“He wanted to know where the guns were” Lise sobbed, her rapidly swelling eye starkly outlined in red against the clammy pallor of her skin. “He wouldn’t believe Dave when he said we didn’t have any firearms. He just kept kicking Dave in the stomach every time Dave told him and then he …..

This week, I have had a small taste, an inkling, of what it must be like to grow old; to have my wits and faculties desert me while my body grows weaker by the day.

Cha-cha’s brilliant green eyes watch me lazily from her favourite spot on the duvet as she basks in the glorious sun that streams through my bedroom window on winter afternoons.

Just for a moment
I stopped to smell the roses.
There in the fresh air,

I discovered that
my nose no longer discerned
the scent of flowers;

its range diluted
by the permeating stench
of life corrupted.

Easier by far
to believe the very worst
than cultivate hope -

in the twilight hours -
that the monsters that wait there
for the inky dark

will blunt their sharp teeth

As he descended the stairs, disgruntled that the body had provided nothing in the way of clarification, Morgan felt defeated. All he had was conjecture, rumour and a strong hunch; nothing added up to any kind of coherent scenario.

A disheveled Ian Morgan ran his hands through his hair as he sat at the desk inside the morgue archive room.

Elias Ndudo listened as Morgan relayed the boy’s tale to him. The more he heard about it, the less certain he became that the police would solve this case. There was something preternatural about this fire; this death.

Wondering how he could give Morgan the slip for a little while, Elias was relieved when Morgan opted to follow up on the cause of the Palframan baby’s death.

Ice’s eyes followed Sarah’s shapely derriere as she left the room and then returned to the table where Patsy Palframan’s eviscerated body lay. Not waiting for Sarah’s return, he began a more thorough investigation of what might have been Patsy’s cause of death.

Fifteen minutes later, Sarah found Ice sitting on a chair on the verandah outside wreathed in cigarette smoke.

Holding the cellphone up to his ear, Inspector Ian Morgan motioned to his partner, Elias Ndudo, to come over. Terminating the call, he turned to Elias with a worried look on his face.

“That was Ice van Eck on the line. Mrs Palframan suffocated all right…but not because of the fire.”

“Ice” van Eck strode down the sparsely lit corridor that led to his domain; the city morgue. Once inside the pristine theatre area, Ice was pleased to notice that his intern had arranged to have Mrs Palframan’s body removed from the freezer and placed on the autopsy table in preparation for his examination. She was a bright, proactive young thing and sexy to boot.

“What a fucking mess!” Inspector Ian Morgan swore bleakly to himself as he surveyed the blackened outline of what was left of Patsy Palframan’s house from the overgrown garden; now waterlogged and blanketed with a grimy layer of wet soot. His shoes squelched as he walked the perimeter of the grounds tugging on his cigarette nervously before entering the fray.

Comfortably ensconced in the worn yellowwood rocking chair, Patsy listens to the loud tick-tock of the enormous grandfather clock; her eyes following the rhythmic sway of the pendulum as it moves back and forth in front of the heavy silver counterweights. The hands tell her that the time is just past quarter to eleven.

And the black wings snap
as they meet and then bear down
- against the pressure -

into the wind’s teeth
and hover for a second
before the next pass over.

An Angel of Death -
face veiled against the night chill
- clad in black and white.

Wheeling, he circles
above the suburban house;
breathing in the grey

that seeps from its walls
and upwards into the sky.

It’s no use! Despite my best efforts, I can’t seem to summon up any enthusiasm for writing at the moment. Besides mulling over a few storylines that don’t seem to be coalescing into anything solid, my brain feels as impervious to excitement and/or motivation as a limp dick without the benefit of delusions of grandeur.

I’ve always been fascinated about the origins of obscure English sayings.

As a child, I can remember my father describing a particularly half-hearted effort as “a 5/8ths job”. Of course, we children soon got the gist that it meant substandard, second-rate or unsatisfactory judging by his reactions, which ran the gamut from frustrated, disappointed or just plain pissed-off.

I was sent this picture this morning via email and thought it was an opportunity to see if I could master the uploading procedure.

Pan and I watched two very good DVD movies last weekend that I’d like to recommend to my fellow bloggers.

He shouted it loud
so that all could hear his voice.
“This woman is mine.

She will be my wife”.
The crowd clapped their hands and sang
‘la Felicidad’.

The lady sat down
on the chair; her eyes downcast
and her cheeks so pale.

He forced up her chin
and kissed her hard on the lips
in front of his men.

A stranger came in
through the cantina’s entrance.

Black storm clouds scatter
and disperse with the four winds
as the sun comes out.

A watery glow
infuses the verdant fields
with colour and light.

Shoots pop their heads up
to greet the newly born day;
washed clean by the rain.

Flying ants circle
and mate before the sun sets.
Some do not return.

Water laden streams
carry sustenance abroad;
feeding the hungry.

Huallpa trailed her cold fingers over the polished granite walls, tracing the grooves where the blocks were snugly joined. Relieved from the daily tedium of tending to the crops, she watched the valley below for the arrival of the wagon train that would bring surplus corn, potatoes and brightly coloured woven textiles to Machu Pichu from other villages from within the empire.