FREE from 4/1 – 4/5 2017
99 cents from 4/6 – 4/13 2017
Purchase link: Amazon.co.uk
Purchase link: Amazon.com
About “The Car”
A sequence of twenty-eight illustrated Shakespearean sonnets describing the human condition in terms of the mechanical components of a motor car. An owner's workshop manual for servicing your life.
‘The Car’ asks, and tries to answer, these kinds of questions:
If the arc across the sparking plug’s gap is an indication of love, can love’s bright spark be cultivated like the ignition timing management system?
What can be learnt about human relationships by studying the phenomenon of clutch judder?
Does automatic transmission mean our modern society has learnt to leave decisions to a box?
Is there life after death in a scrap yard?
Excerpt:
Driving in the dark, we move cocoons of light,
Carrying thoughts along in front of us.
Our vision is short in the cave of night,
Something small in the future darts across.
At a distant bend another car dawns,
Devouring dark with its dragon’s bright breath,
Lamps search the dim opening they have torn
Into the next world to find their best path.
I feel your light begin its probe of me
Searching for your own future in my dim past,
Yet both searcher and searched we cannot be,
The powerful light makes us both recast.
The dark side of each we try to assess;
What one saw quite well, now two may see less.
I knew your parents, atmosphere and rock,
You sprang from their hot earth in crudity.
Their additives guard your advance from knock,
Their adverts sing of fire and purity.
As pipings prime you now to carburette
Let nothing slow you down or change your mind
To take ingested air for which you’re set
And leave past life on filters far behind.
The starter cranks its bridal march for this:
The well-groomed air drawing your vapour veil.
Both mists co-mingling in one tingling kiss
To share a breath that burns as you exhale.
The exhaust of all earth marks your mating:
Thousands wedding-nights-per-minute rating.
About the Author:
Stuart Larner is a chartered psychologist. He has published international articles and poems in magazines and newspapers, as well as in scientific journals. His books include "Jack Daw and the Cat" and "Guile and Spin”. With Rosie Larner he co-wrote: “Hope: Stories from a Women’s Refuge.” Recently he wrote the book of sonnets “The Car”.