@markconnors
A widely published poet, novelist and creative writing tutor, based near Skipton. Co-managing editor of Yaffle Press and Yaffle's Nest. Running and music take up much of my spare time. Website: www.markconnors.co.uk.
365 Tiny Tales
Day 21
Glendalough
He assumed the Perth suburb would have some vague affinity with its Irish County Wicklow namesake but it was full of car showrooms and americanised retail parks. Still, it was the place to come for a new kitchen so there was that. And burgers. #365tinytales #vss
365 Tiny Tales
Day 20
WA Summer Watch
I spot him, his shaved, peached head bobbing up and down in the snake riddled roadside bush above Jindee Beach, with no reason to be there but personal business, whether that be nature calling or some specific death wish. #365tinytales
WA SUMMER WATCH
365 Tiny Tales
Day 19
Don't Judge Me
I've locked myself in the bathroom. The four kids are looping on an argument about screen time. It takes them forty-five minutes to realise I've been here too long for a bath. They start to scream MUM one by one. It culminates in a bellow from my eldest son.
365 Tiny Tales
Day 19
Before
Dont look behind the screens that promise you an ideal life:
walks to pristine beaches, shady tree-lined streets. This is what your village looked last year: dust, scrub and bush, riddled with snakes who crave this searing sun tp warm their cold blood. #tinytales #vss
365 Tiny Tales
Day 18
Bigger
Everything is bigger in Australia: the snakes, the bats, the spiders, magpies that swoop down to try and kill you, dragon flies the size of Tonka toys, the unrestrained egos of its cricket players. #365tinytales #vss
365 Tiny Tales
Day 17
Oblivious Brief Encounter
He loved giving his daughter her first fishing lesson at Eden Beach a week after arriving in Western Australia, blissfully unaware of the brown western snake inching gently by. #365tinytales #vss
365 Tiny Tales
Day 16
Alkimos Crow
Even the crows sound Australian; a simple morning caw, full of mocking scorn, reserved for ashes banter; the spirit of Shane Warne alive and well here in Western Australia.
#365tinytales #vss
365 Tiny Tales
Yesterday's News
I see a message on messenger from my brother the moment I sit down on a nice warm toilet seat for my first pee of the day, a pleasure marred only by a tsunami warning after an earthquake in South West Japan. I google it. No one was hurt. The warning was dropped
365 Tiny Tales
Lawson
He buys curry bread from Lawson, his go to convenience store in Arashiyama. Think jam donut with curry, not jam. Think an unthinkable spike in his blood sugar. Think about the fucks he doesn't give when carbs taste this good. #365tinytales ##blueskystories #vss
365 Tiny Tales
Day 13
Shinkanzen window
There's snow on the ground south of Nagoya. He thinks of the snow back home, how he's in no rush to go back. But he will soon start to miss his cats. Now, He feels time stretch away in front of him, like the railway tracks to Kyoto. #365tinytales #vss
Day 12
Tokyo Sunday
He stops running to watch a little league baseball game on a thread-bare sports field on the fringes of Adatchi City. Number 22, about the same modest height he was at his age, strikes a good pitch perfectly, and runs towards first base. #365tinytales
365 Tiny Tales
Day 11
Second Hand Tokyo
He entered the smoking room in Asakusa, inhaled the putrid emissions of the four men filling it with fumes and then went back out into the bright blue air, realising he wasn't missing it half as much as he thought he was. #365tinytales
Day 10
Pill Fatigue
He's so tired of forgetting if he's already popped his four daily pills. She buys him a special box so he can keep track but using it reminds him how much he needs such things these days, so he won't, not that he's stubborn or anything.
#365tinytales #vss #blueskystories
365 Tiny Tales
Tokyo Blues
He watches a red kite circling blue sky above Sumida River, like he does above Leeds. He's not homesick, but reminded that distance is sometimes an illusion. Familar raptors follow him, watching, content and smug in their artful yet ordinary symbolism. #365tinytales #Vss
Run
She runs by the Simida River, as she's done every day since he passed. She stops mid-stride to watch two love birds gazing at shining water, remembering how they'd always leaned on each other, and how leaning on each other was far more than a metaphor. #365tinytales #VSS
Run
She runs by the Simida River, as she's done every day since he passed. She stops mid-stride to watch two love birds gazing at shining water, remembering how they'd always leaned on each other, and how leaning on each other was far more than a metaphor. #365tinytales #VSS
365 Tiny Tales
Winter in Chuo Ward
He longs for snow to come in the cold and late small hours. He wants to watch Dontonbori's neon mania play out above the untrodden black light of Shisaibashi Street before tomorrow's Instawarriors come and turn it all to grey slush. #365tinytales #blueskystories
365 Tiny Tales
365 Tiny Tales
Day 6
Nameless
They've agreed he will call her 'love' from now on, not that he'll remember. She hates it but it beats watching him dredge his memory for 'Linda.'
#365tinytales #dailyblueskystories
A wintery poem…
Day 5
Amber warning
I wheel my suitcase through fresh snow, from the hotel to the airport. It's 5 am. Terminal 2 is teeming with passengers, flying from departures and to arrivals like it's the most normal thing in the world. Who the fuck are they trying to kid? #365tinytales ##blueskystories
Day 4
On the towpath
'Was that the otter?'
'No. A mink.'
'Really? I saw one here yesterday, that's all.'
'Mink. They come here for the crayfish.'
'Mink are small. It was an otter, yay big.'
'We don't get otters here.'
'Well, I got one yesterday.'
'No you didn't.'
'Yes I did.'
#365tinytales
Day 3
I want to pet one
I look again. They're not big dogs but tiny horses, like the one in The Handsome Family song. I start to walk over to the women walking them. Fuck. They are dogs, big fuckers. I don't want to pet them and we all know where I should've gone. #365tinytales #blueskystories
Joy is an act of resistance. —Toi Derricotte
Gift of Mrs. Reginald Marsh
Reginald Marsh, In Fourteenth Street, 1934
https://botfrens.com/collections/14377/contents/1135174
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Sackner
Alexandra Exter, Theatrical Composition, c. 1925
https://botfrens.com/collections/14377/contents/1137360
Philip Johnson Fund
Liubov Popova, Painterly Architectonic, 1917
https://botfrens.com/collections/14377/contents/1134580
Given anonymously
José Clemente Orozco, Barricade, 1931
https://botfrens.com/collections/14377/contents/1135504
#Tankawanka
Day 2
The second day
My world is water
every field is a new lake
beautiful and sad
the becks are bloating rivers
roaring to the nearest sea
Day 1
#Tankawanka
Day 1
New Year's Day
The new year starts with floods
bloated river torrrent mind
have burst their banks
here comes the sky with colours
here comes hope with its sandbags
#tankawanka
Respair
Thanks to @susiedent.com he learns an old word to use time and time again, in hope he'll recover from despair himself. 2024 had been a year he'd rather forget but there is always fresh hope when one discovers old words to bring it. #365tinytales #dailyblueskystories #@susiedent.com