Creativity is shaped by inspiration in response to conscious or subconscious prompt: simple patience, chance encounter or studied observation is rewarded with lightbulb moments, one notion prompting another, making new connections (especially while asleep), shaping and reshaping, gathering pace and focus like a determined toddler, until we have a lamp to illuminate our way. I regularly ask the Holy Spirit to please keep those ideas pinging, to nudge the dozing Muses. Writing ideas down is a form of release, otherwise they buzz like trapped bees. Weaving ideas into a story that can be shared is to truly set them free.

But some ideas struggle to find a friend, like pieces of long-lost jigsaw puzzles, hinting at a bigger picture that we can never complete (having lost the box). Not one to dodge a challenge, I attempted to coerce my burgeoning stock of unused curveballs into something that would secure their freedom. A fool’s errand. Wedged into a poetic framework that is neither conventional nor naturally pleasing, In-between days lacks narrative thread and resolution. The lost sheep may have finally found a home, but they remain an unsettled flock, too stubbornly disparate to knit together, all wool and no jumper.

I accept this for what it is. I’m sure AI could spin these notions into yarns in an instant, but why bother reading something I didn’t bother to write (echoing The people refusing to use AI, BBC News, 6 May 2025). Without the struggle there’s no sense of achievement or satisfaction, and we always learn something along the way, even if it’s how to deal with failure. This is something a machine could never understand. We must continue to exercise critical thinking, to treasure personal creativity and gifts from the Spirit, and never leave AI to lazily regurgitate its own plausible invention. Otherwise, it’ll be AI versus AI – as is already happening in recruitment – and that’s a very dangerous loop from which to be excluded.

In-between days*

No longer children of tungsten and copper,

Oxidised, pending,

Talos’ shoddy replica,

A burnt-out moped in the underpass,

A summer solstice in binbag and antlers.

Elderly sisters reverse, ever so gently, out of success,

Misplaced memorabilia,

Some dusty, broken insignificance,

Heavy sediments, carelessly dug over,

A cursory tracing from my brassy outline,

In Kays catalogue block capitals.

The breeze plays a merry dance upon ageing bones,

Banana fingers and Hobbit toes,

A fish out of hard water,

Focus punctured, a flailing tyre,

A half-day at the Muses’,

Mismatched plates wobbling atop their poles.

Chimp quits zoo to train as assassin,

The savage revenge of innocents,

A seven-word short story.

That shuddering witch in the corner of your eye,

Divisive spells hidden in plain sight,

Like Marmite upon her tongue.

A protecting angel to each church assigned,

A glimpse beyond the protecting veil.

*Footnote: The title is a nod to the 5 minutes of intense stare-at-my-beer thinking it took to recall The Cure frontman Robert Smith in the Amnesty International pub quiz.

Colin Davey