Hot on the tail of that wily, elusive beast
named ‘inspiration’, I travelled north.

North, where colours mute
and transformative shadow
bends in darklight,
revealing the world as it really is,
as it once was.

Hundreds of years pass,
rolling back time, boiling clouds
rushing over peaks in reverse,
a tiny tornado ***** in on itself,
and hundreds become thousands.

Rain blackens the babies of volcanoes,
engorges forces with greater purpose
and cleanses every shred of vision
from my grasping, desperate mind.

Thousands become millions
And I am stripped of incentive to try.
There is no ruination, here.
No furious nor frantic need
to imagine past lives
in this manicured, managed place.

High-vis’d toilers scuttle on mountainsides
carefully placing and re-placing rocks,
funnelling feet and discovery
on a prescribed and sensible path.

Only the rain
wreathing a secretive misted ribbon,
creeping in glacial cut-throughs,
is possessed of fanciful virtue.

Nothing shatters but the slate
and the landscape does not turn inward
to eat itself
in gnawing, atavistic need.

It says more about me,
than it does of the Lake District
that I would wrench out and offer
my super-heated heart
to see the mountains fall.

Is it schizophrenia ,
or just simple mania,
that makes me just as likely
to laugh, as to cry?
To know, as to wonder why?

Tides push and pull
washing/gritting in equal measure,
who knows?

In light and shade
contrast, I crave.
Everything must be black
(or white)
at ground level,
or lost, soaring in flight.
Motionless or breakneck
at a thousand miles an hour.
Shielding eyes against glare
or staring into darkness.

Trojans face Greeks,
we're all normal, us freaks.
Cutting a path
through waist-high meadow grass
and fallin'... fallin'....
hitting ground, painless,
on my ****!

I love how the night smells
when days are scentless,
darkness brings secrets
we're all friends here, hateless,
seeking something intangible
nameless and free.

Tell of your secret,
it's between you and me.

I use ‘oh, my god’ as an expression
not of faith, but surprise,
of wonder at beauty untouched
by ideology or dogma
as if caught, and pulled, from a dream.

I exclaim ‘oh, my god’ when stunned
not by holy ghosts, but the living,
who do kindness  as though it were nothing
unmindful of securing safe passage
into heaven, or paradise.

‘Oh, my god’, I cry, when words fall idle
or are muted to quiet reverence.
Where twisted skeins of empiric memory,
rush in crashing surf
of reminiscence and nostalgia.

I am godless, but not without reason
‘oh, my god’ being a slip of historical,
idiomatic vernacular.
Even as curiosity drives me to understand
your own ritualistic, devotional motivations.

Raise the cup, my friend
it gives us both what we need.
For you, transubstantiation
for me a divine and luscious tableaux.
For Saint Teresa in her ecstasy no doubt exclaimed
‘Oh, my god’!

They bark at cars, and howl at church bells
Mist rolls down like tears,
While smoke rises in hope.

On a thickly wooded hillside
Within a sandstone scar,
The deer with tiny horns feasts on Rhododendron.

They say there are wolves
Far away in the north
Where midwinter passes fall silent
Beneath a wedding gown of stars.

Send your daughters to the city, my merchant friend!
They will find their manners there.

I'm trying to forget you
thought by slipping thought
but my neurons keep exciting
and my gut keeps getting caught

By transmitted intervention
masquerading memory
a chemical reaction
molecular machinery

I’d blame my plasma membranes
but they're doing naturally
the things that plasma membranes do
as cytoplasmic boundaries

**** these activated receptors
and my synaptic cleft
by strengthening potentiation
without you I am bereft.

The air, superheated, cocoons us
and we drive,
northwards into the heartland
of the desert.

You, black shirted,
your smooth denims
an intrinsic part
of the landscape.
You were born into dust.

I, crisp and white,
a polarised pair
of mirrors for my eyes.

Your hands on the wheel
guide us into the belly of time.
Intent upon a road with no end.

Sunlight hits chrome,
bleeding flashes of forever
into the gaze of any who glance upon us.

The roof pulled down,
my hat is given up
to a vortex of spinning air,
whipping tiny tornadoes
of grit and long-dead weeds
into a dancing frenzy of celebration.

We have no gold on our fingers.
Our teeth shall not itch
with the sugar of a wedding cake.
And we’ll never look back.

Slowly she goes
winding her black art,
twisting the rope,
and conjuring bonds
of instant loyalty
within your close-****** heart.

Carefully she studies
adjusting the fetters,
moulding a psyche
and bending your wiles,
to her own ideals.

Gently she treads
for speed is all ruinous
to this harm she does,
and sweet cruelty bestows
infinite love, between lovers.