And when I am like this I am difficult to reach old dad dead deep reach to tidal reach deliberate avoidance of the obvious reality and you’ll tell me something and you’ll catch in the eye something to catch the eye grieving farther in the eye and in  the painting in the gallery and in the real all farther ahead where above the human the heart the head is displayed the soul the updraft the critical resemblance the criticality the control rods the telephone the shore the rainbow the partition the rakish excursion deauthorising the sky like deer losing our identity and out of the house disoriented in a state a stateless a standard bearer a highline a dance at Le Bain a bump a shout a music festival a glass of water out of the fridge and the cool water flowing down my insides and this is a nice government enquiry somehow smart television eyes smarting and the nerve agent and warm enough and raining already autumn desperate late fluvial pieces came and it was like paint and Schulz describes the gale as originating from a conspiracy of household items rattling amongst themselves great spiral geometric storm walking through a compound which contains the Chernobyl power station walking past military personnel walking security guards long after the accident and a radiation suit and a job watching over one of the burntout control rooms of the reactor and looking round a corner and in the room one of the security guards geometry waiting and spiral naked and gale wants me to take off my radiation suit conspiracy so we can have sex and become anxious household items and it’s not safe and if we have sex it is raining already radiation ends up deer inside him is nerve agent is wake up spine rescinding his parcelforce of set fall riders spoke and to reach fist of a spring bulb and electric princess default and loan repayment to shining star Doubtfire Iphigenia fallout and spiral outwards from the burning and core and ordure of ceremony and master and confer shit degree load bearing or lodestar refrigerant wing and conspiracy blog favourite cresting white like the narwhal’s tusk and slips farther put on a Maigret and dynamic fanlight reaches legible pyre charm a grey mare hammer curls or a drain fluid away of draining excess emotion a streetcorner between two busy thoroughfares remaking from moment to moment a phonebox with no receiver a crisp slow refrigerated wave and deerrise on to laminar flow luminous and drain some motorway and howsoever pileup and affirm there a deep gradient and their right arm savage and breathe there which also resembles solid deer and complaints require it and why grafts hold where endghost and why not take it back and why not take five silly sweet talk and why not take it to the bridge drop the fucker take it to its awful logical conclusion and have done where gradient lips and illuminate the mess with a white sock looking for the egg under the skin dissolving into ribbons. And redo and read it more than once relieve brilliant slop acres room is just arctic infolding darkstar and dawnrise on tarnrake lips from singular fold loop fourteener or leave it say goodbye and part a sunset those legions will and rocket landscape take concrete or bulldoze the fence folds a dead lip clutching the frame of their own portrait and out of toffee coating cracked the containment vessel and graphite on the roof and graphite from the core of the reactor fromage à la crème à la pomme de tire paranoia and arousal about brain repeating something stimulating to itself and then and suddenly and inside you and a LIGHT and a tiny moth of spark and its wings LIGHT go to work on a turf watching boy lean over the balcony of an old-timey cinema and face like a Reynolds Lyon’s Cornerhouse on the way homeward or a smacked bottom long day closes loch shore whither this landscape despoiled face blasting expletives and blasting lead white to the extent you can’t imagine preclearance wreckless dinosaur farm sunflower after sunflower acting like a boss on Snake Island saying go to a dick and it’s your will and your intentions pinned deer on respectable choir tour black mistaken trade clause and hive ground plesiosaur its urgent bones like down and larktide sarcophagus vast rest whipette and a brownfield kink burlap difficult material questions including halfimagined images of lips and of noses touching and when did the first deer fly instead of falling and when are the honied serenities going to hold good when is the judgement charting the reach of fluvial deposit and moraine field and both learning how not to be defensive exist to alarm and when the alarm tone sounds three times it may be a sign the lithium battery needs replacing and of a fire FURIOUSLY HOT BATH CHRIST ALIVE goblin shark Reagan would have loved you glittering etoilated fête less comprising and Golden Lane Estate minefields thinking about Prague whose open car is a burst sundance and Iblis as a canula Iblis as the river’s mouth Iblis bifocating tide pool and exchange drive and Father I see far fallout meter Father I am approaching the spill I am loving you like I always wanted coronation thoroughfare embankment crass wreckage and Bankside laughs laughs since the dickhead’s final burst armada spin valediction and mandible joy ratioed idiot pieces and crude liquid acres access deer volley attendant lawns in front of my programme asleep. And Prospero says to Miranda I will inform you farther at the seashore at the mouth of a cave flipping hoops all day and weaving baskets navigating a trade route biologically as it were dogs barking rabbit flesh shot through with yeller and you are wondering if this really is a family portrait Daphne’s father variously written up as the river god Peneus Ladon-Orontes and as Eurydicae’s brother Amyclas, son of King Lacedemon and Queen Sparta insolent space race huge ship suspended in blackness Friday sails of that ship and the ship’s name is wormwood Chernobyl absinthium Artemis goddess of the hunt and of wilderness and wild animals and nature and vegetation and childbirth and care of children and chastity Quixotic heart piece workshop bombshell drawing to some sort of awful conclusion artful in its wayward roadmen high on deerstop smoothed over carapace sort of a Bacon Eichmann in their glass booth shouting nonce rhyme nonce language or nonce sentence sans trial Daphne’s father obliging her flight from her rapist Apollo the sort of arrangement only a river could dream over stopped flow never behind you and yellow water dirt never the same twice and making a copse of his daughter terrorised flesh brown as a sunday roast caryatid and carotid blood stopped below the skin brownfill concrete found Caesium arrears beckons and idle notion inventories of the villa Chernobyl lonely as a jape and a nightjar and a piercing whistle and it is over and you are holding his hand and you are listening to his voice and you are painting his face you are kissing each cold finger each vignette deerly purchased end credits rolling in a dead language and you talk to yourself to keep warm.

Nick Blackburn is a writer and psychoanalyst from the north-west of England.