Foxgloves and Nylon Heart Strings Chris Fitzmaurice

Freddy's Manifesto



Dystopian science fiction poem.



A short poem I wrote many years ago.



Narrated by Ian B

The listening post

A short psychological horror poem

Cover art by DALL-E

Last Week's tomorrow:

The halls are vast and calm,

And the sounds are mostly empty, ignorable.

I've not seen another person in a couple of hours

And the only way I remember their existence

is the occasional cough

or sneeze leaking

down the long broad corridors.

Here in this room I can be whomever I wish.

Nobody will ever tell me any differently.

In these two hours, I crafted a whole persona.

Who Am I really? It is immaterial.

I am who I decide to be

until the nurse returns

to tell me differently.

I am a wounded soldier of the Glameri Empire,

Wounded in person and in mind

And now this sterile palace is my place of healing.

It's not a lie. It's my best guess.

I don't remember where these bullet wounds came from,

But I remember the nurse telling me stories about the war.

We defeated them, the Empire of the market towns,

the merchants who can never have enough

The ones who insist and insist on how to live.

We won, and now I'm here with my fractured memories.

I do remember the war, but it comes here and there, now and then,

in a shower of gunsmoke and a hail of shrapnel.

I remember the booming explosions that came from above

like the sneezes that echo around

these cavernous passageways.

I look at the shadow my hand casts beneath this spotlight,

And I see the shapes of soldiers

stumbling through the mist towards us.

I see these high cream walls,

and I remember a hospital with streaks of blood.

I look at my bandaged leg,

and I see a defeated army dragging itself to safety.

But the nurses tell me we are the winners.

I hear the high insistent whine of the alarm,

And I hear the enemy

I hear bells in a market town.

I hear familiar voices laughing and chatting.

I hear

I hear you calling to me

I smell your perfume and feel your kiss on my cheek

I feel your soft hands squeezing hard on my army jacket.

I feel you slipping away from me

into a valley of fire and fear

into a viscous immeasurable sleep

Into a general anaesthetic

I hear the bells, the bells of my hometown

The bells of my real hometown.

I look around me at the prison of these walls

And the stale air

And the trolley that seemed mundane

Now malign and alien

Enemies all around

I miss the bells of a former life

A life that I can hear when I am alone

And a life that no longer exists,

A life they have taken

A life they have erased from my mind

And replaced with a new life

A sterile life of whining klaxons

And cream walls

And irresolute dreams

And unknown faces

And indistinct memories

And stolen memories

And new memories fading into the void of a vanquished foe.

Let me out

Let me out

Let me out! I want to go home!

Another anecdote from the galaxy in the Museum of No Importance.

Science fiction audio poem with musical and sound effects.

As a cruiser reaches a new world, what is there but to call upon a wave?

Call Upon a Wave

Fate's deathly grip loosens as

our ship slows its mighty descent and

glides to a hovering halt over the crimson carpet that quivers below.

Lather gathers in a Bevy of hairs that stir

in the sticky waves that lash and congeal

and seemingly beckon us down,

before collapsing back into chaos.

We're safe now. Safe to watch

the waves of treacle that roll beneath our cruiser.

But creamy echoes beguile us,

bouncing from our shimmering hull

and out into this unexplored world.

The air is thin. Lifeless.

Yet, something draws me to watch from the obs deck.

Drunken faces curdle in the slow, glutinous maroon-lashing waves.

They’re calling, calling to me. I can see their siren faces.

Singularly, I’m pulled towards an abyss of tempting eternity.

Flickering shadows of doubt pulse and meet something

shimmering intelligently On our hull,

probing and pressing, pressing on some old instinct.

Finally, into the ocean I fall,

Helmet cracked and I gasp.

Sinking, struggling, drowning,

until I gulp a mouth of nothing.

I am nowhere, below what I thought were waves.

Nothing stirs and nothing is real.

A sickly silence spreads. I scream in broken time, nowhere.

The scream is devoured as it falls upwards.

Three provisions of sense are granted to me,

A smell, a taste, a contradictory texture of gel and ice

They alleviate my malaise while leaving me none the wiser.

I look down or up?

I grasp for the phantom shadows

that swirl outside the vortex that now surrounds me.

Another world awaits me.

Another world awaits.

A short poem lamenting the loss of the post-war dream and the move towards the pre-war era.

A short science fiction story.

Cover art by DALLE-3