She plays his bones like a glockenspiel
He likes how it tickles
He grins at how her skull echoes
She just glad he’s talking in her ear
Theirs is a musical marriage
Hollow notes and ricochets
A tickle of the ivories, they say
But who ever played their own
Such skeletal explanations multiply
As their symphony develops
How grateful are the moles and worms
Now they’ve taken it below
Thank you for reading
Richard
Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.
This dismissed state
Lived through daily
Its snowflake touch
Transcending normality
Its inherent pain
Unavoidable
Thank you for reading
Richard
Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.
This flickering Nowhere makes a mockery of the Somewhere I’m supposed to be
The streetlight’s intermittent bulb, unable to illuminate even the merest confirmation
Gives no inkling of where I am, where I’m going, or even, where I’ve been
An owl hoots in amplifying echoes as though seeking to assist in its radar sharpness
But I am neither bat nor whale, though I often feel like I inhabit their abodes
Those of ebon shades and indistinct definition, of water, earth, air and the in-between
For momentous decision are made at night, not dusk, nor dawn, nor unassignable hours
Regardless of one’s exact positioning, one’s actual viewpoint, one’s supposed vision
As true thinkers shirk from the sun and its brazen obviousness, its deliberate displays
Preferring the cool rationale of imagined midnight streets, actual lonely lanes and desperate city blocks
This flashing beacon intercepts such thoughts and promotes only one conclusion
I am neither Nowhere, nor Somewhere, so must be Elsewhere. I always have been
Thank you for reading
Richard
Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.
Desperate, we strive to unite
both sides of souls made
unmanageable by time
and technology, pain and war,
our conjunction hearts seeking
to ease from the shade,
break from the blinding glare of false light.
Neither black nor white, but red,
they run, with copious amounts of blood.
Always blood. Forever blood.
Thank you for reading
Richard
Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.
The traffic lights distort broken garages. Three hues combine to bathe all in a coruscating dream. And still, the rain pours upon this rainbow somewhere. I mourn it, welcome it, beg for more.
This place has a bleak desperation which compliments their own. A simple truth recognised. This place demands truths, for the lies stand dark and vivid. Even their shadows slide around in pairs.
I twitch a recollection.
A memory of a robin flies under my feet, a crimson inspiration. The vision makes no sound, but I recognise the confusion in its throaty chirps. Searching for worms as they search for each other, it pecks a pointless day. When the night comes and the same tricolour lights that illuminate my evenings bring relevance to this place, perhaps then he’ll succeed. Perhaps, not.
The recollection fades. If ever it was one?
My paranoia is boundless. This inner desperation destroys me. Life is no life in limitless longevity. Only in the rain-washed luminance does hope remain. Only in liquid crystal am I the man I remember. I need no sun!
Darkness returns.
She called me a bat, an occupier of the night, un-living. She claimed I hated the day because the sun revealed my faults. But none of us are faultless. None of us are perfect. None of us were born to continue through death.
How boring now, this sterile world.
The undercurrents of societal want disgust me. People are no longer tame. Minds hampered by expectation require the spotlight illuminations of day, not the gentle pulses of night. The traffic lights’ displays mean nothing in the daytime, mean nothing until dark. They possess no more power to enforce man’s will than a collar on a stray dog.
Incisors slice, not grate together like theirs.
Bring on the rain. Bathe me in amber. Dress me in green. Fear me in red. Yes, fear me. For a colourful death is my calling card, my gift. I can make one distinct in an existence rendered boring.
I watch the lights change: one, two, three. Such simple symmetry. A distraction worth noting. They note it, too. One woman. One man. They hold hands as if these subtle warnings were sent to terrorise. They aren’t. All they do is provide one extra moment, one extra pause before the storm, to a being who no longer needs either.
I count down from green to amber to red. The latter signals their demise, the favour I do them.
The Endless
Thank you for reading
Richard
Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.
The closest we came to forever was the moment in which we gave up. Our breaths held and never really returned. The moment drew out to seconds, to hours, to more. Your eyes dimmed like exhausted candles. Mine were already black.
The closest we came to forgiveness was that moment we met at the wake. Dressed in black from head to toe, I barely recognised you. I said Hello and you almost said it back.
The closest we came to something was that moment when we both said, I do. I remember how it felt, not how it sounded, as those three tiny letters sunk beneath my skin and slipped off your well-oiled own.
The closest we came was closer than most but never close enough for me.
Thank you for reading
Richard
Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.
Hours pass in endless judgements
Arguments of self
There is no winner
Can be no winner
Just the ticking from the shelf
Reminders from the mantle
Motioning of time
That I’m a sinner
Soul’s growing thinner
‘Cross this solitary line
Thank you for reading
Richard
Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed
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
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.
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.
Richard M. Ankers - Storybook 
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