Jesmond Dene

The thing you need to know about this place

is this place is a beautiful wound:

that waterfall was blasted

out of rock and out of river

at the whim of some rich man. He's dead.

We still enjoy the view.

All things are wounds in time:

there's screaming at our birth,

and blood, and terror;

fear, shit and stink

at both ends of the line.

Rough beasts, who think their hour approaches,

have multiplied themselves in screen-lit rooms,

circle-sucking on each other's saccharine, caffeinated rage.

But wounds don't smell

as clean and sharp as cans of Mountain Dew.

Your shock, my learned traitor, was exquisite, when it came.