So this is what desperately
Sad feels like,
Not a harsh dynamic
Jabbing pain,
No explosions or clashing swords,
Just a semi sleepless night
And a waking
Full of realisation and
An awful cloying
Mass of futility,
A physical pain clamped
About the heart,
Enough to recall
My heart attack,

Well maybe so,
The pain is ramping
So maybe heart broken
Is not just a token phrase
This time

Another row and another
****** parting,
Hearts hard and yet
Crying inside,
Anger and passion compete
With yearning and sadness at loss,

We do not know,
You and I,
How to end or part,
And neither
It seems can we have
Harmony between us,

But that is what I want,
That is what you desire,
Even in the midst of war
We both say that
We tire of the fight,
And in not wanting that

We do actually agree,
We both want peace,
We both desire love,
We both yearn to fill
The same aching
****** void,

Well you fill mine,
And I fill yours,
At least we could if our
Rage would let us,
So here's a flag of truce,
Will you honour it?

Can we know that peace

We both

Desire

And

Need?

I looked in your eyes
And I saw in your soul
The passion and colour
Of unquechable fire and
Unplumbable depths
And I,
I jumped,
Feet first,
Into wild abandon

Trains and their journies
Come in all shapes
And indeed
All sizes,

Mine was six feet
And three inches
Long and maybe
Wider than should,

It ran at various
Speeds and with
All sorts of success
And indeed of failure,

I guess a few first class
Carriages and a load of thirds,
With a well crammed
Car of baggage,

Arguable the quality
And standard of the journey too
Yet never mind it's aims,
That departing platform one?

That service once
Was James

Its strange how sound exists,
How silence fits around
The noise that may be far
Or may be near,
Yet always in the gaps
Within the noise
There is the sound
Of nothingness

I am noise and action
An assault upon the senses
Of everone it seems
In earshot or worse yet
Within the range
Of touch or eyes meet,
Close enough to sense
My inner turmoiled demons

Well soon enough,
Albeit not soon enough
For some,
My noise will diminish
My actions still,
And where I once crashed
About there will be purely
Blessed quiet.

Enjoy!

I sit in a web of intrigue
Involved and yet inviolate,
Not touched by others sorrows yet
Feeling every lonely cry,

I tug the webs of life
In which we all are struggling
And help others make a little progress
Or ease their situation

So many know me
Yet but few have any
True sense of me and what
I am or do

Many blunder passed
While some pause reflective
And a few see something which
Registers briefly before the stupor

Washes in to take them down
But life is for those very few who
Grasp my outreached hand
And cast aside the unseen net

That binds them to a pointless
Obedient existance and those
Few those Happy few
Live with passion and with joy

Weeks of wrestling
With the line
And feeling
Your footing
Slip on ever
Less dependable
Gravel

Feeling not just
The solid power
Upon the line
But that imperterbable strength,
That fearsome yet calm focus

As a fish once caught
Is reeled in not to rod
And not to shore,
But to new self knowledge
Evermore

Feet now wet
Toes dipped in the waters
Which soon will
Close above as you
Slip delighted
Beneath their waves

A person who can endure pain or hardship
Without showing their feelings or complaining,
Yep
That is me,
Stiff upper lip and a face of stone,
I will not betray the pain inside,
But what no one seems to remember,
Not even the stoics themselves,
Is that not showing and not feeling
Are not the same,
Not the same at all,
And although my face and tone
Deny the truth
The fact is I ****** HURT!
My heart and my soul
Are curled in a bleeding
Ball in an obscure corner,
Out of sight of the world,
If only they were out of my ****** mind!

As I sit waiting in the storm,
My car buffeted by the wind
And pedestrians leaning
At impossible angles
Those few who dare
Perambulate

I watch the ferry that will
Carry me back approach
The dock at a crazy offset
With wind driven waves
Smashing in spite
Against its side,

Outrageous weather
And red travel warnings
Everywhere yet this ship
Will sail and on it will I be
With my car and with my son
Travelling anyway,

And such is my life
In many ways,
For there are many waves
Hurled against me
And the winds that set against
Are huge,

But ships are safe alongside
The Dock
And I would be if I would
But acquiesce
But ships were not built
For harbour's shelter

But rather for the open sea,
And therein lies the issue,
Ships should brave
The oceans swell
And so the same
For me

Well that was quick,
That was fast in fact,
The transition from
Nervous angler
Trying to land that
Gut felt truth that
Would not yield to
Rod nor line
But rather fought
And pulled and calmly won.

I teach others to sail,
Quite literally,
And I am good at that,
Many many people will attest
To my passion and effectiveness,
But sailing is way more
Than just a glorious physicality,
Its a perfect analogy
Of life and love and death,
I also coach and mentor
The lives and loves
The living and doing
Of others,
Also in truth their endings too,
And I offered that best
Of me to you,


But something you seem
To fail to grasp is that whilst
Tacking can be wide,
Deliberate and slow,
Sedate even,
A gybe is the opposite,
Stern to wind,
A boom crashing across
And the cause of many a capsize,
You cannot be gentle gybing
In any kind of proper wind,
Its either one way,
Or it is the other,
It is sudden and immediate and NOW,
So no,
I have not been tacking,
Although at one point maybe
I was going that way,


With an icky feeling
In my heart like
The warning trembling
In a sail's leach,
I am about to gybe,
And it will be sudden,
There will be
A rapid change of direction,
I am a good sailor,
A great seafarer and handler
Of boats
Both real and metaphorical,
So my gybe will be anticlimactic,
Calm even,
But I will be accelerating
Away from you,
Your self centredness,
Your precious secrets,
Your rage,
Months of scorn and derision and accusation,
And while I do not know
My destination,
Indeed in truth I have none,
I do know the seas will quickly
Be much calmer,
The spray far less and that
Without the ice of attitude
And pain,
And at a parting rate of five knots each
In just twenty four hours we will be
Over two hundred miles apart,
I wonder then,
Will you OR I
Find peace?

I fell over at the weekend,
Fell clenching a rope
That was no longer there to support
And so it didn't,
And James hit the deck with a thud,

And it hurt if I'm honest,
Knocked the wind right from me
And sent shock waves
Through every *****
Every sinew vein and muscle,

As I lay there with a
Worrying spikey pain,
I wondered whether I was damaged
Or just jarred,
Okay or out of the game,

But then the cameras came out
And so did pride
And pragmatism,
And a rapid standing up
Because - well - you know....

This is not the first time I have fallen
And probably wont be the last,
Because **** happens like that
in life and just the same in love,

Because stuff,
And people,
Will always
Let you
Down

I have medals for ballroom
And Latin,
And Rock and Roll,
Gold no less suggesting a degree of competence,

Dancing is joyous and exhausting,
It needs commitment and teamwork
And tension in the arms
And closeness in the bodies of those involved,

It is not easy to find one
With that tension and strength
Of core to truly dance well,
And those who do are popular,

So a partner once found is
To be treasured and respected,
There is no room for discord for
The dance wont work that way,

I know all that and
I have found my dancer,
And I will hold her close
And forever  be a frame to her moves

Because I do not wish to dance alone

Nor with any other

Ever.

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

"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"

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

My eyes do not lie,
They blaze my would be secrets
About the place like a lighthouse
Illumning the safe route home,

They call out my decency yet
Also my passion and my
Lack of limit,
My wanton desire mixed with generosity

They shout that I will have you
If that be thy desire yet not that
Deepest part of me will
Any other have,

Which makes me what?
For I am not for sale and I am
Keeper of many secrets,
Perhaps a form of succubus

Describes me best,
My drugs of choice are
Secrets whispered quietly
Sincerely and occasionally in shame,

My eyes scream they're hiding secrets
Yet also show somehow that none shall
Ever be revealed,
And so it is for me,

A rolling succession of
Those who want so much yet get but
That which they truly need,
My eyes see all

My heart knows all,
My fingers trace the lines and
Passions of others lives
And futures,

My eyes oversee my
Meandering toward that cliff
Whence none have returned bar one,
And it is He to whom I will

Reveal both mine all
and their everything

This fool is not dressed
In colourful rags
With bells at his toes
And the horns of a ridiculous hat

This fool does not cavort
For the applause of a court,
No tumbling or bumbling
For applause,

This fool stands aghast
Seeing in its awful scale
The enormity of his folly,
The depth of his error,

This fool is in jeans
And a shirt and yet
Not a stitch of his
Dignity left,

This fool is just
A fool who loved
Much too well
And who's stilled heart now

Is broken in hell

Our eyes speak volumes
That our mouths never say
Though our bodies ache to hear or feel,
We circle polite yet yearning
Until one day that perfunctory polite embrace
Lasts a few seconds longer than ought
And holds a few inches closer,
You feel my body’s strength,
I feel yours succumb
But then we break and there is one more
Unacknowledged sharing which
Neither can now unknow

I wonder if this might be
The last,
Indeed most certainly it has been the best,
The greatest leg up,
The final boost to better
That I perform,

So much history overcome,
So much pain,
Such loss and sadness,
Such tragedy incarnate
Across so many years
It scarcely may be borne

By my shoulder,
Nor mopped by my soul's
Sponge no matter the trying,
Yet slowly now we see
The change,
That change sought so long,

And even as that change rises,
Even as hope and happiness
Reach self sustainment,
I fail in equal measure,
Slowly and inexorably
Fading away,

No longer blazing,
But burning,
Sputtering,
Failing,
An ember,
Gone.

I sit once more dismissed,
A lonely figure in my head and my heart,
Aware of the specific trigger
For my sacking as your partner, lover, friend,
Yet also keenly aware that

Once again ADHD has twisted reality
And scale and proportion
To the point your rage knows
Nearly no bounds,
Only that I must be destroyed

And in this there is such
Injustice and a great untruth,
Because I read your verse,
I see the photo's we took even on a day
When we met but to part,

And what I see,
What I see over and over and over,
Is the flow of love from thee to me
And me to thee and thence back,
A circular intimacy without end,

Until you took bolt cutters to it
Sought to free a link in the chain
You feel has bound me to you
And you to me,
And us to we,

But here is the thing love,
That loop is like Hercules soul,
'Tis harder than you think to cut,
There is always a hair's breadth
You cannot ever sever,

Yet for now I must wait alone in the shadows,
Away from the warmth of our love,
That irrational you that arose from
Pain and ADHD
Must depart before

The real us

Can

Return

And there it is
That slap that we discussed
And was said would never come,
A stinging roundhouse
***** of a thing
That even half expected still hurts,

Is it the stinging pain that hurts?
Or the attendant change of heart
And the failure to hold to
That hard won learned
Body of knowledge and
A system of belief?

Believe me I am big enough
A straight on punch with a closed fist
Is going to be absorbed
And then be reacted to,
Counter struck
And then followed by attack

But in this I cannot,
Will not counter nor attack
For this is not a fight
That I desire and neither is there a victory
Nor a war to be won,
Just sadness at losing

Once again