…tripping along, giving leave to my wayward feet, wantonly allowing my hair to whip my face, shroud my eyes - eyes whose pupils dilated with a deep and fierce passion. The red and gold of danger pulled me up, instinctively. Impulsively, I reached. It was mine. But it burned.

I wasn’t looking, but was magnetised by its light- of sun or star I did not know -absorbed only by its iridescence. A truly unstoppable glory. And I couldn’t help myself. A hapless moth. I didn’t want to stop looking, but I knew the light, could only blind.

Didn’t ask. Wasn’t waiting. Didn’t expect to witness the fragmentation of my heart between love/desire and issues/contradictions - foolishly imagined one strong love upon a sea of calm, not buffeted by wildness, frustration, desire and unpredictability.

I don’t want to want. I resolutely, but naively, slam the gate behind me resolving to never look back. But Determination has a fickle sidekick - called Desire.

The bitter blanche - another hearing the sweet names. Caustic envy – as they bathe in the deep confident undulations of your voice, succumbing to the strong arms and indisputable probing instincts, revealing deepest need, most profound desire.

I remember walking through this mist before, its white impenetrable glare blinds me once again but then, back then I had forgotten what lay beyond and believed that was all there was.

************

And all that was brought - man and child, fighting wild. Wayward. Controversial. One whim led to the road of defiance, the playground of Satan.

The best, the worst. Memories hold strong. Sheer unadulterated brilliance brought with it a pain, carving its brutal destruction. But I saw through the pain - I saw a good man driven. I saw how you could impart, touch, any man, any woman, for a time before it became too much.

Searching beneath, beyond the tangible, sensing, tasting, what lies behind our material reality. The cavalier walk across the tightrope, taunted by the mundane tempted by iridescence, only seeking deliverance, a deliverance that may never come.

Each fragment of what the whole could be - maybe. Flawed, crazy and precious. Nothing shines so bright as shattered fragments.

I felt your loneliness and would go with you anywhere, with anything, to relieve that overwhelming all-pervasive loneliness. But no comfort could provide solace to the barbarian past - the brutal images wield their power. The indelible pain remains and is carried, an unwilling chalice to poison everything that you love. Driven and desperate, the need for extreme - for hate, for love, for sensual, mental and physical oblivion - can never be sated. This hateful quest.

Questions defy answers. Answers can only exist without questions and they are so close to you anyway, you cannot see them, they could be in every small thing you do, everyday, every opportunity to make good, everything you do to give that chance to be the best man you can - to bring light and joy to those with whom you converge.

Distance only brings clarity to what you, and I, and us, were, are or will be. Convergence brought passion, daring, extreme and yes, love and yes, lust unquenchable, escalating to fever pitch, more, more, harder, faster, frenzied unquenchable desire, dark, deviant and pure. Of angel and demon the alchemy was unique, outrunning, outstripping everyone within reach too much, too far, too hard, smashing hard upon your granite pillow.

For you, I gave again, knowing I would lose, I gave again, wanted you to be the one but knowing you never could be. Exploring the universe, breaking boundaries, daring again and again, further, farther, higher, challenging self-destruct, bringing to the brink and looking squarely into the face of insanity, daring to live out of our comfort zone, that zone which you dared not just to visit but to inhabit, discomforting as it was for everyone, but, nevertheless, your home.

As random our meeting, if graced with age, I will remember. And as a wry smile plays across my lips, and an ironic frown ripples across my brow, I will remember. I will remember, the worst and unquestionably, the very best.

Shine on you Crazy Diamond.