Where the Wild Things Were

 We would drive out

seven to a five seat car

sling sleeping bags on shoulders

bags of firelighters

cassettes and bongs

and wind our way

on the forgotten bridle path 

to Hangman’s Wood.

Couples took a two man tent.

Mark Mitchell, Brett Wells,

Nick Ferrin, Zac Hewlett

the two Dan Hills.

A shifting cast of guys and girlfriends.

Half boys, half men

sending excitable shouts

into warm nights

on the South Downs.

A fire would be built and lit

the bigger, the better.

Ground would be cleared

of sticks and stones.

Music would be argued over

debated, fought for, played.

Ozric Tentacles, The Orb,

The KLF, The Shamen,

The Prodigy?

Or how about The

Incredible String Band

Pink Floyd, Donovan?

Once everything was set

the music had been settled

we would all go

where the wild things are

imbibe huge

experimental doses

of psilocybin mushrooms

or LSD or ecstasy

or combinations of all of these.

Almost nobody ever drank booze.

Almost everybody smoked joints

continuously.

We were all convinced that

somehow

we would push ourselves

to the furthest extremes

of chemically assisted experience

and that this would

somehow

have highly beneficial

psychological outcomes.

I do not know now

at this remove

where we obtained that hypothesis.

Probably my dad

who was known to sigh moodily

complaining that,

‘You can’t get real acid these days, man

Not the real high Hoffman gear’

or some such thing.

One game we would play

as the overwhelming

avalanche of delirium

poured into our camp

was to pick a partner

stand either side of the fire

and stare each other in the face.

I do not know who

invented this game

but it was a perfect way

to share an intense encounter.

A deep, lasting and

intimate bond

was almost always made.

One particular night

I stood opposite Mark Mitchell

a burly black magician.

Covered in piercings

rings and pentagrams

and bearded since birth,

this avuncular Satanist

stood opposite me

across the huge fire

stoking fireflies

from the cauldron of its guts

with a timber wand.

The fizzing chemistry set

inside my skull

was dismantling the planet.

The night sky breathed

to suffocate the trees,

the oil-painted darkness

pressed up behind Mark

until, to me,

he was floating on an ocean

of obsidian marbles

and I was gazing at him from above.

He stoked the fire again

his huge searchlight eyes

illuminating everything

within me.

As he stoked

the entire global population

of monarch butterflies

flew up to be collected

by Mark’s swinging ponytail.

I suddenly became aware

that Mark and I were

somehow standing

not around a fire at all

but either side of a 

countless number of

furious Bengal tigers.

Their roars and growls crackled

frighteningly close

the heat of their bodies

burning my knees and shins.

Fear came over me

like an ocean wave

overcomes the swimmer

lifting my body

into rising panic

turning me over and over

pulling me down to

incoherent, directionless

darkness.

It is a fear so complete

it borders grief.

The fear of a child that he has

lost his mother

or of a mother hunting

for her child.

‘Come back, man’

Mark’s huge grin.

A silver sickle

cutting through the oil.

‘It’s okay, man. Stay in it’.

The body was blazing now.

I had chased away tigers.

I had dropped through

the bottom of the ocean

and found dry land.

And now as I found Mark’s eyes

his face became a series

of ever changing

liquefying masks

as though the whole of humanity

were appearing through Mark

to wish me well.

An old lady quickly became a priest

the wise Geronimo a dogman,

Jerry the mouse Monica Vitti

a waterfall of faces

that would never relent.

And so the night wore on

as we coupled and uncoupled

gazed into each other

loving and helping

determined to see

new things

find new things

in hallucinatory terror

and joy and love.

Things that we could keep forever.

Of course, that part was all a dream.

We were just boys

on a hillside

in Hangman’s Wood

just boys with chemicals

that are rightly restricted

trying to impress each other

trying to impress girls.

I know all of that.

Of course I do.

But I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.