Talking heads on TV this week. The Man is Dead. What does it mean? Every mouth on the screen seems animated just to make sense of it all. Omar watches the full, pretty lips of a Japanese presenter. Everyone seems to think, they say, Arab violence started with Hamas.

One mouth… Read full post »

‘Now that Osama is dead, should the Arab world join global democracy?’

Asmina sighs. She’s an East London blogger on Wordpress. The questions readers ask!

‘What utter tripe,’ she types. 

The so-called free world, Asmina writes, Is run by the superrich.… Read full post »

RINGG. Nouche picks up the phone.

Silence. Then, ‘Hello’.

Billie Jean.

That was in January, though. It’s weeks later now: Valentine’s Day. Abebech, Omar’s baby sister, is officially a week past her due date. Contractions started yesterday, but her waters… Read full post »

Kids and cake. Babes and cock. In the Aldgate Pret this Monday morning, Omar’s baby sister Abebech devours a Banana Slab. 

Omar, again, needs to look away. He drops his sandwich. Conflicting images. He sees his sister as a child, her shiny cheeks, a crumb of something always… Read full post »

Terry is dead. It’s Monday, 9 am. The news hangs over the Whitechapel Day Centre Conference room like a tree of smoke: the concrete room like a burning oilfield.

The strip lights buzz. From Anwar’s lap a nappy-haired little girl peeks just over the table. Large black eyes, just li… Read full post »

A small face, framed in a black veil. There is a row almost, of them, in the Regent Street Apple Store. Veils. Black. Not quite a group, as the women stand or sit separately, apparently out on different missions.

Not that Omar would notice. Women in niqab, black ankle length dress,… Read full post »

London, January 2011.  Former crackhead Omar and French artist Nouche have been together for one year.. or have they? Spending cuts, silence and rage in Dialogue, the first 2011 episode of online serial The God Thing. 

Dialogue  

Love you. Two words Omar has never said… Read full post »

Painting (unfinished) by Gunther Daniel Herbst 

She's in the window. Reaches up to close a powder blue blind. The walls are black. 

Her shape is a cut out against the pale blue curtain. Like a dancer, like a shadow puppet Degas. 

An eighties soul singer, Anita Bake… Read full post »

Come

New Year's Eve 2010 in Amsterdam, Dutch author Nada Holland first met Gunther Daniel Herbst. Her short story Come is based on a mirror painting by the London-based artist, who was named One to Watch by Art Review Magazine.

'I always wanted to write a short story called Come',&… Read full post »

Hey OS friends. Any ideas for what this might need? It's a double stream of consciousness story, (like an interior dialogue, right? two people, both 'taking turns' thinking to themselves)--based on a set of double paintings by Gunther Daniel Herbst.

First draft. I like the ending and the beginning i… Read full post »

I believe, you say

in me.

My turn.

I am listening to a song by the XX.

I am yours now

So now I don't ever have to leave

I am using platitude, yours, theirs, mine.

You.

I love myself.

You affirm your Seven Year Old self,… Read full post »

Did you ever get caught, I ask. Sleeping around.

I just told you about the time I went out with someone I'd interviewed for a newspaper story, a Scottish writer who was taking me out on the town. We got so messed up we spent the night crawling from bar… Read full post »

I'm a good girl but 

I thought to fuck

and write to you

would make me come

to life and set those

bleeding 

words on fire.

You're telling me to die.

(you do so beautifully. . .

'lay down your life

and you will live

the life

beyond… Read full post »

Yea though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I fear no evil  Psalm 23

I believe SEO driven blog is a leading cause of cancer. Processed voices are.

Processed voices: sound bite news, movie spin-off novels, romcom dialogue, network anchors, workshop fiction. Commoditized b… Read full post »

There are six voices in my head, today, six men in my life. The first is my son, seven years old, sipping soup at the dining table. He chatters while I sit, and listen, to someone else.

I've let down the sunscreens on the windows, even if it's cloudy… Read full post »

ALWAYS WEARING TOO MANY LAYERS

Never private enough

ALWAYS TOO NAKED

I NEVER OPEN UP

  Read full post »

Ray LaMontagne is a legend in the making. Watching this American singer songwriter cross over into the hearts and minds of millions right at this particular moment in time is breathtaking. From a reclusive, painfully shy loner, Ray is right on the verge of becoming a star. What happened? 

 … Read full post »

The Federal Goverment Building towered over the San Francisco Tenderloin. Midnight. Outside, the homeless, the crippled, the crazy, huddled under a streetlight.

A sharp clap, like a whip, slapped from the sky. Up, in a distant spotlight, a flag rippled atop the tower. It w… Read full post »

A hard face, lined.

Boys' eyes. Wide.

Closed, now, in sleep.

Beside me. 

Sounds, groans, emitted. In sleep.

A man's bulk. Deeply alive, like an engine

Running stationary

Low creaks and croaks

More active in sleep

than I,

a hard girl, eyes lined

Watching

Wide 

A… Read full post »

A dark morning, still in bed, trying to remember my dream.

A cave, a grave, a tomb of stone, in which I lay. A line comes to me from the dark:

I slept in your grave.

Not that you are dead by any means.

You're alive and well, working… Read full post »

Seven year old wakes in the dark.

I see a painting, he says. 

A painting we've never seen.

A painting in your imagination, I say.

Yes, he nods. It's very painty. 

There's two men. Under a tree,

with yellow grass. They look like

they're having a picnic.

But they're not.… Read full post »

So. I got seriously strung out on OS, then got off it just long enough to feed seven year old, sleep, and come up with this title.

As for the post, I have roughly 50 minutes to crank it out as I go, before home and family will fall apart around… Read full post »