Two eyelids meet in lashes seductive,
graciously closed, one of mother’s many precious nodes -
keep us safe, respect our shuteye state,
and when we open in the morn a tear shall yawn
from our tired I and flow into earth’s blissful face -
enrich the place, as tears do, with palpable relief.

*

^ Keep us safe ^

Caitriona’s Voice:

“So far I go through fear and wonderment each time we settle down into our temporary home – so compelling, so hyper-real, being outside for this long already. I’d started to realise how big this walk would be in the two days before we left, but it’s still been really quite shocking. I almost cried into the wind, eight-hundred feet above the sea, with joy and gratitude at being taught the things I’ve known I need. I’ve seeping holes in place of my heels, the plasters slip so the sticky bit rips in, then the broken skin gets mashed with glue and walking sock – towards the end of the day I stop feeling them as my body switches into survival mode – but then each morning they zing and flaringly wake as soon as, boots tied, I stand up… And it’s so cold, too cold to sleep through the night, it makes me crazy – I made a song: “If you camp out when it’s cold Mr Santa makes a note…” – but all my life I’ve struggled with not feeling entirely present, and on this trip we’re right there in every moment, and we’re together – working on our hardcore survival guide for honeycoombers… Ha.

Bunions, backache, tiredness, cold, the unknown end – each question answered by “we’ll see”… yet no gambler could see the possibilities of each bay, each coombe, each headland further round, out of view. I am content each time I eat or get warm because of each day’s new peak secret. Each raw foot or broken backache is simply a necessary strengthening. My body’s bending into shapes it’s long been envying; breath’s held deeper – I can feel my system springing clean with each new scene. But new fears have been difficult in their adjusting – at the moment I seem prone to lengthy staring, an anxiety’s appeared in me that doesn’t often – I’ve been scared to death of everything: bulls, dogs, goats, horses, hills, streams, wind, cliffs, farmers, boars (although there’ve not really been any boars… so far at least.) All these fears have appeared somehow insurmountable until they’ve been achieved – (my prince I am so glad of you) – and so I’ve reduced my worries bit by bit…
Ahhh… we’re only just getting into it!”

*

We arrived in Lee valley from the natural harbour at Watermouth that we departed yesterday morn. Apparently the grassy fields of the little headland that we paid £17 to camp on were once owned by no man & free for all…

Legend has it some thick-armed beast wrestled the spirit of the place to the ground for a count of three and won the right to call it his own. He plucked all the little stones from the fields, built showers and lights and white enamel shit-suckers, put up signs to attract caravan-flies and their precious parasitic cargos, installed three-holed food dispensers for their hungry electric-tongues. He left all the lights on at night so no-one would get scared or stumble in the dark, provided a machine that promised ‘hot drinks’ (but arrogantly refused to deliver either hot drink or money back – just stood there silent and took the flak). He made a little house where all the caravan-fly-families flocked and paid for every drop while they sucked up the electric-noise-picture-box through exploited sense-holes, numbing away the after-effects of a hard day’s play. He ate the metal that he got in return but never really understood. He ate the metal and got fat and heavy, and when he finally keeled over people just camped on his belly – their metal tokens tumbled uselessly into the void, echoing through fading family photographs of a beautiful place where everyone looks annoyed…

^ riding thru the sky like a carvaning fly ^

*

After resting in the valley of rocks, playing brain ping-pong in the cave of indecision, we spent the night in a cheap and homely B&B. Trevor and Pat were so welcoming and easy it felt like dropping in on family; a good bed and a good meal balanced out the uneasy sense of having gone awry – two rooms in two nights?

We woke rested and covered the ‘strenuous’ 13 mile stretch from Lynton to Watermouth. It wasn’t easy by any means, nor as hard as it should’ve been. Saw the ‘white lady’ as we left the valley of rocks: a sort of Mary Poppins made of negative space, catching a gust with her brolly in a cryptic going nowhere. Passed Lee Abbey, a functioning Christian community, caught the gist from a billboard that they think of themselves as nature’s caretakers (thought she could take care of herself?) and reckon the hills and wind and things belong to God, who created them. Seems to me there are plenty more interesting (more ‘local’) stories that might be nice to tell if not to fully believe (being stories n’all) saying most to those who know them beyond shallow readings to the very breathings translated wheezings. Anyhoo…

We climbed high, walked long, saw sights that we hope to see again and sung songs that aren’t forgotten – just hidden whispers in the currents of our voice. Walked along cliffs with jack frost’s freezing fingers jammed up seaside nostrils, faces half numbed by constant cold-stroke. Wandered over the Giant Hangman, a massive heather-haired beach ball rolling under our feet, stone-piled summit receding by ever-shrinking degrees as we approach.

We arrive to 360 degree views: sweeping swirl-streaks of candyfloss cloud, fields fallow or ploughed hopscotching into Exmoor’s glorious roughery – the fast wind slipping from it urgently, sheep weathering the unrelenting blast like stubborn clouds. Recall the second morning’s walk along North Hill: Cat wary of passing the unfenced bovine masses, we give in to two short-horned bulls because the devils they stare and I care not to be basher punkt – but I refuse to be diverted by peaceful cows – sing songs to reassure us all, don’t meet eyes and pass as wide as possible; heads down, hands held, singing:

“Hey brown cow, we comin’ past now, don’t freak out
Mr Moo-moo, we ain’t gonna move for you-ooh
We just passin’ through, you’re a very lovely Moo-oo-ooh…”

*

We’re sat in the tent weathering occasional passings of dark cloud laden with cold rain, hoping when this front passes it’ll herald a warm climb. Here in the dunes at Woolacombe: a wide and long sandy beach facing West, punctuated by many rock-pools, the shipwrecking stick-out of Morte Point to the North and the humpy headland of Baggy Point to the South. Dogs occasionally bark from (hopefully) distant dunes. Sometimes cold spots pass and I can see my breath drifting like the clouds of dancing snow from earlier: grey dispensers shaking high over the sea, disappearing before their slow falling substance disperses – settling and quickly converting to magnifying droplets on our faces, body-heat accentuated by the brisk air, breathing into it through growing grins – moods lifted – it’s felt so cold so far that the frozen sky-fall is a vindication.

We’re nearly at the end of the first week and it seems like too much has happened to keep but I don’t ever want to lose even a bit of it, which I guess I won’t, I’ve lived it, so somehow it’ll always be part of me.

Evolving: bags become easier to pack and more accessibly arranged,
the uses of certain items multiply, cooking become more efficient…
and yes, by the third cold night, we even learned
to turn our insulation mats
the right way up
(!)

*

< previous / next (coming soon) >

^ Our Trusty Tourist Map (about 30 years out of date) ^

^ Day 1 - Day 4 ^

*
< previous / next >

Goat-shit Crevice a.k.a. The Cave of Indecision

Stuck in a damp crack with a cold Cat, making a nest from last season’s fern after sweeping out the feral devil’s dumplings. Shattered from yesterday’s epic trek from our castle-fort in Tangled Wood to the village inn at Lynmouth. A walk described as ‘moderate’ in our faithful guide, estimated to take 5.5 hours; it took us through 12 hours, at least 3 breaking points, a good few ‘Devon Miles’ and around 13 ‘lengths-generally-accepted-as-miles’ (see, distance is a bit like time in that duration is subjective). I don’t think the people who wrote the book were carrying their homes on their backs – either that or they’re giants – couldn’t see a giant fitting more than a big toe on some of them paths though: cut into the curve on the edge of the world, huge waves like tiny wrinkles on the sky-rug way below.

Tangled Wood led us on to the tiny village of Culbone, its ancient church reputed to have served a leper colony way back in once-upon-a; unfortunately however, evil gabbering day-walkers came trunkling down the coombe in a hideous fluorescent troop and scared us off before we could perform more than a cursory survey of the grounds: graves dating back to the early 1800s, the surname ‘Red’ holding the vast majority of places, most recent Red death in 2004. We left the cool air of the valley-snuggled settlement (conditioned by a gurgling stream) and carried on up the coombe – felt like a thousand feet up by the time we sweaties reached the top, ascending through moss and rock and sunshine through sparse spring leaves.

We passed along the top of a wee valley on Yenworthy Farm and considered calling it a day right there – well out of the way and begging to be explored – another of Mother Nature’s glistening jewelled vaginas, filled with tickling beasts & tree-hair & gallivanting rivers of Amrita – but we passed it up, the path calling ever funward through mossy forests fish-eyed by the sea… feel like I’ve never been so high, and getting high now, every time I eat – this sudden sugary surge as starvation cessates (many times a day).

On through the ‘unusually mature’ stately pines of Pinetum, haloed by a prehistoric sun. A gaggle of hard-hatted happy kids led splashing upstream as we scuffle downhill – a “Howdy” to their “Cowboys!” (darn these matching leather hats!) Then round-the-bend and back uphill to breaking point, pushing off my thighs with my hands to gasp another foot in. Cat really not having fun anymore – burst blisters rubbing muscles burning hormones raging statements biting the mouth that’s chomping at the bit! I enjoy being cheesily happy in the face of great adversity, but decide not to push it.

Caitriona’s voice:

“Each inch pinched more than the last, each gasp punctuating the curses spent out of bursting calves. Like old elephants sewn into turtle shells we climbed again, each time believing this crest would bring a place to rest, my eyes child-welling as I looked upon another ascent. Narrow paths lined with moss-soaked trees, such age and wisdom shown in their angled grasps of the wind, clear streams balancing dust and leaves, an original description of ease which on closer inspection reveals to me that these sights of blessed pleasure must rely on mother nature – their place was found through trial and error – my place in them, my joy at seeing every scene, is fair reward for aching limbs.”

We reach a place so beautiful that I’m looking at it for a time before it actually appears: Sisters Fountain, where legend-has-it Jesus drank with Joseph of Arimithea. The water is crystal clear and makes the possibility physically apprehensible – the sense of refreshment as sharp as the hawthorns that cover the hill just beyond. A huge stone crucifix sits stubbornly in the dappled shade while a pump in a small corrugated-iron shed contributes a regular thud: a watery resonating kick-drum at a tempo where relaxation excites. I play absent-mindedly with the paving stones either side of the fountain, shifting my balance to make them bounce with an off-centre step, they settle-twang with an effortless comedy.

Caitriona is speechless -

mind like
a wind-tickled tree.

Caitriona is…

Shhhhhhhhhhh

“…paths so old and often cloud-bound that every surface is tapestried, a history of growing moss and lichen flowing over stone and boulder, clothing weathered branches, making movements more ball-gown than broom…”

More lushness at the edge-of-the-world: simultaneously scared to look down and pleased that there are still places in this fair land of molly-coddle where you can walk but a missteps breadth from death. On! And ever on! Shifting hefty many knuckled bag-fist from back-pit to bruised back-pit! One foot in front of the other in front of the other TRIP! Ankle wiggle glory breath ball foot fuck hurt!!!
But – y’know – worth it.

“These are the times you actually get fit.”
(As I told the good lady one time too many…)

We got into Lynmouth as darkness fell. Will never forget rounding yet another moor-cliff-mountain-hill to see it tucked inside the day’s last mist, shy in the diffused gleam of the setting sun – still three final miles away!

(So much fuel has fed the feet that words come out in halves and unplanned combinations,
stumbling tungs… spelt wrong.)

We headed for the sparkly lights and sharp fizz of cider, couldn’t find accommodation this late in the book but the pub we were in was an inn – well above budget but better than pitching on tarmac. They weren’t officially open for lodgers but agreed to admit us, wouldn’t make us dinner though – seems the cook had already washed up…

Ingeniously, instead of heading up to our room and eating something, we decided to head down to the mouth and celebrate with a spliff on the sea wall – I remember saying, after the sudden wave of sickly weakness that swept in with my long-held final toke, as I was slowly toppling sideways, quite unable to be concerned, thus in a calm and apparently jokey tone:

“I am losing my consciousness…”

and there it went.

. . .

I came to about forty seconds later with my head in the lap of my dear Caitriona, looking up into her sweetly concerned face as she asked if I could see her – I’m not certain I replied, but when I tried to sit up and apologise, she said:

“Hmmm… better get down off this wall.”

We sat on a bench but I was still slipping away, black bubbles blinking clean like brain-sherbet. I was fighting to stay conscious. Stand up and stamp was my stubborn and head-strikingly daft decision. All blood like a waterfall to the aching balls of my sore old soles -

Cat part catches my limp body but
jelly neck
delivers head
to paving slab C R A C K . . !

But this time consciousness does not fully depart:

I AM
jolt-shifted to a parallel plane of perception
trying to wake myself up
looking down into a mercury puddle
being pulled up and saying hello
to the bustle of future-past people-places
in the rainbow black
geometric ripple-wrapping
of a dimensional cross-section.

…?…
…Me…
…Cat…
…Lynmouth…
…Fall!

Today touching or wobbling my head makes a dull pain throb. Sat here in the Cave of Indecision, having to admit that it’s cold, and will get colder – but it never gets any less magnetic! The sheer easy peaceful terrifying magic! And we would survive (if not have an entirely comfortable night) and for our toil and sacrifice perhaps be rewarded by the rising of the sun over the ocean behind the stacks of wise old faces piled high in the valley of rocks.

“Feeding each other with our indecision we snapped nerves and ached ligaments as we wrestled with what seemed to be a cubing rubixed problem: I’m sensitive and anxious, shocked by each pain into a stubborn resentment; I want a predetermined bed place, I want to be warm; I’m tired, I ache, I have my period and I’m sick of it – he is slightly concussed from losing consciousness, doesn’t really want to go anywhere in response to neck pains and shoulder aches, just wants to sit out in the cold (or that’s how it seems to me). We found a spot quite early on just out of town – it should have done – granted it was cold and full of poo – but…”

“Should we stay here?”

“…we made a day nest good – and mostly left it cause I thought we should.”

If I don’t see a seagull for the duration of this coffee then yes…
Six seagulls soon sail round the headland.
If those berries are juniper then yes…
‘Food for Free’ says they ain’t.

*

We fly our nest
as the sun finally sets
below the low thick cloud-bar
way out west.

Having climbed to the top,
looked out along the next of our lot:

“You can say
you never can
but you can’t
never not.”

*

< previous / next >

^Cover up^

^In the beginning was the word^

^...and the word was good.^

As I write this the cold of fading day is creeping in
to take the place of the soon departed sun.
I am bound by my writing arm to Caitriona
who is bound to me by hers – through a loop of
bungee hooked into the green army poncho
acting as an extra layer of warmth
around our shoulders
and down our backs.

We are sitting in the roof-rampart of a
part-derelict part-restored gate-house-castle
that extends from its lower part in an arch
over the footpath we were ascending
as we saw it.

I have to fight off a touch of OCD
brought on by the magic of the place
making every little action on our parts
part of a quest for perfection.

Unseen
Intuitive
Etiquette

We each give a gift wrapped in home-grown tobacco:
me burying a parcel of dark chocolate
(sniffing it three times between our noses
filling our heads & our lungs with its food)
in the earth
(the leaf litter of countless
seasons as the trees
around us grew)
while she twirls tearing pieces then releases
to the wind.

Two Owls occasionally answer each other
from distant perches
in the woods.

*

< previous / next >

^April Fools^

Caitriona’s voice:

Laughing-cries to say goodbye to familiar faces
my space in the mirror; long train rides
no longer knowing where the stops are coming.
Heavy backs draw questions, the following surprise
makes belly-butterflies run and hide.

Land into blasts. Tired eyes
from too much feared and fairy-grounded sleeping
suddenly open wide, this is a place
where seafronts bend their eves
like any windswept tree.

Hands clasped we tumble into funward ho!
A zigzag crisscrossed by man-handled sheep slides
up this towny-prize mountainside. My moonbled eyes
admit astonishment (shy flash of defeat admit!)
as weary legs stretch, crunching up to search
for the elusive summit.

With limping feet, my heels demand
a broken shuffle to appease the pressure,
caught in the cool fast breeze I sea the seeing,
serenaded by the pines I drown my eyes
in the sea-filled sky this gifted climb.

Wear my whole body inside -
my outsides are freezing.

On hillside of birch-babies
trying to thrive
we found
they framed
an invisible curtain
to rest our first night in.

Cold toes,
rain moans,
tent holds,
wind blows..

*

< previous / next >

Same Old New Zzz

*

Here we go,
here we go,
here we go…

*

First half

Three people thick at the bar -
we only wanted a pint after work
but now we’re being forced
to sup from the World Cup.

I managed to avoid last week’s game:
England versus the USA. Woke up drunk
and went to get the papers, nearly puked
all over myself to see the gulf coast oil spill
roped-in to some absurd rivalry -
just another part-player in that funny old game…
how lame. “Inglan is a Bitch” by LKJ
immediately became my anthem of the day.

“Inglan is a bitch – there’s no escaping it.”

Why then
is my heart all-a-flutter
for a bunch of overgrown boys
singing Rule Brit-fucking-tania?

There’s a whistle, two bangs and
a multitude of whoops -
a shower of confetti
widens my lady’s
suddenly sparkling eyes.
It’s kicked off like New Year’s
at the end of time
and we’re swept away
like everybody else
in this place.

Cheap trumpets blare
seemingly built just to play
the theme from Dad’s Army
for one day only
fading away like Mayflies
that never got to mate.

Dud-dud dur dur dud-dud-dud
Dud-dud dur dur
drrrrrrrrrr…

Mate. Saint George can’t kill the dragon
if it’s already dead. He’s a pumped up
Don Quixote with a worm eating his head.

It’s hard to sustain the excitement
with so little happening on screen,
even the commentator has devolved
into pop-psychology: talking bollocks
about the effect of a lost ball
on the self-image of
Emile Heskey.

David Beckham
sits on the sidelines
in a snazzy grey suit,
my lady says she saw
the whole team getting off the plane
wearing the same – she reckons they
must’ve employed some snazzy
consultant who made them ditch
the 80s tracksuits
for a sexier look.
That may be -
but it’d take
a bowler hat & brolly
to really do it for me.

I’m starting to drift off,
see a vision of our boys
being led on to the pitch
by Steven Gerrard
swinging an incense censer
and holding aloft a crucifix…
Must be something to do with
the virgin-white
of our kit.
Then finally
something happens
and I snap out of it!

Heskey’s been hacked
and the crowd whistles
like a toothless old wolf
with its hackles up -
oooooooohhhhhhhhhhh
it’s like being back at school
for a second, everyone’s behind
the next push forward like
we’re gathered around a fight,
hungry for our mate to take
revenge and get a smack in…
Gotta love that mob
mentality! (or not.)

Then something wonderful happens -
the camera drifts like my wandering
attention to the end of Algeria’s goal -
some South African bird, a ruffled trampy thing
like a starling crossed with a pigeon,
is perched, oblivious, on the back of the net.
An omen if ever I saw one:
No violent punt
could disturb that bird’s
peculiar calm.
The football becomes a leathery egg
being bashed about
a green but barren womb:
There can be no cheering
ruffian lovechild while
that beautiful creature rests.

“I need a fag -
how long’s left?”

“About 10 minutes dear -
try not to think about it.”

So the game drags on
till the sacred whistle blows
and we join the mass exodus
outside for a smoke.

*

I go to take a piss
before the second half starts,
stare at the wall behind the urinal:
a collage of past events littered with
impulsive scrawls – my eyes rest on a small
sentence written in red biro:
“How do you keep an idiot in suspense?”
I chuckle while I tinkle and
my eyes wander once more -
they find the perfect answer -
“With free popcorn”

*

Second half

And so the whistle blows again. But this time
with rather less dramatic effect – the old apathy
is setting in, seems we feel slightly cheated -
sheepish like a proud wolf caught humping
the lewdly-dressed leg
of a prostituting poodle.

Will our lame mascot be able
to jump this hurdle?

I entertain myself with the idea
that some kid somewhere must be
locked away in his room
furiously masturbating
into a football sock,
climaxing at the exact moment
that the guy next to me shouts:
“Cum on England!” for the
gazzilionth time.

Three lions on your shirt -
a billion writhing tadpoles
gasping for air in the better half
of his trusty old pair!

I remember the good old days
of Gascoigne and Lineker
when England had integrity
and balls – one poor soul’s
now a drunk in a mental home,
the other soul’s been sold
for a thin slice of salty potato
in a crudely decorated packet
of tin-foil.

The game is really going nowhere,
and slowly at that. My mind is creating
nonsensical inanities, stuttering to itself
for no good reason: J-J-John T-T-T-T-T-Terry!
T-T-T-Twat with a triple T-T-T!

Beep Beep Beep-Beep-Beep
Beep-Beep-Beep-Beep
BOR-ING!

Beep Beep Beep-Beep-Beep
Beep-Beep-Beep-Beep
FOOT-BALL!

Then I notice the small invitation
in the top right-hand corner of the screen:
RED BUTTON: JOIN IN!
Man, that would be a scream!
A pitch invasion by a thousand flickering spectres,
couch potatoes transported by their TVs
straight to the centre
of this crazy spectacle!
This mass-hallucination
masquerading as reality!

I’m afraid I have to ask you
to think what we could achieve
if we put this kind of energy
into something that actually mattered!

T-T-T-T-Twats
drunk on milky cups
of titty-titty-tea!

Yes, I’m preaching
but then again:
this game is
like religion
for some.

So why not?

England might not suck -
but it seems
our imagi-nation does

!

Now the game is wrapping up,
limping disheartened
to the finish line -
but we won’t have it!
There may only be seconds
but at least there’s still time!
Even the slightest surge now earns
a chorus of oooooohhhhhhhzing COME-ONS!!!

But the fact that we want it so much
is simply not enough. Any one of us
would try harder than this for free -
to say nothing of a snazzy suit
and fifty grand a week -
but we’re not on the pitch.

England is a Bitch -
but we have to make her
OUR BITCH!

We have to cover her
all over
with luscious licks,
show her
we love her
while doing the twist!

We have to bend over backwards
to make it happen, all the while
avoiding the peril of going too far
and disappearing up our collective arse…

hole…

OUR SOUL!

PEOPLE!

IS AT STAKE!

And this is
one game
where a draw
just will not do.

So do

like the funky munky sez

and

NEVER
GIVE
UP!

Never Give Up!

"Emergently Musical" by psilly, Ink & Watercolour on Paper, 15 x 28cm. (2010)

“Emergent Musics” by Mark Conway Wirt is a collection of music that, like some magical audio gardener, he has grown from a series of self-organising seeds. He has taken these seeds and placed them in a mathemusical greenhouse based on drawings by the invisible hand of emergence. They are lit by the sun of his creative imagination and watered delicately with the crystal purity of his aesthetic sensibilities. They flower into marvellous rotating parasols and unfurl spiral curls around cones of sonic delight. They plink like the translucent threads of a (philip) glass piano trying to dance on a (terry riley) rainbow. They pluck at the occult parabolas of transcendent geometries with tiny ears on the tips of their fingers. They are the sound of a waterfall in a sky-blue porcelain cave; the musical tremblings of a spider’s web tickled by triangular flies that don’t fear death; a jungle breeze playing dot-to-dot with its own discrete particles…

That’s my theory anyhow – as you can probably gather – it’s best put to the test…

Download everything for free at *emergentMusics* (and while you’re at it why not investigate the intriguing *theory behind it all*.)

"GroUp" Ink & Coloured Pencil on Paper, 40 x 60cm (2009)

We’re rolling out our sleeping bags, staking our places on the floor.
“It’s a psychedelic sleepover.”
(laughter)
“It’s like psychedelic scouts!”

The talking stick sounds like shifting sands as it passes through my hands:
“So often she goes through me like a train. I want to find the strength to sit up straight
and really pay attention. I want to become a better, stronger, person. More fully myself.
Not just for me but for everyone.”

One by one we go kneel outside the garden door;
Cyril stands behind us spitting florida water,
he puffs smoke into our auras and fumigates
the seats & crowns of our spines. Cleans off the street.

We link hands, one up one down, a clockwise circuit, and chant Oms.

One by one we drink down the honey. “Bless your journey.”

We visualise floating upwards – above the house, above the clouds,
above the earth, above the solar system, above the stars – to the infinite
white light outside the black electric bubble of our universe. We exhale
our souls into the light and then pull it back inside us. We hold on tight
to the light, take it down through the swirling stars to our solar system.
Back to earth. Back to our bodies. Connected.

I’m nervous. Alert. A burp.
Sat up straight.
Waiting.

Soft music is playing. Stringed bings weaving a playful tumble.
A small stream, attention settles like a leaf.
A tapestry in which all is centre.

Inner-light is outside.
A space without dimension.
Difference is measured in degrees of intertwining.

My stomach writhes
like a wounded slug
on a bed of snakes.

In my outside I
two triangles touch
tip to tip. Tentative.

I am a queasy paradox:
apprehensively welcoming.

I try to give myself permission
to act in my absence.

A stretch unfolds.

I think of all the dark and fearsome things,
feel them shifting behind the curtain -
worry I’m bringing them in. But not for long -
all is subdued by a trust warm and deep,
an abdication that does not negate responsibility:
what will be, already is.

I convolutedly compute the ramifications of following through
on an urge to empty my bladder. My self-image kicks the bucket
so I don’t have to. I am quiet and shuffling like a monk
taking infinite care in the shutting of the door.
Candlelight animates the dancing dakini
as the water leaves me like a song.

I pass back into the room renewed.
Bend my knees and sit on my feet
to court a delicate reverie. Be Silent.

The dog is my brother. I am thankful for this
sturdy, muscular little bundle, simple & humble.
A shiny kNight with islands of white like squashed stars
pattering nails across the wooden floor, grumbling sweetly
into the corners and sniffing at the door. A house jaguar.

Ayahuasca
sings with whispers
in the chambers of my heart.

Ayahuasca. Ayahuasca.

My stomach turns
into a yawn, an offering
to be taken up by those
with rainbows for eyebrows
and full cheeks of dawn.

I give my hands to the sky
they arc back to massage my shoulders.
Aching mole-beetles urged out of their cocoons
roll away like fleshy tears to be absorbed
in the forgiving earth.

Cyril joins his voice to the Icaro
and the bottom falls out of the boat
tracers echo the chorus of ancestors
in which we now float. An audible rainbow.

His voice rings true, raw with the sincerity of effort,
I remember him saying: “Once you start it can be hard to stop.”
I can feel the truth in that, the momentum of it.

When we truly listen,
our bodies sing.

Pensively in tensity I sit
on a stomach that squirmily requests
a little womb. Am I warm enough?
I fight the temptation to go foetal;
I feel weak in the face of an angel,
withering in a whirlpool of strong songs.
I give a little, slide down inside my sleeping bag
allow my soul to spread like a garden… Soon enough
the glittering rust of my ribs is all that remains
of the barrow that wheeled me in.

I am a plot in the allotment of the universe
a plant in a box tended by a shaman of sound
who makes presents from the ground with absent hands
and stands tall man. Ipulating. Undulating over me.
Making MudrasSshaking The Walls.
Mad Skills. Twelve feet tall man. Ipulating.
Undulating liquid puzzle of structural integrity
sorting itself out with orchestral inner-logic
turning organic cogs in my own puzzle box -
I am part of this puzzle man. Ipulating. I am
a candle approaching a bank of cloud. A
small animal sniffing at the feet of a human-shaped bush.
Take that back like a nervous cat. Shrink like a rewind man.
Ipulating. A few steps forward. Undulating. A few steps back.
Where we were is no longer here. The puzzle clicks
and releases a tear, a tiny purge,
nectar for the humming birds
of the One Great Heart.

But this work is hard!
To be fully conscious of my body
as a network of factories
using time as a fuel
to manufacture eternity ( in the flesh, )
and to do so gratefully ( in a flash, )
as a matter of good taste – ( lightwork. )
Said another way:
so I taste good,
and know my place
in the mystery
of the dance
that is everywhere
and for everyone’s sake
and to know that
me that makes
no different to anyone,
intertwining.

I sit up again. Rest my bum on my feet and my hands
on my knees, bow my head, quite naturally.
The gaze of holy beings falls
warm like sunlight
onto my crown.

This spiral of hair, this bubble of baldness,
a mark of respect. An unseeing eye that acknowledges
deference. A love that walks the bridge of difference
on kind feet that gently sculpt a loop, a globe,
a unity.

I feel cold
struggle in the inexplicable folds
of my heavy orange poncho.

Lost in the inexplicable folds
of The Great I-Don’t-Know.

Propping the huge sagging tent
of a dark sun, searching blindly
for a head hole. Giving up
and pulling it round my face
like a sad Mary.

Cyril and John are drinking another glass.
They ask if I want one but the question is like a bubble
riding on a river and I don’t notice when it pops.

The house jaguar comes to climb on my arms
and madly lick my face. I see one dark gleaming eye
looking into mine, dark gums and spittle-shining teeth
flashing beneath. I ask him to go away, I’m tired but
I think eternity still wants to play.

My queasy belly has turned around and gone the other way,
winding like a snake towards the opening of a cave
a long, long, way away.
Awe-way.
Awe-why.
Awe-aya-who-ask
King Ayahuasca.

I get back on my back and get back to work
making gifts in cellular-cottage-industries
churning my cheese with the juice of an invisible sun
whose light is everywhere and whose warmth is everyone.
Inhaling is exhausting. Expressions are experiences exercising.
I am burning up. My breath steams from my face
and tears stream from my eyes.
Songs propel themselves relentlessly
like thoughts in an open mind.
Like wild horses in a tame field.
Like smoke in a concrete sky.
I am thirsty. I am dying
from too much
exposure to eternity.

Cyril and John are sat near my feet
crooning like werejaguars
over the bucket.

John-jaguar is purring support
to Cyril-jaguar whose barking-body wracks
with the force of a thousand stampeding gibbering-gaps
slimy green phlegmatic snake-snaps chattering out
a gurgling torrent, a clattering centipede
of accidental splatter. A good boo burp.
A glurbur burglar. A nurgle further phew.

The house jaguar is slurping up water
with his flapping tongue
making a music of wetness
to highlight my thirstiness.

A laugh speaks for all of us,
we seek it out and drink it down.
Eternity comes back for another round,
this time I hold my ground.

Cyril moves in geometric gestures
like a shape-shifting peg fitting through
a series of self-generating holes.
He stands and the candle casts
a mystery play on the walls
as old as time.
The silent mime of a fire-cast shadow,
archaic, thick with the flesh of living memory,
telling a wordless story, an entity in its own right.
As old as time.

Moonchild.

The very fabric of my being unwinds
the spreading threads of my soul shine
a light that is known only as reflection.
Knots that never were untie themselves endlessly,
they are the roots of this tree. A fertile death encases them,
a writhing transmutation of tired old flesh, heavy with experience,
happy to be sadly sunken to the bottom of the pile. A grimacing smile.
My face is contorted in a beautiful agony. It is a mask of light
milked by shadowy fingers. I understand Gargoyles.
I am wrathful Hindu-deities of fire frozen as sculpture.
I am an electric spider with needle-fine feet teasing apart
the Celtic knot of my deoxyribonucleic heart. I am rapt
in the rainbow roots of the sacred tree,
staring upwards with damp eyes,
solemnly. Perceiving the great trunk that turns
in magnificent melancholy, revolving slowly -
the perfect pace of a body in space.
This graceful column of great strength,
this twilight length. This holy night,
naked before the billion eyes of the stars in its sky.
Stars which are light penetrating the dark density
of its fractal canopy – spaces in space.

The Whirling-World-Tree-Wheel
we all huddle under. Its tips
loop back to its roots. We are
all on the floor of the same roof.
We are angelic clouds of exploding stars
spiralling black-hole tears through
supple veins in the puzzle-solving muscles
of the same giant face, each wrinkle a river
of infinite expressions in the time of space
it takes to see
a vision of
The World Tree
…

I am revived.
I go outside, gingerly stepping around
the silhouettes of psychedelic scouts
in sleeping bags. I feel the welcome chill
of a clear autumn night. Smell the spider-guarded
Rosemary near the ghostly white roses glowing
in the ambient light. Look into the fullness of the spaces
between the shifting leaves of a young sycamore tree,
playing peek-a-boo with the belt of Orion,
pissing gratefully onto its roots.

Cyril comes out for a smoke, his eyes aglow
and his voice a burbling spring of kind excitement,
this is an animated conversation, alive with sound,
expressive strings of syllables bypass the usual channels
to fill the space between known words with
the resonance of similar instruments.
He is glinting cosmic happiness, a gem
from a far off continent of astounding variation,
a glinting jungle-Buddha, a flowering snake-man
weaving a picture of myself as a tall bearded druid
recharging atop a grassy pyramid
up which a spiral of water flows.

He is showing me something – his arms embrace the universe
and slowly work it into a smaller and smaller ball until
it sits in his palm. He peers at this tiny thing,
takes it between finger and thumb, tilts back his head
and drops it through the door of his third eye. It expands again
inside his mind, only to be coaxed back to a point, stretched between
two hands and snapped free, shooting each of us in turn with blessings.
The final arrow is sent straight up and gracefully arcs back
smacking into the floor and filling the world with light.

A buzzing machine enters the sky and increases in volume towards us,
a helicopter trying to get under our heavenly skin, an evil droning thing.
I frame the twinkle of its false star in a column of smoke, hoping
to blow it away. Cyril laughs and says we should remember
there are people inside and have compassion, think with love:
May they get home safe with a lesson, and let their folly rust
back into the earth from which it came.

We listen to the silence. Cyril says he can hear
the insects talking – I can’t dissect the embodied quiet:
the near nothingness of an ocean of blood roaring through
my veins, the feint words of a still night’s wind caressing the trees,
the slight subsonic creaks of meditating buildings shifting positions.
I can feel the insects talking, on the edge of an awareness I have lost
or am yet to possess, the calm surface of
my audio-imagination is agitated by them.

Cyril tells me of a certain Brazilian cicada,
sings the praises of its high intelligence and beautiful design,
it has pink, blue and green armour around its third eye -
I tell him the ones I’ve seen are like massive ugly flies,
but he says this one is different – my vivid imagination
is inclined to agree. Cyril says that when it sings
it is emanating, like a resonating chamber that contains
the sound of the shape of its environment;
its song is its sight.

As soon as we decide to enjoy the quiet for a time
the garden door opens and John comes grinning out,
“Man I felt like I was dying. Phew. I was turning inside out!”
He goes to piss on the tree, laughs a joyous relief,
takes a deep breath, and becomes as honest as
an interested child under the stars. Their light
and his face are one and the same. The fire
in his eyes is the music of his laugh.

“How’s Lee doing?”
“He’s good man, think he just had a little purge.”
“Really? Cool! He’s really impressed me, I gave him a big cup for
his first time, he said he had some stuff to deal with
and he’s just laid back and gotten on with it.”
“I haven’t purged actually. Feel like I’m making
a big smelly-belly present for mama in the morning.”
“You didn’t have a second cup?”
“Couldn’t even comprehend the question!
got everything I needed from that first cup anyway,
really powerful stuff!”
“Yeah, he knows what he’s doing -
puts all sorts of influences into his tea,
I’m hoping one day he’ll teach me. But c’mon guys,
we were doing so well with our silence tonight!”
“You can talk!”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you remember last session you were trying
to get everyone to shut up? And then twenty seconds
later you were like: Wow guys, check this out!”
“Ha! I don’t think so. I think it was you that kept talking -
anyway let’s be quiet now.”
(laughter)
“I’m serious! Listen!”
(sniggering)
“Alright you asked for it!”

John good-naturedly protests as Cyril clambers onto his back,
locks his head in the vice of his arms and silences him with his hands.
He clamps on hard and John resists but soon they both relax,
silence snuffs out their friction like a match starved of oxygen.
Silence speaks without saying a word,
we understand without forming thoughts…
In focusing on what is barely there,
our deep selves become more distinct.

We return to the welcoming warmth
of our faithful cocoons. Lee gets up
and does a circuit of the room, his face
beaming as he thanks us each in turn.

John brings up the idea of one last cup -
it amazes me he can take so much.
Cyril warns him it could leave him feeling drained
but you can see he’s going to drink it all the same,
Lee wants another cup too, and so I end up
having a drop just to keep them company:
“Bless your journeys.”

While they ready their ships for inner-spaceflight
Cyril and I twirl prisms of different configurations
before our eyes, making the candlelight stretch
into six, eight and twelve-pointed stars. Zooming
in and out, angling this way and that, overlapping lenses
to animate kaleidoscopes of light. We ponder this beautiful
recurrent fracturing of sight, like trying on for size
the eyes of a giant fly. Then the music carries us away,
we wrap ourselves in thoughts like digestive juices that,
fizzing slowly, reveal the bones of our experiences…

When a problem is answered
in the continuation of the same thought
the content can be forgotten, because
the change has already occurred.

Perfectly comfortable, satisfied
to the centre of my soul,
I close my eyes -
the events of the night
begin to codify, becoming
symbolic elements
in a visual design;
changes in my body
wrought by changes
in my mind – and all thanks
to the mediating influence
of a magical vine!

Cyril tings the Tibetan cymbals
and whispers his gratitude
to all that make this possible.

As night turns to dawn
a contented yawn echoes
the ceremony’s close.

(A Palpable Character)

Whispering blessings
Under the old squat oak
Into the palm of tobacco
Little brown rivers
Falling into the wind
Settling like snow
That the secret knows
Knotted in the dirt
Tangled grass

Exude a yearning
Sound from the soft bellows
Of my chest, unfurling
In the air the umbrella
Of my opening head:
An earth
Facing flower

*

(Purr Pull Hey Zzz)

Little brother
Psilocybe
Fun-guide
Me to you

Drop your spores
And give yoursElf to me
I will give mysElf to you
We can share this mystery

Psilocybe
Little guys
Please show me where you hide
You are such a joy to find

Liberty caps
Elf hats
Nipple-heads
Little brothers
Fun-guide me to you

Please show me where you hide
Where you laugh
In jungle grass
Let me grasp
Your bell-shaped hearts
And crown mice-elf
A-gain

*

(Other brOthers)

Hello, bless, but
No – not you -
I’m looking for the
Other brOthers.

*

(aFamilyaFair)

I plead
But they stay away
Wrack my brains
Worry that I’ve misbehaved

My greed
Prompting me to pluck ’em too young
Before the mushroom cloud had sprung
In times gone…
(What a pinhead!)
I promise
To leave the children
Who are yet to fulfil
Their function
Growing in the grass

*

(Starring Earth)

Little brother
Psilocybe
Fun-guide
Me

(Let me show you
Where you hide me…)

Unlock the gateway
of my mind,
Hide in visible
Plain sight
Un-why’nd

Wheel dance
On the other side
Spiralling unspoken
Many colours merged
One soul become diverse
A moving ghost
In the singing light
Of our flesh prism.

*

(Another Dimension)

Ferns fizzing green
And rusting brown
Sunlit: one high frequency
Dimensionless like angel-spit
Smoothed around
The space of shade:
A breath into the void
Filled with kindly grades.
The canopy’s shadow
Dappled dimples like dips -
Am I the ship on this ocean?

*

(Wood 'n Sun)

Scan the landscape
To feel for a pull
Watch the flight of a crow
And ask for a clue:
First up & away from me
then turning into my direction,
Bidding on.

King Stag and His Little Helpers; Pen, Ink & Acrylic Paint on Paper; 40 x 60cm. (2009)

Caught like a lightning strike
In my scanning gaze
Leading landscape to a plane
A breathing tapestry:
Lit up for one eternal moment
In the warp & weft of distant trees
And fractal heath -
The tall shining skeleton
The bone-lit King Stag
Moon-flesh tied like wishing rags
To the windless cage of his proud ribs,
Antlers like World-Tree-veins
Pumping ancient days
Through the thin skin of night -
Time is a cyclic flicker
And memory is alive.

Immediate, unmediated
Memory – a meaningful picture
Like a flaw in the crystallised eternity
Of life. Like a crack in the mirror.

RE
EN
CHANT
ME

*

(Young Meat & Old Bones)

Little brothers
Fun-guys
Won’t you show me
Where you hide
Where you laugh
In jungle grass
Let me grasp
Your bell-shaped hearts
And crown mice-elf
A-gain

*

(Little Brothers)

It would be just typical
To find the first of you here
Growing next to the lake
Beside the busiest of paths
- And there you are!
You unmistakable bell of heaven
Ringing in the untold depths
Of our shared being!
The dark gills of your hydraulic spreading -
You rise to release your children into the winds
Of our world: when the seeds are ready
The fruit will make itself known.
Rest in the hammock of my hand
Dear brother, join me in the juices
Of my mouth – transmit the earthly musk
Of your flesh to my flesh: the liveliest of soils
Is lit by the essences of many deaths.

*

(HammocKing)

Liberty cap
Elf hat
Nipple-head
Little brother
Little guy
Psilocybe
Fun-guy
Fun-guide
me to you

*

(ShadowSaurUs)

Sing gracefully
In wordless gratitude
A growing tune
A knowing tune
Sing gracefully

The resonating chamber
Clouds of coherent sound
The mists of awareness descend
Like tiny hands drumming into shape
The unfurling umbrella
Of the mind of never
Like a bubble
Rising from the deeps.

*

(WitCHat)

I think I am
Following my knows
But where am I
Being scent
?

*

(Shooting the Breeze)

On the sunny side
Of a wide & wise old oak
Smoke explores the possibilities of space
In air that is solid with light.
The strength of the sun
Strips form to its blinding essence
And sets it in eternity.
My map is not this territory
But together we write this story
And so the leaf of this tree is a flag.

I see it would
Make sense to meet
In the field known as: “Ham”
For that is the sound coming from
My little blood brother
Lit from all angles
In the warm womb-honey
Of our living memories
As he speaks my name.

Little brother
Psilocybe
Fun-guide
Me to you.

Share my senses
Make a present of my tensions
Free them like a burp
To be gobbled up by birds
And we will be now
Here together.

Make my senses
Share my meaning
Until the dreams of life
Become the winds of my feeling.

Little brother
Psilocybe
Fun-guide
Me to you.

*

(Peekaboo)

And hear they come
The exclamation marks
Of my joyous song!!!
Little winks & laughs
From my brothers in the grass
Punctuating the weave
That permeates my being -
Purring mutant souls of the soil
Flinging themsElves into the path of my vehicle
Drawing my chariot, shuffling my sheep
With an invisible pen – sieving my particles
To find the wHole of
ME
RE
EN
CHAN
TING
The world responding
To some mutual urge
To meat – Two meet
Tweet To Eat & Chatter
Like a skeleton’s jaw
Caw! Cor!
The awe-full core
Cannot be guarded
Caw! Cor!
Nor can it be
Discarded.

It is alive
It is life itself
It is ever present
It is forever representing

I T S E L F

Testing

Seeing

Exploring

Living

Fullness

.

(The Leaning Power of Teaser)

Give us
Oh lOrd Our
Daily breadcrumbs
And lead us not
To the which-is
Confectionary abode
But delight us by living
In the flesh of our fields
AHHHHHHHHHHHH
OMMMMMMMMM

*

(Little Dears)

Thank you
For making me

An unselfconscious
Hunter-gatherer

Once more

I stalk with the purposeful
Nod of the crow

And graze with the graceful
Dip of the deer

They do not fear man
When the mind of never is near

Important things are conducted sideways
As rainbows from the duct of a tear.

*

(Atlas)

Pleased to be
meat, you?

*

(An Opening)

It can be rude
To blow your blessings
Directly in the face of one
So radiant as the sun
(My coat of arms
is a brotherly hug?)
Better to put-put the smoke
Gently around its circular aura
Dabbling a soft spiral of acquaintance
As the breath peters out.

*

(Woven)

Little brother fun-guy
You are such a joy to find
Growing in the glowing grass
All things pass but small things last

You tricksy little monkies
You pretty micro-pigs
Snuffling out the wind
And smuggling in

The ringing
Of your bells
Inside the hallowed spirals
Of our sleeping shells

Humming with
The living memory
Of the first sun
F
A
L
L
E
N
So close to silence
In the calcified womb
Of the earth’s moon

Every faculty
In this universe-city
Swooning
With the deliciousness
Of sense itself

I T S E L F

Thinking

Singing

Eating

Laughing

Freeing

*

(Tree Chi)

This is the field
I have been feeling
This is the field I’ve felt
This is the end of the trail
Of breadcrumbs, this is
The home of the sweet
Little baldheads, this is
The place where the pixies
Are meeting, this is the place
Where the golden-tops gleam.

*