Ashling Lynch

Alf, on a bleak December day
Dave perceives it as a bleak December day. Really, it is just a December day. Although, if we’re honest, what is December but a human construct for compartmentalizing existence? Not that Dave cares about that right now.

Alf, on a bleak December day
Dave perceives it as a bleak December day. Really, it is just a December day. Although, if we’re honest, what is December but a human construct for compartmentalizing existence? Not that Dave cares about that right now.

Athena Sydney

How can something so sweet taste so wrong?
A Dutch television journalist is trying to draw more attention to this subject and has set up a petition for him to be arrested. Since he believes he is aiding and abetting crimes against humanity by purchasing chocolate, he wants to be incarcerated for h

Andrea Wong

Some days pass quickly
I sit around a fire on a tarp, a wool blanket over my legs. James squishes me. Martin feeds me marshmallows. Eleven of us in a car on winding streets and I see a ring around the moon.

Summer In A Small Town
When in July Summer’s scorchèd breath sighs And college students have said their good-byes, Locals of culturally unaware towns Don short-sleeved attire and work on their frowns.

Bob Grey

When Bob Met Mommy and Daddy
The people are really nice. I think they are more American than some of the people that are here. More in your face, you know. Like WHOOOOO!

When Bob Met Mommy and Daddy, part two
Welcome to the second half of a conversation, I had in a filthy dressing room we pinched from the Wannadies, with the delightful duo that is Mommy And Daddy. We return at the point where I try and wind them up with a topic I know to be contentious...

Barbara Heron

Questions?
I bet you smile like that at everyone. I bet my absence from your life doesn't trouble you one little bit. Do you enjoy my attention or does it bug you? Do you laugh at me when I leave the room?

Cerridwen

Strawberry Fields
He was tiny; I towered over him. I would have fancied him to be an elderly leprechaun except that when he spoke to me, he had a thick German accent. He walked up to me and said, in a very courtly manner, "Excuse me, young lady, but would you mind taking a

D J Cargill

Junk Food
The remains of a large doner with chilli sauce lies disembowelled in the market place where as a child I fell on the cobbled stones fracturing my knee and hobbling me for life.

Daniel Reid

Mr. Baldwin
The mother finally makes it clear she needs someone to call her a cab. "Does anyone know the number?" floats around the line up like a plastic bag in a windstorm.

Cafe
Population eighteen hundred and forty one. A town so small it still uses angle parking with plenty of available spaces. And to my shocking disbelief, there wasn't a parking meter anywhere. How could any city, town or village survive without miserly scr

Hudson
>My friend came back and as he put two bottles of domestic beer on the table, they landed with a splash. I reminded him that I only drank Bordeaux, but he told me to shut up and drink the beer. This was no place for wine, unless it was out of a box or in

Daniel Rudd

DON'T BUT DON'T/ FAGMAN/ APOSTLE BOOGIE
'Pass the water' / 'Where's the bread?' /'I missed that last bit,

1,2,3,4sake/The thinker and the doer/The boy with the red coat for skin
Caught the sun when he looked at the skies

The Bird, The Bee and the Face
I have offered the bird no food nor has it ever entered the room to acquire any. In fact, it has never entered the room at all; even in the hellish weather which often follows it's sweet, ethereal song.

Four Minute Myle

A Childhood
'Then Vicky came round the corner and banged into me' We always took turns to blame each other. Now there's team work if I've ever seen it.

Gayle Anderson

Ward 5
That night I remember. I remember the sweets he kept in the cupboard behind his chair. I remember helping him plant seeds in the greenhouse. When they grow up they will go into the garden, he has the most beautiful garden. I remember everything.

George B

Excerpt from a teenage opera
That's it - if I could take all the balloons from the street balloon-sellers and set them free above the heads of the startled passers-by, I would do it with great pleasure.

Gordon McIntyre

The Light Bulb
It started as a pub conversation about boring things and what we can endure - and it became a bet - or at least a point to prove.

James Beneitz

Stay, Hit, Split
I've decided to wait three more hands and then head outside, not only to flee the casino, but also to flee Harold and Al, both of whom, riding their respective waves of probability, are heading toward a painful crash, most likely into each other.

James Danson Hatcher

Realisation of what was wrong - chapter 1
He took out one of his keys and into the trains plastic window he carved "Saver Returns are less than useful, they only save you £2 and you have to go back home on a set date".

Jack

The Journeyman
He shuddered involuntarily, not for the first time that afternoon, as he felt, more than saw, the great airy chasm with the sharp, jagged rocks far below.

Jay Eckard

Music, Marriage and Masturbation-An Interview With Richard Colburn of B&S
I think sometimes Stuart gets embarrassed at the end of "…Arab Strap" and stuff, especially if we're playing hometown shows and, you know in case, his parents or any relations or anybody are there, so he has to make something up for the last little bit th

Doctor Who
In the mid and late-60s, the Doctor’s lady companions were known for screaming their lungs out. Famously, his companion Victoria screamed the Weed Creature out of existence.

Joseph

Archiving the History of Loneliness
We would feed the ducks and geese. And I would find tiny treasures buried under the sand. A toy car. A feather. A pretty leaf. A shiny stone. I would always ask questions.

Archiving the history of the loneliness - Part 2: the Diner Monologues
Perhaps it was all the coffee and cigarettes that made me stay there in that booth until 7.30 in the morning. But I know it wasn't. It was her eyes.

The System of Failures
Locks on your door to that bed where you carve those words into the wall. To keep you from going insane. Strangely, you find the greatest comfort in them. The soft lines glowing white in the few scattered rays of sun that somehow found their way in.

Swansong for Mon
Across the borderlands at night they came, exhausted to the soul and dragging trails of blood behind them. The omens had not been good and the people, blank-eyed or weeping, expected bad news.

Jonathan Sanders

Jesus and a Shotgun
I wake up sweating, shaking, needing dope to keep my heart from beating itself to death.

Jordi

Family: 8 years of magic pop. No spanish lessons required.
If you ever dreamed about a record that combines the innocence of 60s pop with the magic of The Magnetic Fields, The Field Mice or even the best New Order tracks, this record is still the answer

Janan Zaitoun

The man without a face
I cry on my disfigured face/ Just as the rain drops on an ugly old place/ Only, the people living in there are not so ugly/ They are kind, loving and have faith.

James Wright

Sap Runs In My Veins
I never knew to be sad of the rain because that’s all there really was for me to play in, and so rain was just another playmate for me to chase through the yard, or help me build forts in the sandbox.

Kena Sosa

Statistic
When my 25 year-old cousin had died in his sleep three days before my wedding, I asked my dad for an explanation I knew he didn't have. All he said was that Cherokee tears run deep.

Karken Van Der Schiff

Wishing you well
I found it this morning - a small angular thing, cool and hard, polished but not wholly smooth. It was fractured, unraveling the buttery early morning light into splintered strands of glassy rainbow as I held it between my forefinger and thumb.

Louise Jackson

Fashion, Perception And Idiocy - Mainstream Radio Today
I have tried to fit in. When I was younger I tried hard. I listened to the radio so that I could understand what my friends were talking about, I tried to follow fashion, I tried to blend into the shadows but do you know what? It just didn’t work.

Mark C

Me And My Pillow
By 24 I had become bored of living the multi-pillow lifestyle, and I decided to settle down with just one.

Melissa S Hill

Before the Fall
I reckon he'll call me 'baby' till the day he dies, and I'm fine with that, especially when he gives me his irreverent smile and asks me if I traded my husband in for a newer model.

Matt Groesburg

It is not good to travel alone
The central processing unit. Center of the universe. Memory flourishes and chokes here. Reality is skewn and discovered here. The mind is a holy place.

The Voice from the Past and the White City
I am motivated by inertia. It is always easier to keep going when you have the momentum and, of course, the gasoline.

The Great Lake Powell Escape
I didn't really have a reason to go except to momentarily break away from my own life. I had just gotten out of a relationship a few weeks before. True, I was running away from something, but I didn't know what.

Matt Henderson

Sandinista!
I can imagine the young punk, tossing it away... "The Clash have gone off their nut! This isn't punk!" But that's just it. It's the most punk thing in the world.

Mary Lou

The bus smells of pee
...and as my right eye left him I saw a girl who made me laugh although I only smiled outside and did a bit of a guffaw inside and she had an orange bag, like from a shop, it was the first thing I noticed because she was swinging it so fast.

Bus number 2
She's put on her stereo too but her left hands clutching her phone like girls do with their bags on a night out and they're pissed and...

Bus Number 3
To be honest, I can't look at him anymore. He's not noticed though and it's been four months.

A Man In A Suit
The bus was struggling with the lascivious weight of summer sunned bodies, lackadaisical and sun bleached, sitting slumped against windows and boxed friendly by partners' shoulders, and I thought about the man in the suit.

Michelle Y Kim

Heavenly Bodies
Once more I found myself, in that glorious illusion/

Minerva Ravenwing

Samhain
Long before I knew I was a witch, Halloween meant more to me than even Christmas. That's saying alot for a greedy American kid in the height of the abundance, that was the 50's.

Nima

Dried Petals
With love I pressed them into your hand...

A love poem called intentions
The sea makes the rain,
And the rain rides the wind,
And the wind blows

Moments of her peace
If they could still smooth/ the lines of your brow/ as my fingers once did...

The Stare
when we stopped for a moment and her eyes would meet mine,

Nick P

DANCE TO A DIFFERENT TUNE
...living through the music, dreaming of nice situations, the chances he had missed, imagining that there were kids close to him loving the same records... trying to find lyrics he wished he had written...

Blue hat for a blue day
I must be the unluckiest kid in the world. I only wanted to make Helen laugh so I gave her that small piece of paper where I had written "look at her stupid hat". But Mrs. Green saw it and now I'm here sitting at my desk trying to write that stupid senten

Athens2004 (or, jump to a different tune)
Then I saw a nice English girl wearing an English flag as a skirt. It would have made a perfect photo. I got the mobile phone out of my pocket and took a picture of her secretly. I wished I had asked her "hey can I take a picture of you?".

Not a rose for Emily
Finally the bell rang. John was the first to get out of the

Ola

In Search Of The Appropriate Form or It is Hard To Be Inspired
Ola lala (yawning)
-The only horrible thing in the world is ennui; and you are a total bore. Sling your hook, you linguistic bewilder-bully!

Trolls and elves and being childish
"Yes, yes, that is all very well," you will say, "but why would I want to devote my time and money to watch a childrens film about non-existent creatures?"

How pleasant to know Mr (Edward) Lear
Back home, I took out my copy of "The Book of Nonsense" from the drawer and placed it on an honorary place on my shelf. I do not care how Miss Bess will react to that when she comes back. As the rhyming goes, "how pleasant to know Mr Lear!"

Soon you will know that you are sane:
A rough and selective guide to out-of-the-ordinary music you might want to come across... or avoid!

From Athens with love
My first impression of Athens was that of a seaside town, blown out of proportions; or maybe some gardener had been taking good care of it and that's why it grew so, so much that you see it everywhere around you...

Partha

Sound Turnaround
It spurred the talk of the town, and was the uber-cool topic at diner tables of sociologists and psychologists throughout India. It was an event blessed during that years lighting celebrations.

What A Toss With Your Boss !
You have just been introduced to your immediate superior or "Boss" , your controlling officer . A person , whom you are to report to every day of three sixty five days a year, and who will be the guy to scribble on your annual appraisal sheet.

Phil Reynolds

Low - Kind of a rock'n'roll band. (Interview)
We need Low. In a world of tabloid-chasing crack whores, nu-metal dullards and autotune chancers who spend more time on their hair than their songs, we need Low.

Sonia Luthold

Summer Nights in April and Queen Jane
There’s war on the radio and, no, it’s spring, and now I remember reading about tulips and flu and Iraq-was it on the same page? or the same newspaper, perhaps.

The adventures of wak, as told by Robert the Useless
"It is good that you have a job" said wak. "Because you will need a job if you are going to buy food for me".

The adventures of Wak, part two: Wak On Rain
<<that is why it rains>>, said wak. <<you must think about all the things you have lost. without that, they would never become a part of you. >>

Reuben on the Celestial Sphere/The cat doesn't like to chat, just lie/Will I die with socks on
The universe, he said, when I was a child, was not like this;/the speed of matter and collusion of particles were different.

Old friends and the reason why
Do you have a place in your heart for those you love when they have made it clear, time and again, that the importance of their destiny overrules any ties they may have?

Simon James

Hank Williams Last Drive/ The Dreams of Scotty Moore/ The Man in Black
Young Charlie Carr's got this tune running round his head /( It’s Jambalaya - but he don't know that. He don't speak French.) / Whistles it between his teeth over heater hum and Cadi purr.

Three Poems About Heroes
I fall to pieces /Crazy /For thinking that my love could hold you

Disco at The Asylum
Eric the charge-nurse came up to us. Dark-haired and tatooed with short-sleeved white tunic. Ex-Navy. “Hello, boys and girls…” he drawled in pure Alex Harvey Glaswegian.

Stefano

Sharing the supreme weight with ONQ
Playing music makes me a chess player. Composing music requires the same logic and mathematic principles involved in chessplay.

The past, present and a few trips to Space: An interview with Morose
That was the ontological motivation of the songs: to freeze myself, to take a polaroid of THAT ME in THAT particular moment. I think of my music as a sort of X-ray photography.

A Summer As Imaginary Local Heroes
You need love to be an imaginary local hero. It is not enough to burst your best-kept-hidden ego up by playing the guitar in a rock’n’roll band. Kind of playing. Kind of guitar. Kind of band. Kind of Summer infatuation.

A Summer As Imaginary Local Heroes (part two)
It would have been fine for a seaside holiday park. But not for a small town, not for the countryside, not for the dusty memories of a lake resort once fashionable in the nineteenth century or so.

A Summer As Imaginary Local Heroes (part three)
The day was passed slowly broken by escape pauses, the length of a cigarette, in the courtyard. The walk beneath the pines marked the border between where we were living and an outer world.

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts
...having nothing much to do, explore the ceiling. It doesn’t really matter where you are or where you’ll be. It doesn’t. And the half tone of grey or white of the ceiling you will be looking at tomorrow, for there will be spiders on the corner.

Tanya Tidmore

Mother of three
"...You move people with your words, you write through your heart." It all made me think. Wouldn’t it be great to earn a living being able to do what you love to do!