobe behind a chequered screen
...

encased inside his chrysalis
ate beanshoots prunes and cod
hung on for millenia
that embryonic god
...

whilst waiting
on inauspicious days
for flights
...

Nectar screams the poster on the wall
and as the petals fill the screen
does he think what might have been
...

a tentacle of fear
reaches out
and senses
where the sun never rises or sets
...