ALT When My Dream Was Near The Moon… It had outpaced prayer by about two days: dreams travel wispy-light, but god-chat has an excess-baggage-fee from the always desperate over-pack. Imagine a properly-engaged Creator swarmed, ruefully stroking every buzz of stinging need, then returning each emotional-shard, duly calmed, to the constantly fidgety hive. Moonshine-balm: a dropped milk-bottle seeping over all our steps, pungent-wash among jagged revelation, properly witnessed only at a ridiculous distance; like the stars, we forever flatten and impound. All of nature daily within a springtide of surging yearns, we think divinely we just walk across the churn, instead roil inside taking with us anything grabbed plummeting down. Julian Cason

ALT SPRING STORM The sky has given over its bitterness. Out of the dark change all day long rain falls and falls as if it would never end. Still the snow keeps its hold on the ground. But water, water from a thousand runnels! It collects swiftly, dappled with black cuts a way for itself through green ice in the gutters. Drop after drop it falls from the withered grass-stems of the overhanging embankment.

ALT SUMMER GUSTS The land takes under its happiness. In the star light sameness all the short night gust rises and rises as if it would disappear. The blossom has no hold on the ground. But sky's breath, sky's exhale through a thousand gaps! It scatters slowly, colourless heaves all in its path all in its path tumbles. Breeze after breeze it rises from the blossomed petals of the recessing cut.

ALT WATCHING HIM GO (After ‘Young Woman at a Window’ by William Carlos Williams) He is tail-lights and boot-heels, shored pale on soft nape, tilted head haloed by dark mane at the mouth of a door, small hands hooking his belt, pulled until he is swallowed by the house. And her.

ALT Girl Knew a girl who loved Joe Jackson in truth, wasn’t fond of her or then particularly of the man. It was early college years. Heard Steppin’ Out in a shop the other day: it made the past a mess, a lurid paint-pot stir. Who would have known so many regrets could be recorded as the flip-side of a great song? Julian Cason

ALT THURSDAY THROWBACK ‘You can’t put a price on education,’ Somebody said to me once ‘About 9k a year I think, minus Maintenance.’ They didn’t like that ‘But you can go anywhere with A degree.’ ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘The job centre Is nice.’ Pot Washer Emyr Payne Text is on a black background. In the bottom right corner is a yellow outline image of a pot.

ALT Algorhythm I follow my Algorhythm through cryptoscatter syncoplogic rankless.protocolvoided my life gloriously_unsorted && unindexable_

ALT A Tanned Fruit In December One putrid apple, rib-caged by bare branches, a wooden-heart: mid ventricle squeeze; maybe Eve-chomped… before an everlasting Fall. Julian Cason