Ripped To Bits By Ghosts

I moved into my workshop, with a gas-ring and pair of chickens in a cage. I needed no assistants. I watched the sky from a hilltop laboratory, harnessing the lightning.

In reality I sleep under the stairs in my friends’ flat. He’s a motorcycle courier, she’s a receptionist. I work where I can, wherever the agency sends me, seven days a week. If I’m ill I rely on her noticing and bringing me soup or something. I have a notebook to record my dreams. Huge flights of geese turn furrows through the red November skies. Worlds can barely contain me.

From Guest Contributor Geoff Sawers

We Lost A Room Last Night

We found a house out on the dunes, beyond the golf course. The conservatory had crumbled already but soon a jagged fissure opened up across the living-room floor. Soon the front door burst from its hinges and other people started to show up. A tramp slept on the wrong side of the crack one night; he was gone in the morning but we didn't know where. You know we'll have to leave here soon, she said one night as she held me. Maybe head up the coast? I squeezed her back and we watched a window slip from its frame.

From Guest Contributor Geoff Sawers

Sparks

I lit a fire in the garden brazier and threw in all my notebooks. If books are shut they burn slowly but if you fan them out they may catch; soon the blaze was roaring sparks up into the arms of Orion, poised with his great stellar fire-blanket. Passport, driving licence, certificates: orange heat, a feeling of rage and an aftertaste of rubber and almonds. Then I jumped, arms turning into wings, I took the fire into myself. Then I was the stars, then I knew, I was the burning. Singed feathers, and now I could be the morning mist.

From Guest Contributor Geoff Sawers