Nothing is indestructible.
We all know most things can be broken.
At home, in your friend’s toy chest
Breaking things in a place you’re considered a guest
I guess,
Breaking a bone hurts. I know through some testimonies
I wouldn’t know, but maybe eventually
That ninety or so broken degree
Painful message sent through the spinal cord holding me--
Together.
Underneath the thin material having been tethered.
The spine surviving endless stages of weather
Holding on to claim being a backbone helplessly held together
Hoping through each trimumph the chronic pain might feel better
Only holding onto the self as a go-getter
As life’s building blocks as the brick setter
The rain picks up
And life’s damp becomes wetter.
Just let her.

Things, as if they were pushed right over the edge
Smashed, or broken, as the smasher’s true pledge
It’s not me. These ten fingers deny
To be responsible for all the pain felt as the time passed me by

Maybe it was everything. The endless rotation of our planet.
Maybe it was this or that. ****, I have had it.
It wasn’t everything, or anything, or anyone or body
It wasn’t the unerasable ink splatter and splotting
It wasn’t the wind that knocked me over
It wasn’t the colors you’d paint me
It wasn’t the night,
It wasn’t the morning,
It wasn’t the past or present cold mourning.

It was not my limbs or the joints, or the ligaments that compose me
The fragments and pieces ] glued together intravenously

Each psalm taken in the hurricane seasons’ wrath
One, after another, too broken to cast

The two unequal hands ring based on the hour
Whose sounds was the ring of a shared life now gone sour
Because being ignored, as if I never existed is power
Unconsider yourself, at least today, that forever blooming flower.
I might be a million things. But of those not a coward.
Today you took the title with a medal to show off to the people you know
Welcome to the black and the white swan’s big show
At this point I’m the raven, she’ll never know
I was too drunk to function at the end of the show.

The curtains begin to rise, and I watch in surprise
How exposed and naked are the both of our lives
As your patience has taken time to disguise
Replacements as substitutions for the nature of the styles
We have to live life in the ways that we fight
Hoping for what we want in the end without struggle
How about perfection? I said on the double.

And those two uneven hands of the clock are due to change places
Ticking away at our concept of time
And aging our faces
The weeks pass us by
The days and the hours
Ask me who if not both of us are the coward

The giant dump truck grinds up countless materials
Making fragments of the things that existed for real
And what lasted in the bins of the emotions free wheels
Making internal rationalizations for what I tried to feel.
It’s over and over on what I wanted to seal
Were too many things to remember?
Dreams turning it all too, too real.
Turn my mind inside out I begin to expose now and peel.
How long will it take to forget
Or to heal?
I don’t know what to call this.
And idea or what’s real.
I’ll tell you what the heart asked for his final meal
Peace to believe what we did have was real.

Life keeps grinding up what treasures I’ve collected.
Forget what memories I ever recollected
All I’m asking is that I remain intact and protected.

But no one can guarantee me that.
No one can ask me to offer up my hands frostbitten with your cold
No one can ask me to bluff followed by my own fold
No one can ask me the number of me having been sold.
There was one dream and I bought it.
Except the belief in the memory is what I’ve left to have fought it.

I don’t ask or expect to ever be repaired.
But you didn’t break me, so why were you ever so scared?
Maybe for the immeasurable amount that you actually cared.
But today’s findings have left me quite frankly impaired.
I didn’t exist to you at all. I was the invisible man.
I use all my abilities to understand as I can.
But nothing makes sense to the invisible man.

So he hopes and he hopes for just one part of him to be seen.
One of his hands through the smoke in your overly-woven screen
To knowingly be holding one of yours, when your reality’s clean.
I’m the invisible man.
Pretending not to see me was a game played unclean.
I hope one day in your life he exists.
Parting through the smog and the fog and the mist
As I feel forgotten in both my clenched fists
What's left is to let go of  those fogged moments like this.

vi.xxiii.xii

twenty years on
and i still look for her
on the seashore

it was a promise she made
that even if given to another man
she would break up for once
come running to the sea
for me
and if i wasn't there
she would go deeper
leaving on the sands a note

i was here as i promised

she came to my life
she came to be my wife
but twenty years on
i still look for her
on the seashore
she ageless
waiting for her lover
and then going down to the sea
leaving a note
on the sand
unerasable

*i was here as i promised

If only you knew
The thoughts I've had for you
The broken tears that were shed
The empty promises that were made
The lost hopes for each other
I f only you knew, the things I'd do to keep you
I shouldn't have these thoughts
For they can't exist
If only you knew about the long nights I've had
Up until two thinking of you
Wondering
The love that will never be true
The thing we will never have
For you have fallen for another
If only you knew how bad I'm hurting
Because of you
Would you love me
Would you long for my caress
Would you care
No
We'd still sleep like we're lovers
Spitting hateful mummers
If only you knew I didn't mean a thing
If only you knew the mark you've made on my mind
It's unerasable  
So forever will you be there
If only you knew how much I cared
How much I need you
If only
Would you stay with me if you knew these dreams I've had

Piercing
Shattering
Sapphire doesn't
Come close to touching it
Ice white
Glaciers
Winter skies
Reflected in the ocean
Pale
Frayed threads
On the edge of a sweater
The faintest
Water colour
Dash of night
On a page

Leave me out in the dark
I'm not your playground of destruction
that you run to during your recess.

chiseling the grass,
sharp as sickles.
thrashing your leather whip
on the dusty ground
with an unerasable frown.

Strangling it around
the rusty bridles
of my broken swingset,
ripping it out from root down
at the twitch of your wrist.
Straddling my worn out see-saw
imbalanced by the wreckage of time
prance around until it
shatters into a million steel slivers,
While your hair brushes the clouds
while you have the first taste of rain
and feel the chill of snowflakes against your skin.

But this playground,
this zealous monument,
was built for
a higher purpose.
It's a place where
streams overflow,
wildflowers grow,
solace to the fireflies afterglow
& poetry readings during
seasons of snow.

If it does not stand for it's purpose,
my trembling hands will flick
a matchstick on the the wick of the trial
to arsonate it's submissiveness
and eat it's dispossessed soul.
It's flames will touch the
cradle of the crescent moon.
And from the ashes

I will rise,
*the Undying Light,
the Untouchable Night.

christopher
you can't be so cold all the time.
half your face is always eaten
by hair, and
you've been ignoring phone calls.
christopher--
i miss when times were simpler.

you're keeping wild ghosts
slung 'round in bare sheets.
she doesn't even stay around long enough
to be called company.
every time back in bed is
a thousand naked defeats.

christopher,
your kind of loving is unbreakable
blossoming gentle
but unerasable.
you're sometimes delicate i know, so
i won't let you grow
paper skin so thin
cut by a shallow remark.

in all fairness its quite unfair
to think you don't belong here
so let us prove you do.
you're coming out with me as soon
as you unlock the door.
don't risk cutting yourself
on razor thin mistakes
that don't stack up.

christopher
always giving doesn't make you weak.
there's something glowing in your optimism
and how it survives burning alive each night
twisting up from lost ashes at morning's light.
don't let it taper away with
words on a page.

do you remember that time you
threw your keys in the street
and slammed your foot through a cabinet?
i've never been so scared for you.
do you remember driving home drunk in the fog,
stomach torn up with disgust?
i think you know it wasn't worth it
i think you know she wasn't worth it.

christopher
your life doesn't amount to some long con
i think you found who you found
for a reason
i think your life is more than
dreaming about old demons
and feeding dead feelings.
please believe there's reasons
for you needing the people you needed.
christopher--
i think you were made for picking up
Our pieces.

this title has begrudgingly waited for some loving kindness, fulfillment-needy, since October of Two Thousand and Seventeen

which is not quite as long as the decades I have been waiting to
accumulate the words to provide us both, an inspired solution

my days are numbered
in decades, decals, varying lengths of hair,
belts with notches that ain’t reachable,
suits various, both too big and too small to fit,
the who who used to own them,
begrudgingly, writes this

city born and bred, with the pale skin needed to prove my urbanity, each day came unto me begrudgingly,
even, especially, the good ones

when I was ten and rode my bike from freedom to mystery,
and back again in a city that was ok, if you stayed out of its way
and knew the city’s vocabulary and its erogenous zones

when nothing come easy, when even the easy, when it comes, comes begrudgingly

when you think of love, and the next immediate thought is:
how great the cost - recalling too well,
the pain of childbirth and child rearing
and the staining, paining fluid is in perm-attendence,
that doesn’t ever fully departs and
is not never entirely stain-stick-removable,
and the children come ‘n go according to their schedule,
someone else’s vast eternal plan

life in the same apartment  
where my parents died,
listening to the stories of joined lives,
listen to the sisters telling them
over and over to a stream of visitors
earned from and of a 98 year life,
given up willing but, begrudgingly as well.

the story-telling skill because of them,
my mist-matched parents who did ok
and their very best,
gifted us hyperbole innate genetic
and all of us now registered
tall tale tellers;

some write for a living,
some live to write,
some write to make themselves clearer,
after honestly confronting their subway reflection  

words acquired bot ‘n sold,
they too are stains unerasable,
very always handy,
the one thing we shared, word skill,
was never at loss, words never held a grudge
no matter how long they waited to serve

this fact, begrudgingly confess;
all my-word skill was freely inherited...
and I hope it satisfied the title
and you, those that waited patiently but,
begrudgingly

The fairy tale I believed in had died,
I cannot rejoice, caged by society and sorrow,
The foggy night, shall you let the moonlight touch me?
Look at me.
Look into my eyes.
Behind these iron bars,
I was born, a child of failed union,
A child of malice and rage,
Pray to whatever God you may,
I shall bring justice
Under the tutelage of the faceless god.
I shall destroy all that deserve death,
Before they destroy all those who deserve life.
I shall bear the burden of sin,
So promise me, shall you live?
Promise me this, and I will gladly live with this nameless monster of mine.
My ears ring with the voices of the ******,
Calling out to me to end their lives.
I cannot remember the melody of that day,
When we danced together in sunlit day,
Now the rain shall never cease to fall.
I cannot see anything beyond my perverted notions anymore.
Let the sky rain down upon me black acid rain,
Let the air be filled with miasma thick.
I am a being of rage and hate,
Of fear and avarice,
With the blades with which I killed,
The God of my innocence,
Today I shall punish all those who are guilty.
Accepting the unerasable scars on my body,
Let us ravage the false gods of this world, O nameless monster of mine.
Ah.
This skill, these prayers.
I am the God of unrelenting justice and damnation.

Is there
a deeper Darkness
Or
Is there
a deeper Lightness
waiting?

Abscesses of our minds
not withstanding

What hole
thing
R u?

Wavering in the light
pixelated weak

R u carried
or do you stand?

Is there
an edge
to be had

Or is it
just an occupation
from which
to distract us

and see
tear filled acts
of confusion
celebrated

clearly we are
winning
our game
to be righteous

Which is
to lose
and somehow
win over time

Unerasable blues
and salt
seeds of continuous
self-doubt

Potato chips
to dark fasting
Crayons to an
iron radiator

Socks to a nebulae
clenched in birth
is a song
radiating

We are the deeper
folds
respected by fabric
aficionados

Creases in everything
shape themselves
on our tongues
in our emanations

We are the shore
climbing for awhile
to the land
then back to the sea

We are the circle
almost back
skip that illusion
lean into the swing

Break into another
beaker of stinking next
pour it on yourself
suffer early and often

this continuity
a lie in a lie
in a genre
you choose

for breakfast
crunchy
is how
you prefer





Copyright@2018 Dennis Willis

he's so unsure
in the most self assured way

he has eyes like the sea
before a storm
a combination of
       blue                          
   and                  
green        
so remarkable
that you want nothing but
to have them look
into yours
the very same way

and his laugh is
a sound that should be
boxed up
and put away
to be accessed at a
moments notice
to be cherished
--always
every single time it
stumbles out
of his diaphragm

his face is
familiar
in the way of a childhood comfort
that you never want
to un-see

a mix of joy and nostalgia
that you want to relive
everyday

he has a way about him
like
he could break at
one crooked word
yet
he's strong enough
to carry
the whole world around
on his shoulders

he's unerasable
but you wouldn't
even want to erase him
if you had the chance
--he's perfect

he'd carry around all your burdens with you
and bottle up your laughs
and document every three A.M. conversation

you constantly just want to
be with him
because that's where you're okay

and you want to tell him
you want him
to know
but
he probably wouldn't want that
and in all likelihood
he would disappear
and that
would be like
trying to breathe
           under            
                    water  



- l. m.

Soon his car was full of scars.

Was a time
He kept it clear of grime
Dusted off even a speck of soil
Put in his labors all his toil
To see
His car scratch free.

But in this running game
One after the other came
Streaks upon streaks of rough embrace
Leaving behind the ugly trace
Of unerasable scars
On his new car

Now he sings in philosophic mode
*Scratch is inevitable as you run on the road
You can travel only that far
Beyond which waits the first scar.

Fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes--
Nature can be quite…demanding.
We're just a speck in the grand scheme;
At least that's my understanding.

Our relationship with nature
Should be one of respect and awe.
But in the guise of progress we've found
That mankind has a fatal flaw:

Our love affair with material things.
You wonder: That can't hurt, can it?
Ah, but just think about
Unlimited growth on a finite planet.

From caves to computers, we've come a long way.
But some resources are irreplaceable.
When they're depleted, their loss will leave
A mark behind that's unerasable.

Population times consumption--
It's really just a simple equation--
Equals environmental impact
And NOT merely on occasion.

Constant growth of both the economy
And population smacks of futility
And gives our world a recipe for
A bleak unsustainability.

As we add to our atmosphere
Carbon dioxide and methane gas
And destroy what it takes to sustain us,
Who knows what will come to pass?

Our world is such an incredible place!
I hate being the prophet of doom,
But let's not ignore reality:
There's only so much for us to consume.

Reasonable consumption now:
Is there such a thing as that?
If so, let's investigate
Our options. Jumping Jehoshaphat!

Avoiding economic collapse
While putting less stress on things
And controlling population growth
Perhaps could soften the future's zings.

Think about our children’s future.
Think what we’re doing? Think what we’ve done?
Why would we turn this beautiful planet
Into an uninhabitable one?

- by Bob B

I'm too much
think too much
feel too much
seen too much

there's too much
wrong

encased, lowered
sealed, oxygen-devoid
decomposing underground
dunno if I'll ever be
my oddnormal alive
again

last night I didn't eat enough
drank too much, but still
not enough
to numb this chasm
climbing on feet cracked
trying to ascend
my insides

last night I cried
in my brother's arms
shaking infantile
held close - yet
lonely still

the kind of lonely
that only sets in
after you forget
what it's like
to feel

when the trauma unit
becomes your domicile
for years on years on years

you can't even know
how ****** up you are
all comparisons lost
perpetually swept under
survival mode rug

he told me
I'm not ready

for anyone

proceeded to confess he's
writing a letter to the girl he
fell in love with ten years ago

to unburden his chest
attempt a closure
or maybe crack
back open

they had a thing
it was too much

unexpected
unerasable
haunting

love discovered
then abandoned

the day after she left
he hooked up
with his son's mother
for the first time
to escape the pain

entangling himself
in surface motions
for the better part
of a decade

too much
is there still
the connection
never severed
red strings
still tied

...

I want friendship, but maybe
that's asking too much

after making love
breaking apart, gluing back
only to shatter again
without even so much
as one pillowtalktouch

yet that, says something
so strange and rare
unto itself

...

but when your mouth shuts
my brain snorts questions marking
volatile heartstops and starts

I don't wanna be
writing a letter in 10
(or would it be 8 now?)
to shut thresheld door
never walked through

I want to know real hello
if only to get

real
goodbye

retire these lines
(hypothetically)
to open bare arms

without
fresh residue of you
emanating cold bone crush
without
searching for your diamond slivers
in another set of eyes

if I know one thing
for absolutelyfuckingsure it's:
these skeletons of truth
will keep on rattling
behind closed doors
even when we'd rather

our remains
be still

By Harlon Rivers; sent to me in a message
3/17/18

A simple man walks a twisted lifeline
a Path Humble, seldom seen or said.
He often hears from river edge,
watching the simple beauty echo
in the harmony of river's song.

And in the green and peacefulness
a rare light enkindleth a pleasant gladness,
A timeworn body needs a place to catch a breath
for a while, for a while...

Where the wisdom of windblown silence beckons
muted whispers without a home …
for to lay down unerasable burdens unshed
for a while , for a while...

Black & milds burning my fingers.
I know that it's bad, but it feels so good.
Stress weighing on me heavy.
I talk to God, but, no clear answers.
Tell me what I'm fighting for.
Dear God, if you're up there, tell what I'm fighting for.
What am I crying for?
Hoodie over my head, God, what am I hiding for?...

You spend your whole life trying to be perfect,
Just to find out that you ain't ****.
You try to be the guy that carries all the burdens, including your own,
But you realize you're ill-equipped.
You break everything you come across: glasses, vases, and hearts that are now lost,
Because of you.
This poem is not from my point of view,
But if it was I'd understand why he feels so blue…

You see living in this life, you're bound to feel doomed.
Good things can happen to you, but negatives will still loom.
And people wanna be all close and personal with you and your truths,
But nobody's loyal around here, all they want is your truce;
Not to be cordial, but just to get in on the news,
That's why I choose a lane to pave, and never say when I move.
​But even when you try to be humble,
​You start to  get in your feelings when you hear the slightest mumble.
​And then you wanna rumble,
All along we've been living in a jungle, and I don’t mean no New York.
We in a world and generation where your “homies”’will eat and not bring extra forks,
They will let you starve.
Selfish and self righteous,
Very messy with their moves.
That's why I rarely go out, and my friends, I let God hand pick and choose…

Now the perception is mine.
Hoodie still on, world’s cold, but I'm doing fine.
Black N milds still sitting in the cup holder while I drive,
Formulating lies in case my mom found out like “they ain't even mine.”
“Well why they in your car? You want your lungs get black and die?”
“Man, momma them ain't mine. They must belong to one my guys.”
​Can't erase the unerasable, or trace the untraceable.
​10 times out of 10, all your wrongs will come back to you.
That's why I keep my guards up like Garda,
Because karma’s like that crazy ex girlfriend you can't shake off of you.

I've been finessing the systems.
I've been showing all of the symptoms of a hardheaded BOY that just won't listen,
And think he's a man, and that he can stand on his own to.
And will tell you to your face he never wanted you.
​Counterfeit power.
​Egotistical attitude,
​That is sure to fall through.
Let him fall through…

I mentally pace back and forth tracing and tracking my train of thought and somewhere along these ragged,ratchet lines I get lost
My past right behind me has had it claws waged into my soul and regrets make their way to my tongue and come out as my apologies of unerasable black ballpoint markers that have mummified my previous lovers.
I have stopped corpsing but these cadavers wont get it
I sat there with my bent vertebra making sense of these calcified skeletons that have made a home in my remodeled closet right after being thrown out.An Elijah to them.
Our love being crucified by them.
But I hope that love is like Jesus or that somewhere in his genetics love is Jesus because if he is, with three days of darkness a resurrection is long over due. His eye filled with uncertainty.Regret wipes his smile away in a heart beat. His kisses turn bitter still hoping that love is Jesus or is the son of Jesus or a cousin even because then the hope that his kisses will be kisses again.

your Love

Unerasable...
The curves on body
And why is it
That your hands
Look so soft
Why do I even care?

girl... Out of your league
"Alright, I'm backing out"

Unmistakable...
The colors that glimmer
In your eyes
As the sun touches them
The crooked calm smile
don't do this to yourself

No guilt
I know I'm spot on
Let truth emerge on it's own time
For surely
It always comes out
Make no mistakes
there's nothing at stake
"It's all in my head"

No doubt should have
That head checked out
I hear whispers in the wind
And ghosts talking
A prayer and a loving mantra
The frequency
Of all Saints in heaven
The Divine, the Tao, The Source
The soft whisper of the darkness

Surely so many prophesies
Have manifested vastly
Words left my lips
Of truths I could not have known
And peace invaded my heart
As a soft voice guided me
Through the deepest meditation
Lessons on life emerged
From thin air
Putting chaos in to focus
But not this...

It just tells me to keep going
It will all make sense in time
You're not crazy
But I know better than most
That the deepest lies
Can be so rationally structured
How would I know the difference

PTSD screaming in my head

I hear the voice
The unmistakable voice
Pounding through this space
In my head I smiled
And said "Hi"
But in reality I froze
No words left my lips
Nearly walked in to you

PTSD pounding in my head

But I see nicer things in my sleep
The drowsy breathing
Of the most beautiful man
I've ever set my eyes on

frown
go away

Still no guilt, nope
I know I'm right
Just take your things
And go make life happen
But my soul still goes against me
There must be a good reason
But maybe it's really all in my head

How does one proof
Thoughts, dreams and whispers
When time stands still.
And to you my disengaged partner
Where were you doing overhours?
You know what?
I don't care, just be straight with me.
There's nothing left here anyway.

But Imma be a good girl
Even if it takes forever
No shame of cheating
On my good record of loyalty
Just wonder why
You're still here
too many attachments

Meanwhile...
There's a scent in the air
Just around the corner
On the hallway
if only you were as available
as my thoughts want you to be
I have no secrets
and everything to lose
just ask
*I'll hate it but I'll tell the truth

My timing has never quite been right with anything I’ve done in life
Not knowing the difference between what I want and need
And somehow not getting either one regardless of how hard I try
And it’s so hard to abide by letting my head talk my heart out of feeling
But somehow the universe has a funny way of making me think that my world
That I, am indestructible
But when we’re young aren’t we all indestructible?
It isn’t until the sun sets and I’m alone that I start to wonder
If maybe I’ve been confusing weapons and words
Words as weapons
Disguising themselves as flattery to make yourself look good,
And **** do you look good

I want to drink you like whiskey on the rocks,
Savoring every drop
Of aged perfection in my vast collection
I want to feel the burn in the back of my throat
And hope that my bad decisions can only be blamed
On transition
My lowered inhibitions only bring out my honesty
And honestly I’m consciously losing my sanity
Staring at blank pages
Tired of writing apologies
For things unseen

There is an entire cosmos inside of your eyes,
Beckoning to me as though they are ready for me to explore the depths of you
Without a spacesuit, jumping into a realm of complex serenity
I’m hoping gravity will catch me
Before I fall too hard
Sick of skinning my knees
For men who don’t appreciate me
They don’t deserve me
But you...

You say that you are my silver lining
And while I’m out here climbing, some days barely surviving,
Just the way that you look at me makes me feel a little more at home
In this unfamiliar place of my life
When I’m surrounded by uncertainty
You bring me home
When my naivety gets the best of me, admittedly, mostly physically,
You are a constant, stability, you are the eye of my storm
Eerily still while the world around me is demolished
And I must be honest
Sometimes I wish you were the destruction
Maybe then this corruption wouldn’t have caught me so off guard
Your perfection is unnerving
Silver lining
As though the clouds trying to cover the sun
Are not enough to stop the shine from behind
Enemy lines
You shine

And when this chapter of my life is written
And it’s time for fresh ink on a blank page
I hope that you remain a part of the story
That you helped write in kindness and hope
A kaleidoscope of opportunity leading to immunity
Of letting myself sink
I always use ink because lead can be erased
And you are unerasable
I’m insatiable and it’s debatable
That maybe I’m just lonely
That I just need someone to hold me and tell me I’m okay
But it’s the way you call to say hello and ask about my day
That puts a smile on my face
I know you like that
It’s the little things in life that make me happy
So thank you for letting me be sappy
And emotional when I know I’m a lot to handle sometimes

Maybe someday what I want and need will be the same
And the universe will align to let me have both in the same breath
And then I won’t need a silver lining
Because I will finally be content
But until that day,
Please don’t stop shining.

Music was my refugee,
it let me grow up out of nothing,
it teached me how to dream,
and teached me how to fly,
even my wings are made of it
'cause it's the only thing no one can break

Music was my way out,
out of every pain and fear,
music let me found myself,
and teached me how to loose myself
carried me away with every chord
It chains me to my memories
without feeling jailed in back times
It feelings for those melodies are just
overwriting all those fear back than -
just leave back some scary pictureshots
against all those pain they've been unerasable burned with into my soul

Music teached me how to smile,
how to dream till the day i die,
it told me how badly wrong it was
those darkness i'm born in
music teached me how to ask
for this other world behind

it teached me how to fall and loose
without the question
how to stand up again

The view at the top draws appreciative sounds from my friend and her partner.
I take a picture on my mobile phone.
Maybe I will post it on Facebook later
In a highly edited version of the day
To help me forget the complexity of real life:
‘Wonderful walk with Paula and Simon near Burnt Island, Fyffe’
I might say or, rather, type.

Up until this point, there have been some qualified highlights:
The weather is good,
Although not the ‘brilliant sunshine’ forecasts had led Paula to expect,
Snatches of bird song,
A yellow hammer, we think,
A buzzard which circled before diving to ‘rip some poor thing’s guts out’, as Simon put it.
I can also recall some darker notes,
The insidious encroachment into nature of the human mania for control:
Signs telling us to keep out,
Barbed wire fences,
A huge brick-shaped rusty blue container in an abandoned farmyard containing God knew what,
And then, in strange wasteland confusion,
A storm-felled tree,
No longer bearing apples or any other fruit,
Having apparently sealed its fate by attempting to grow around a stone which denied its now dry and tangled roots good ground in which to find sufficient purchase.
The scene prompts my friend who writes crime fiction to comment
‘It’s the kind of place I like to bury bodies.’
Earlier a grassy outcrop of rock
That perilously overhung a sharp drop
Had tempted me to stand right there
And stamp down hard,
‘You know’ I joked ‘just to see if it’s my time’
But, obviously, I hadn’t dared.

Later,
After the descent,
We will see a cat scratching itself in silent ecstasy on sun-heated tarmac
And shops whose names hint ancient prophesies of better things to come:
Chapter and Verse Antiques,
Peach Blossom,
Kingdom Amusements,
Zenith Beauty and Everlasting Health.  

Come what may,
As we stand here,
Losses have been suffered:
A favourite hat forgotten on a seat on the train,
A bag bearing favourite glasses on the overhead rack.
We had realised just too late,
Watching slightly tortured,
As our carriage pulled away like a dream of what might have been.  

In other euphemistic news we have  learned that our journey home may be disrupted because a person has been ‘hit by a train’
Putting an end to the pain
Of trying,
Becoming a travel bulletin
Provoking irritation at the inconvenience and
Generously reminding us of the way out
That, one way or another, comes to all -
It is maybe always just a question of choosing to leap
Or waiting to be pushed.  

We don’t know this yet but
In the end the trip back to Edinburgh
Will proceed without delays
And miraculously my rucksack,
Reported on lostproperty.org will find its way back to me
Like a handkerchief gallantly returned to an Arthurian damsel in distress
By an algorithmic knight and horse,
Paula’s hat will remain lost to her forever but perhaps, from another point of view, will be found.  
But there will be no bringing back the person
Whose blood will by then have been carefully removed from tracks that carry us home
Almost as if they had never existed
Like another piece of Facebook click-bait distraction,
Crucial details wiped out.
But this does not prevent the truth from being exactly what it is -
Quite inexplicable,
An unerasable blemish in the fabric of eternity,
Like all of us,
They will always and forever have been alive
And yet will also always end up dead.

Which brings us back to where we started.
I am not sure we ever really left.
Time is all relative, we are told.
Even so, we are not young
But younger than the man who,
Wheezing, red-faced, slumps onto the bench provided and,
Referring to the climb to reach the summit
Which has been steep,
While simultaneously eyeing the reward of a Cadbury’s crème egg fetched eagerly from his pocket,
Asks us,
‘It was worth it, was it?’