From other times

First then, the breaking down of all you held to be true or right by yourself. The close secrets and unfolding mystery of intimacy that was latent in you. The acrid side - missing a check for an STD because of snow; waiting for an hour on a freezing night in Manchester; but it was worth it to reveal a bottle of red wine; a painting of  a cyclopean sea captain with a gold background - or to snatch a cigarette from her mouth in a comical act of bravado. No-one wants the other to die, no-one can stand the bond that makes a separation that much harder to bear when it's gone. Each of us have a way of expressing that grief - some admittedly more eloquent than others, some jealously guard those words and are dumb through choice. Those must be the most beautiful words of all. Like a quick glimpse of a dark small fish in  a pond, swift, back into its hiding place. The vanity of shyness.

Myself, I prefer to pick up the pen and feel the heat on my shoulders. Still happy and safe in foreknowledge steeped in layers of grief - cum - elation. Rebecca all the way from Korea - sorry about the one that got away - my subsequent mad dance like the time I saw a cat run over, and it danced before it lay panting and expired right in front of me. I, you, we live on. We never stay still, even in meditation or sleep. Outside I can hear a carnival, horns and drums. My eyes are bulging! My teeth stickily coated, my tongue a-drip.

For you then, anything you want. I taught myself the lessons, the turning away - the 'construct' pain as construct; and the infallible promise of a daily scream from next doors surly little boy or the cats who scream like men. All this blends together in a myriad moment of delicious heat, along with those eyes that could cut ice, but the loins that could melt icebergs! Impossible not to be humorous - the last resort surely, but the strongest. Dursn't matter. Here's at 'ee. All the things we shared. I love them and remember them not as I might; a cenotaph; a spectacular fit of puking; of unimportant memories - of something buried and gone; but as I once said : the pale blossom leaf jigging in the shade of a tomb. Distinctly dancing towards the light. Come with me.