Launch Date & Sneak Peek

It’s National Poetry Month!

In celebration thereof, I am pleased as punch to announce the official launch date of my first-ever poetry collection:

Songs in the Gate
Poems from the Borderland of Now and Not Yet

Available on April 27th!

If you feel like you can’t handle the excitement, you’re not alone. I’m fairly chuffed myself.

This collection has been fifteen years in the making. It includes poetry of all sorts, from rhymed/metered to free verse – and, as a special treat, my first long narrative poem: “The Witch of Hampstead Heath”.

This piece came from a vivid dream I had one night in August of 2017. I do not presume to understand anyone’s subconscious (least of all my own), but the dark moral of this poem makes me think of the old Grimm’s fairy tales that are so close to my heart. Furthermore, the lesson is one I am in constant need of learning: be more quick to listen than to speak, and be not so full of your own story that you are not open to share in anyone else’s. That way lies bondage, and living hell, and a fate worse than death.

To whet your poetic whistle, I give you the first few stanzas of “The Witch of Hampstead Heath”.

Enjoy, and Happy National Poetry Month!

The Witch of Hampstead Heath

If all alone you choose to roam
Best heed the path beneath
Lest your feet stray near the home
Of the Witch of Hampstead Heath

If from yourself you are not free
Hold fast your chattering teeth
A quiet heart is the key to flee
From the Witch of Hampstead Heath

Where lies her dwelling, no tale says
She wanders like the mist
Where every new Narcissus plays
She keeps a steady tryst

For years unnumbered has she dwelt
Eternally decayed
All souls who have her presence felt
Her toll perforce have paid

Born of hunger, ravenous
Unsated through the years
Her appetite is cavernous
And grows with mortal fears

Her hair is grey and withering
Her brow well-creased with seams
Her voice a subtle slithering
That hisses through your dreams

Her eyes are wide and deep and kind
Each one an empty well
She’ll hear you deaf and see you blind
And love you into hell