We had lives. Palestinian ones. In the silk grass curls tousled in the wind the smell of the sea Yemeni ones. Sitting on chairs too small for us a coffee and a friend a tasbih of cold carnelian between rough fingers We had lives. Syrian lives. Fresh tobacco  in a crowded cafe hovering above a…

Coleridge’s clock made of marble and of stone with a little man who strikes the hour Azrael in his cloak of rag and bone. ‘Beware! Beware!’ he cries from the top of the stair. High up in the Great Chamber of a fine country manor, a rickety old elevator will take you there. They’ve built…

Inspired by Hans Christian Anderson’s ‘The Phoenix Bird’ There is a little egg buried in the depths of the rubble. Born out of the blood of the very first rose that fell on that very first day, under a sky alight with the sins of these self-anointed  gods it trembles here now in its nest…

I have loved you. I have let your branches wrap their olive arms around my arms I have found myself bloodied in your nets, burning in your music I have forgotten I was there. I have forgotten I was here. It was night. We built a ship. And sailed the flood. And great whales  in…