Author: Richard Ankers

Richard M. Ankers is the English author of The Eternals Series and Britannia Unleashed all published by Next Chapter. Richard feels privileged to have had stories and poetry published all over the world. He lives to write. A prolific writer, a constant source of clearing his mind, Richard has created this website to share just some of the many poems and prose he has written that would otherwise have fallen by the wayside. Reading and writing have always been Richard's main love along with the pursuit of keeping fit, running, walking, and anything that provides a spectacular view. Running in the rain with his headphones on whilst dreaming up some future storyline is just about perfect. It would be nicer still if that run was in Switzerland or Norway, but we can't have everything. Oh, and coffee, lots and lots of coffee.

Un-Blue

Her eyes were the colour of the open sea, transitioning from calm to storm, rippling in sargasso blue, almost indigo, deep and dark, yet tepid. This changed as she changed. Her demeanour ignited. The calm still of the soul she hid so well rippled into being. Those waters that were her eyes pulsed a cerulean mirage. She brooded. I gulped.

Seconds became minutes became more, or so it seemed, and the storm she’d often threatened whirled a maelstrom of frothing cobalt. Hurricane winds tore at her kelp fields for lashes. All the energies of all the seas manifested as a single violent ocean. She churned. I feared.

The abyssal depths had nothing on her, as she exploded in ultramarine, a devastating tsunami. The tears poured forth not from sorrow, but absolute rage. Her world was my world, one of liquid purification. She laughed as I wept, as I fell, as I dreamed a torrent of lies.

I awoke to a strange sensation of bobbing, and her calm again cyan orbs.

“Sorry,” I murmured.

“I know,” she breezed and leant in closer.

She pressed. I dipped beneath the waves. The blue faded to something darker.

The drowning didn’t kill me, just the reality of my foolishness: Her eyes had never been blue, but as black as her cold, dead heart.

The End

Thank you for reading
Richard

Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.

Softly Falling Stones (tanka)

heavy these moments
of enforced dusk and darkness
softly falling stones
drums beating out the timelines
of different lives and places

Thank you for reading
Richard

Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed

The Clockwork Chronicles – New Release!

I’m very proud to be one of thirteen authors included in The Clockwork Chronicles, a fabulous new anthology from Madhouse Books.

My story ‘Irregular Constructions‘ is a personal favourite piece, so it means a lot.

The book is available in all formats as of today.

Here’s a little video too: The Clockwork Chronicles

The Clockwork Chronicles

Thank you for reading
Richard

And with an extra dollop of self-promotion…

Here’s the link to my latest release, a book many years in the making.

Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new Steampunk Extravaganza Britannia Unleashed

The Blackbird Sings

I wake. I weep. My blackbird alarm clock chirps all the louder, only adding to this hell.

I dress. I fall. The belt I wrap twice about me fails to secure. Will I ever learn!

I eat. I drink. The race to the toilet is a mismatch, and I’m the loser.

I dress… partly. For once, I use my head and don’t bother with pants. Take that fate! Yeah, take that.

I mow. I rake. Several women and a few giggling schoolgirls shout or point or scream or jeer.

I work. I slave. There’s always a distraction, but never a distraction enough.

I avoid. I blur. My beat-up Volvo hovers on the periphery, catching the light in concave shadows and rusting browns.

I vacate. I climb. The shower beckons a sweat-stealing pleasure. But I don’t deserve pleasure, so head to my room, instead.

I undress. I collapse. My eyes close like shutters this evening, midnight filling the void.

I dream. I scream. They are here, as always, unblemished by blood or glass or broken bones, or my drunken incompetence.

I hope. I pray. Perhaps this time that blackbird named Death will let me die in peace.

Chirrup! Chirrup! No release today.

Thank you for reading
Richard

Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.

Lily (a poem)

cover the lilies in trailing silk
delicacy wrapped in more
what once was white protected now
no fear of winter’s chill

—

when days are dark, colder still
from the window, I shall watch
the frozen lake of captured ghosts
my Lily being but one

Thank you for reading
Richard

Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.

Serpentine

Invasive creature
Slithering through unctuous blood
Poisoning my system
With indigestible venom
Blocking arteries
Licking nerves
Curling into spaces
Where no spaces were
Like cholesterol
This snake at my core
Lingers.

The first slice hurts
The second less so
The third is a pleasure
Exposing innards
Revealing truths
But the snake, this viper
Remains untroubled
Sliding elsewhere
Gliding within
Leaving only scales of injustice
Behind.

Acceptance is the key
Acknowledgment of this other
Welcoming the pain
Desiring what poisons
Not expunging
So I sit, run, sleep
With my significant friend
Saying good morning
Bidding good night
Until my serpentine deconstruction
Ends.

Thank you for reading

Richard

The Shivering

The shiver began at his navel and radiated out like a pebble tossed in a pond. Uneasy sensations swept through the boy’s torso, down his limbs to tingle his fingertips, rattle his teeth, curl his toes. Just when he thought there was nowhere else to go, the shiver shook the earth at his feet, shattering a rock as though crystal and dislodging several worms.
“Am I dead?” he asked no one in particular.
“No.” The voice came as even more of a shock than his shivering, which for now had departed.
“Then what?” he asked, undeterred.
“You are changing. You are… how does one put it politely, on the move.”
The boy hung his head as though ashamed, seeing his shiver had cracked open the ground, into which he descended. This was not a plummet by any means, rather, a falling leaf caught by a breeze.
He watched as the light of the sun he’d grown so used to shrank back into a pinprick star. This, too, soon vanished, leaving him all alone in a smothering darkness. Every sensation of movement had gone.
The boy imagined himself to have fallen asleep because he woke to a fog and his shivering having returned tenfold. His arms shook like a hummingbird’s wings. His head vibrated like a shaken cocktail mixer. A grey gloom pulsed around him as if to help, like the sponge packing around a box containing a priceless vase.
“All out of questions?” came the voice again. Definitely female, and smooth as velvet, it coerced the boy with uncomplicated kindnesses.
“No.”
“Not a one? You are an unusual young man! Most of your kind are so flummoxed all they can do is ask questions. Most of which I cannot answer,” she added, as an afterthought.
The boy placed a hand on his tummy. He grimaced and chewed his lip.
“Sure?” The voice was almost in his ear. “It is my burden to explain the unexplainable.”
“Well, I suppose there’s one thing.”
“Anything, dear boy. You shall have an eternity to dwell upon the answer, as has all mankind. For no one, not one soul, enters the realm above or below without first passing through purgatory. You might as well ask something to tide you over until you’re judged.”
The boy felt a stale wind assail his nostrils, heard the smacking of lips. It sparked something he just had to know.
“Tell me, Death, if that is who you are, was it the kippers or the eggs?”

Thank you for reading
Richard

Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.

At Least the Wind

There are no cerise sunrises, no vermillion sunsets,
the tangerine tinges of summer warmth
dispelled like the bone-white winters of old.
The stars are diminished, wiped from the sky,
no longer the moon has good friends.
Now, all is remembered, read of, imagined,
the false, flattened televisions’ vivid colours
too bright for eyes meant for gentle views.
We have taken this from ourselves,
convinced our souls we need nothing else:
No seasons, no change, no rain on glass rooftops,
Not now we’ve the certainty, the assuredness
of knowing exactly what, when, and where,
at what time, with what force, like clockwork.
Hermetically sealed, nothing in, nothing out,
I turn away from my son and speak to the window:
‘At least the wind, my son.’
‘At least… the wind…’
A lie for his future, and a disgrace to our past.

Thank you for reading
Richard

Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.

Of Words and Their Consequences

There was no particular difference in our styles. We wrote as we were, evil and worse. Yet, there were discrepancies. Some might have termed them oddities.

Kara had a propensity to exaggerate situations. I had an inclination to err. Only when our shared editor pointed this out did we ourselves notice.

It became a farce, our correcting each other. Soon after, it became more, each desperate to put the other right. Our editor said it didn’t matter. But it did.

I tore up all her notepads. She snapped my pencils in half. I flushed her ink down the toilet. Kara laced mine with something she ought not; she knew I sucked my pen whilst thinking.

I died on a Monday. Kara spoke at my funeral just three days later. I rose from my coffin and laughed when she said how good a husband I’d been. Our editor, now her editor, laughed too.

Kara self-published her book; it was under-appreciated by others and overrated by her. I read it over a person’s shoulder whilst haunting a toilet. Neither the manuscript nor the toilet was clean.

When Kara joined me in the afterlife, we joked about it. Our editor was now God. Neither of us liked what he had to say.

Thank you for reading
Richard

Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.

Moonscapes and Melancholy

I am very pleased to have had my short story ‘Moonscapes and Melancholy‘ published today by Lothlorien Poetry Journal. Those who know me will know I don’t make a big song and dance about such things, though I should, but this journal is a real beauty. I would encourage anyone who writes short prose, fiction and poetry to head over there and take a look at what they require.