Author Archive
As a youth, you were beautiful you didn’t need a mirror to tell you that you didn’t need to transcend I did that for you. Your earlier face, that asymmetric face was the one I knew best; with the nose offset, thanks to the playing field. Then the glass came between us between…
The Tankerton bus drew up. The passenger door opened and the bus settled down with an emphatic hiss. No one left and no one came. It was high summer. The driver shut off his engine, opened the half-door of his cab and emerged into the sunshine. Pausing in the doorway, he yawned and…
One of the two things I learned at school and can still remember (the other was that Samuel Johnson had a cat called Hodge whom he fed on oysters and described as “a very fine cat indeed”) was that young hares in their first year are called leverets. With this fountain of General Knowledge to draw upon, it…
Silence heard through the din of crickets the serene broken only by the unseen. A metallic flash the kingfisher’s splash into the green. Paradise. I have been here all my life, waiting for this moment. For Derek Walcott (d. 17th March 2017). His Midsummer, Tobago inspired this poem.
It started with a shriek. A shriek that became an itch, an itch that gave me the germ of an idea that became the Greyhares blog. The shriek came from the direction of the shower one morning in late October 2009. My wife had noticed that Pears soap, a soap we’d both been using since…
Expect nothing, you said and nothing is what arrived this morning in the first post. Nothing. Enclosed in a box ten inches by ten by ten all wrapped up in used brown paper and salvaged string. Expect nothing, you said Not a penny if you marry that spender of misfortunes that good for nothing,…
a catapult; unsprung a gob of purple bubblegum a yard of string knotted; in three places a map of those three places a penknife; worn a breast torn from the pages of Playboy a woodpecker feather; lesser spotted a tasty piece of sausage half a handkerchief semi-snotted pieces of eight – one and thruppence in…
About the author
Alan West is a marketeer, software developer, blogger and would-be poet. Though he has created and edited a number of blogs on behalf of others, the greyhares blog has been a personal mission and a particular pleasure. Outside of trying not to retire just yet, Alan enjoys languages, writing poetry, and practising the dying art of discourse which, he says, is best enjoyed with food and drink and the company of friends.
As a youth, you were beautiful you didn’t need a mirror to tell you that you didn’t need to transcend I did that for you. Your earlier face, that asymmetric face was the one I knew best; with the nose offset, thanks to the playing field. Then the glass came between us between…
The Tankerton bus drew up. The passenger door opened and the bus settled down with an emphatic hiss. No one left and no one came. It was high summer. The driver shut off his engine, opened the half-door of his cab and emerged into the sunshine. Pausing in the doorway, he yawned and…
One of the two things I learned at school and can still remember (the other was that Samuel Johnson had a cat called Hodge whom he fed on oysters and described as “a very fine cat indeed”) was that young hares in their first year are called leverets. With this fountain of General Knowledge to draw upon, it…
Silence heard through the din of crickets the serene broken only by the unseen. A metallic flash the kingfisher’s splash into the green. Paradise. I have been here all my life, waiting for this moment. For Derek Walcott (d. 17th March 2017). His Midsummer, Tobago inspired this poem.
It started with a shriek. A shriek that became an itch, an itch that gave me the germ of an idea that became the Greyhares blog. The shriek came from the direction of the shower one morning in late October 2009. My wife had noticed that Pears soap, a soap we’d both been using since…
Expect nothing, you said and nothing is what arrived this morning in the first post. Nothing. Enclosed in a box ten inches by ten by ten all wrapped up in used brown paper and salvaged string. Expect nothing, you said Not a penny if you marry that spender of misfortunes that good for nothing,…
a catapult; unsprung a gob of purple bubblegum a yard of string knotted; in three places a map of those three places a penknife; worn a breast torn from the pages of Playboy a woodpecker feather; lesser spotted a tasty piece of sausage half a handkerchief semi-snotted pieces of eight – one and thruppence in…
Alan West is a marketeer, software developer, blogger and would-be poet. Though he has created and edited a number of blogs on behalf of others, the greyhares blog has been a personal mission and a particular pleasure. Outside of trying not to retire just yet, Alan enjoys languages, writing poetry, and practising the dying art of discourse which, he says, is best enjoyed with food and drink and the company of friends.
