for my friend Iain..

Harry the dawg….a birthday portrait commission for my friend Jess

Albert Ross, Albert Ross, you again.

“What are you up to now?”

….you asked me that last time you sank my ship.

“So what are you up to now?“

Talking to you again Albert Ross, with sick in my nose and damp elbows….”is that dogtooth or shark?”

“So what are you up to now?”

I drowned and got washed up on this shoreline….flotsam, jetsam, treasure, measure….that’s what i’m up to now.

A N T H O N Y A X E L by bigleyspokes

The length of no is a long sentence. An entirety of you is the blue sky, the sun, the smell of a walk, the stars shared in a sky with a moon which pulls and pushes your desires, your fears. A sea of possibility…a sea to disappear into, pockets laden with inconceivable no’s, drowning in the void of blank black sleep, no dabs on canvas, shaken awake in a hospital waiting room, a guide on caring for your plaster cast holds my attention. “But everyone has gone now”, he says, my skin damp and cold, just an impression left on an unmade bed.