Author Archives: Tony Single

100 WORD SKITTLE // Sweet Josephine

I threw that huge pink diamond into the corner and swore.

“What? Trash again! Not what I need!”

“Forgive me, Mr Tutin,” mewled Prump. “It’s the best in my collection!”

“I don’t need sissy luxury shit! Give me a tough, solid, male piece of crap! Like a horse!” I shook my fist in his dopey face. “Give me an Adonis of the horse world and I’ll happily ride its brains out!”

Prump went over and picked up the diamond, blew the dust off, then pocketed it.

“Some people prefer unicorns, you know,” he huffed sulkily before leaving the Gremlin library.

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2021

summer’s last day

his ears shone redly in the setting of the sun
his puff of hair an orange, a halo of light
and the earthworms drowsed in a rusty can
at his feet, toes splayed and warmly pink

if only there’d been another minute
one more hour to append the day
a breath stolen beneath the moon

grasshoppers made their ruckus in the tall grass
stroking limbs to their wings like tiny violins
water shimmered with the scales of spotted bass
the line’s arc and plish was his blithesome song

if only there’d been another minute
one more hour to append the day
a breath stolen beneath the moon

and so everything breathed, full of bliss and love
in this treasured moment, my memory of him
we stared into the carefree summer clouds above
before they trammeled the horizon into sepulchral night

if only there’d been another minute
one more hour to append the day
a breath stolen beneath the moon

for our shine to outlast a little while

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2021

GUEST POST // I See Your Eyes Bulging by Captain Q

I see your eyes bulging
Sounds like you’re trying to buy a vowel
Drool pooling at the corners of your mouth
All because I dropped my towel

by CAPTAIN Q
© All rights reserved 2021

eidolon (we)

and so do we all decant
all along our silent roads
incant in silent refrain:

‘when the book of breathing is closed
when the clocks are covered in the town of lazarus
when the faience of minds has declined to the last’

in that final silence that befalls us all
will the ghost of you remember me
and gather up the ghost in me
will you lovingly take the ashes and bone
and carry me home

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2020

TATI’s & TONY’s DEAD POET TOUR // The Gods Are Dead? by William Ernest Henley

The gods are dead? Perhaps they are! Who knows?
Living at least in Lempriere undeleted,
The wise, the fair, the awful, the jocose,
Are one and all, I like to think, retreated
In some still land of lilacs and the rose.

Once high they sat, and high o’er earthly shows
With sacrificial dance and song were greeted.
Once . . . long ago. But now, the story goes,
The gods are dead.

It must be true. The world, a world of prose,
Full-crammed with facts, in science swathed and sheeted,
Nods in a stertorous after-dinner doze!
Plangent and sad, in every wind that blows
Who will may hear the sorry words repeated:-
‘The Gods are Dead!’

by WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY (1849-1903)
Public Domain Poetry