A Story so Untrue You Have to Believe It’s Real A Story so Untrue You Have to Believe It’s Real On foot from Edinburgh to Canterbury for a once-in-a-decade conference on "What It Means to Be a High-Functioning Humanzee in a Mythological World", we are discussing the cultural fallout of "phase-three scholasticism", which has rocked the academic world and the Catholic Church in Ireland, and is responsible for the suicide of at least five university deans and three bishops, as w

Above Heroic (Though in Secret Done) Exile, or ignominy, or bonds, or pain You must wait for courage or grace but fate Is stubborn. Waiting is very long, like exile, And is walked in steps, solitary. The Lord’s world lies before you, but all is war. A bulldog ant bites its tail just as the tail stings The head, multiplying curses. Earth tacks to your toes, dust sticks to your face. Strong light beats down; it burns your forehead As in wandering mazes you roam. At dusk

The Darkness of This House Making his advances in tall steps, Davie marks Suzie standing small at the kitchen sink. She drops something, holds still her breath. ‘No-one’s gonna listen to you, Suzie, and that’s a fact’. The ugly brown voice of a drunk scrapping for a fight. From him bad odours rise, smells of fish and river foam, tobacco and beer. He picks up a carver, puts it down. ‘So don’t even think about it’. It is evening, it is hot, and a dead carp’s eye looks up at Suz

The Fact of Being Is Always True Said the professor — I am in a vortex, a maelstrom, below the eye’s surface, standing on the abyssal plain, the fundament of all that is. The atmosphere is moving thickly, dark submarine green, the tempo of sea-bed’s colour, darkly illumined and populated by gods, the eternals, singing songs of Necessity and Fate. And a word carved deep on the forehead of the chief eternal stares straight at me like a cyclopic eye — That word is destiny. Tonig

In the Beginning Was Strange to think I am the universe and everything in it too. I call out. No voice returns other than my echo. So evidently, I am my own cause and, worse, horribly alone. Bored, I fall into a deep sleep and dream of many things: wave-like particles in plasma; diverse organisms, vertebrates and invertebrates; metals and gases; all kinds of finite bodies with perishable qualities, competing for succession and place and rank. Time passed and, with time, entro

The Humanzee In the heat of a celluloid American night, Doctor Franklin Ahab — host to a crowd of forty souls — walks in a stately manner through the upper rooms of his Massachusetts mansion. He descends the wide staircase, smiling and reeling off witty one-liners. An orchestra plays The Rite of Spring in the enormous dining hall. For a few minutes Ahab casually mingles among his guests, then calls for the conductor to settle down. Hester, his life partner in a transparent d

Discourse in the Garden: A Short Drama An olive grove. Night. The sound of approaching footsteps. SOCRATES: ‘Swounds! A dark day for strong flowers and cool breezes. Can you deny it? PLATO: Are you spreching to me, sir? SOCRATES: I am, almost certainly. [Sits beside PLATO.] Call me I am. PLATO: Ha! Welcome. Call me anything you like. I’ll deny it later. SOCRATES: Ho! I’ve only lived the one life. Where next? Should I go on? PLATO: Always going on. Even when you’re half dead.