The lightning rods are all around me,
Above and below and beside and behind,
Even inside and through my very me and
Bursting out all over,

Because like all of us I have mine own,
Charged with all I am and
All that I desire,
All I crave and would achieve

Are described by arcing bolts
Of something like electricity,
Yet terrible and beautiful
In a way that volts alone just aren't,

But why then can I read the
Bolts of others so readily?
How is it I can reach and touch
And bend these other's

Essential sparks to better
And more profitable things?
To that my judgement feels is better,
Or is good?

Am I to be trusted with such a power
Such semi omnipotence with such
Attendant potential to harm
And maim?

Yet if not me then who?
For I do see and I am able to bend the
Struggles of another to better or for worse,
Seeing a better course I cannot help myself

But to reach out and change another's destiny,
But so far what harm have I done?
Have any truly suffered?
Has any harm been me?

None so far and this then do I share
I will continue bending lightning
The best I can and why?
Because I can

Because I dare

Because I care

Look in your heart and what do you see?
Look into your deepest darkest desire,
What is it your eyes perceive?
That which is watching your gaze,
That scary scary thing,
Is me

"Why this dance?"
She asked of me
"When we both know the dance is more than
Feet and shoes"
"Why this ersatz cavorting
Around beasts with two backs
When what's at stake
Is a meeting of our souls?"

"Because it is all one"
I said,
"All one,
The beasts the highs and lows and rainbows,
The unicorn and the snog,
It's all you and it's all me,
We just choose which bits collide
And which of those we keep"

Today the clouds parted
Though none were in the sky
To soften the midday sun and its savage glare,
But these were clouds that hitherto
Softened and blurred conversations,
Stole the worth of words
Unsaid,

Today the filters were not there to
Real-time edit the stream of meaning
From my mouth into her ear,
Today those social mores and fears
Of insult,
Injury or worse were absent,
As questions truly bluntly asked were
Truly
Bluntly
Fully
Met

How sweet it is
To watch  the disruption
Of my slightest touch
Upon a knee,
A wrist
A hand
A thigh,
That fractional loss
Of coherent thought
Engendered by what may have been
But accident,

How delicious to extrapolate,
To sense the nascent effect of
More overt intervention,
A palm slid gathering
A skirts material,
Or lips insistence upon
Goosebumped flesh,
Even as the conversation
Carries on all innocent
Above the surface yet,
How very
Very
Guilty underneath

How far that bar
Could have been
Removed from safe endeavour
Had a hand wandered
Beneath a table,
Or a touch been left
To warm too long,

A fractional delay that says
This is no accident and yet
Not enough to be
Reacted to except
Somewhere deep
In that carnal zone
We fear and desire
So much
To free upon an
Innocent world,

That sense of safe and loyal
Moral status quo,
Quivers under stress
And tremors in the face
Of her carnal monster,
Who's teeth bare and snarl at the bars
Of polite and acceptable behaviour,

But yet that rigid
Smiling calm prevails
(Albeit by a tooth's skin
And the blessed lack of that final back snapping
Straw of temptation)
And as the heat,
That innocent heat from a
Boiling sun, builds
The words come that say
"Let's leave it here
Upon a high"

There is an embrace hanging
As yet unenacted,
A smouldering aching yearning thing
That burns and writhes and
Demands to be born into reality

An embrace that promises so much
Yet threatens more and with equal vigour,
Turns a world upon its head yet
Fills a need so completely
And quenches an aching heart