Quarter Past Six on the clock.

Dearest individual, whom inspire mind and lighten heart,
You are not loved but you are of fond thought,
Opened, have you, the door to the past,
A shining brass key and clean cut, tailored suit.
I itch in excitement and long for your touch of history,
You grace my door in elegant discolourment.
My door opening to the white light of dusk,
My October colouring in orange,
Autumn sweetening a crisp brown, the coffee and red of my dawn.
I am awake and I am waiting,
I am in what they call, I am in love.
Rolling red lights pass my window,
How I long for rain.

Ode to Southend-On-Sea

Oh you always seem to find me,
Don’t you, the moon?
Oh if there is any one I am in love with,
I do think it is you.

Oh the thought does drift about my brain,
As did the sea air the last time I felt it about my hair.
How I miss those leisurely days beside the pier, or sat upon the sunny rocks.
For it has been almost a year since I have seen any real sunshine,
And whilst I prefer the grey days…
And much prefer the night…
There is nothing like the warmth of evening sun on your back,
As you read Murakami on the rocks with your feet burrowed in the sand,
The sound of children laughing around you,
And parents wishing to go home.
Knowing that Rossi’s ice cream parlour continues to modernize up beside the hill behind me,
But as ever serves the same delicious menus,
How I hear no cars but am ever aware of their rolling by,
As if they are sorry to be a break between the parlour and I,
And a cut in this beautiful scenery.
Such does the sea lie before me,
Does the industrial views of Sheerness.
I see the towering chimneys from here, and all the miles they lie away are nothing when it is all but water.
How the sea dips into any part of the shore it can,
It laps back and forth, each time growing closer to my toes,
Until it cannot go any further,
Until it slowly laps back as if rewinding itself.
All to show are the creatures and stones it leaves behind.

It is so very similar to the way a mind whirls about it’s memories.
How things roll in and out of your mind,
Further and further away,
And closer and closer.
When your current thoughts recede, lie all the ones that merely drifted beneath the surface of your consciousness. Misplaced or still alive in your mind,
Though perhaps not in life.
I adore my nights,
But please do not take away from me, my evenings at the seaside.



Oh, just this one more song,
May we stay?
As I hear Vera sing and you smile in the dim of the bar.
I know the sea is just outside,
And the stars sit happily in it’s ripples,
This fine, sweet, sea side night.
Oh I hear no more gulls but they shall return by morning,
And here it is all the clinking of glasses, the moving of trays,
The sweeping up of the end of a night,
And here plays that final song.
That one I asked for, to myself, just this one!
And here, still you stand, in that fine, fine suit you wear so well.
This is my favourite dress, oh won’t you dance with me,
Just for this last song?



A sweet melody, that brought you to me,
Vera sings.
And so you take your hand to my waist,
The other scooping my hand up into the air,
Stationary they hold,
As we dance, sway in this seaside bar.
Take me back to Brighton I cry,
Oh but this time,
Let it be love by the railings.
We’ll do the sweetest waltz across the shoreline, me and you.
The lights scoop the end of the pavement, and illuminate the pebbles of the beach.
And here we are, just us.
Oh where is everyone else,
Oh let’s just pretend they are all dead.
Just for tonight.
It’s just me and you, dancing beside tonight’s black sea,
And it’s just what love should be.
Oh why can I not see your face?
My sweetest figure in such fine attire!
What love will be but I cannot see!
I just feel all the adoration and returned love I swell with,
Released only in a smile to your ear,
As you ask me how we might get home.
And I tell you once again,
Just this one song more.

I might be something, dreaming.

Suppose I write a new, for the old?
My dreams have been so tell-tale lately!
And so unco-operative as I attempt pen them down!
Blasted, unrelated, unrealistic sub-reality of one's own mind!
But so realistic! It is the problem, they are so!
For I feel in them,
Feel as you might breathing in the rain on a routine stroll to work,
Feel as you might on that first dive into the cool of an outdoor pool!
The people in them, I have seen, mostly, I have!
I have grown with them, I mightn't have all of them any more,
But they have been here, in this supposed waking world.
And growl, have I, at waking on occasion,
To find they are still not here.

It is proof of my time-walking?
It is certainly proof of my dreaming!
And it is all of the dreaming, it is all of the mumbling in my sleep,
And the constant logging of dreams!

Suddenly, I awake and am onto something,
Suddenly writing is as writing can be,
And I've a beginning to that story I never finished,
And mightn't finish if I should have trouble sleeping again.
On all these notes and the above and below, I return to my dwelling, I return to the screen and pen my endless papers! It might just happen, I confirm, it might!
I may have stumbled onto what a life I am supposed have,
Or at least the same road.
Well, same city at most,
But the same nonetheless! On the map it all is!
I can be something,
Can't I?
As awkward as I am in daily situations,
As dull as my voice sounds,
As vague as I ever am,
As unshapely as I may be:
I might be something.

I might be.

Bridges, And Real Bridges.

The light and wintered cobbled streets,
That hold our name,
I cannot write of the beauty that I see with you,
Your arm at my waist as we scour the Cadbury centre.
And the white sunlight against the windows of the olde shops.
The history we discover as we attempt the memories we make.
And I’ve no longer words, but I cannot write nothing!
I long to unleash terrible things to you,
Unimaginable future that hold us both!
I stop myself at the empty walls we pulled down,
And I wait for you to join me.
Hiding at the bottom of a cage,
We lie in wait of another day,
For another may be the opportunity we seek,
And the other might be the binding fear,
With light-hearted tear and want!
Want of it all!
You, I saw you across that browning street,
And I thought I saw her horrid silhouette,
I thought of your waistcoat wavering undone,
And I felt your hair in my grip from afar,
And you entered a door I assumed I would never see open again,
Once more I had turned,
And missed your returning.
But I met you on the bridge,
Oh how I met you on the bridge,
How alcohol lingered in my breath,
And every sense I had was mine,
For it all felt like nonsense.
For I wanted to reach into you,
Into the nothing I thought we would ever become!
I looked into the kindest eyes of blue, I gazed and perhaps never gazed away,
For even then I did not know what I would do with you,
I did not know if I should see you in my home town,
By my sea or at each smile or frown.
But I never, in wake, touched another I never glanced back.
The moment you managed a kiss unto me,
I could not climb back over that wall.
I waited on your words far from me,
And I let my heart leap about the page from which I deciphered,
All the unimagined feelings you portrayed!
Now I may even make up word!
For I have nothing to say to you,
For you feel it all.

A quiet wait at the end of a working day,
It would see you having already returned,
A stationary silver car beside a bank,
And summer threatening at the backs of the walls,
But the scent was warming.
We bought a few things together and we took a trip back to my place,
Idols on the television,
And you but metres away from me.
But hours away from me.
A rush of hours, a mind of weeks,
Trips in your car and the music, it speaks.
The sun above and the night all about us.
‘Your voice, it keeps me up at night’.
And you finally return your kiss to me.
You return your delicate hand to my face,
As if you had never handled so precious a thing.
Than corrupted little I.
I needn’t have even wished that I had never felt another touch,
For I hadn’t. Not like this.
And I wondered then what I would do if I threw caution to the air,
The waters from the docks,
If I dove into nothing headfirst.
If I couldn’t see a metre in front of us in the fog and yet I pulled us through it,
A speed of which I slowed,
With the beating of my heart,
As I first felt yours, beating against my chest.


And I do believe, that had you not crossed my path,
I would have crossed yours.
And we did meet , at all times and never the same,
We did speak the same mind.
I discover, still, why this place has a purpose.

Lightening heart of yours,
Always takes the darkened; mine.
And bleeds into it,
A sort of golden blend,
A feeling that bares renewal blind,
But forceful.
That puts a hand in mine,
That lingers a gaze in mind,
And only with eyes as yours,
Do the crystal seas seem true.

'November 1st, 2009' - the piece sighed.

On being so, your senses heighten, so much that you can sense the very animals moving hidden in the trees.
Of course, nothing is just given to you, after all, a gift must be unwrapped.
A breath of night is always the first of a new life.

I paused, as I,
Entirely myself, contented by the previous days had,
Those the last of October,
This that first night of November,
And I looked through the doors windows,
The pubs lights off now,
Just the lanterns of the streets outside,
And there he stood.
A profile to me,
His hair a-skew to the golden damp cobbles,
The moon bearing down upon him from the very centre of the parting sky.
His arms, so full yet so fit,
Holding up the umbrella he packed away to bring inside,
So I must avert my eyes, must take my body from the window.
I’m sure he sees me enough.


On leaving did see, his hesitation in fingers through his hair,
Though about me, I shall never have an idea,
He followed but he left,
And so I went out alone onto those very same cobbles,
That harboured him just minutes before.
The moon sat still as ever,
As I stood aside the bridge tonight,
It lit the sky more powerfully than even the sun,
That I never see.
For a lamplight it always more appropriate than the main.
Every cloud dashed past,
Painted softly as the lines that ink my back.

Dark figures don’t haunt me,
Dark silhouettes pass through my life,
As I walked along side the river for Novembers very first twilight,
Through the leaves, through the crunch, through passers by and bitter breeze,
I saw a figure passing in time between the pillars across the water.
Though daylight still strong, but shaded,
I could not make out this to be a man or a woman,
But it walked as I, hands in pocket, head slightly bowed,
A fine silhouette of entirely black, from hair to clothe
Our steps met at the bridge, and though it went a different route to myself,
His eyes still met my own for a moment,
Before we crossed separate roads.
As I crossed my own, I saw him pace off, hands still in pocket, a cinched in waist by his tailor,
He appeared entirely a black image,
Mute and strong
Against all those autumn leaves that dashed the cobbles of Castle Park,
Every one else had features,
He, not a trace of detail,
And yet I was drawn,
And again we walked in time,
Though this time, through trees not pillars did he disappear.
No red this year.



“You, I spent my life missing you….” Hesitation gripped her, the last three words trailed from her speech, yet carried on in her conscious mind, “And I shan’t stand it a moment longer”.
That life of the damned, so they called it, may just keep my own life from wanting him any longer.




A park lit by moonlight, soft lanterns and sound tracked by tapping rain that fell from the leaves still on the trees, and insulted those that now led upon the floor.
It’s pathways decreased by what now mostly led,
What looked like bodies of leaves on the ground.
And so I stepped, in time to old music,
Hearing the modern talk of those around me.
Oh a girl, old before her time, hath she no where to go but the leaves of adolescent trees?
Moments and memories, all stirring my mind,
To a consciousness that decides who and who isn’t in my life,
And reality, that reality
That dips in for shock factor,
And so my self may never rest,
Oh tender hooks.
On edge.
My mind, revelling now, as I near just twenty human years old,
All that has passed,
And all I have become.
For fear I spent years,
Of living an ordinary life,
But never has it been just that.

Some how I seeked happiness, and that was a wooden floored home,
Rugs, soft lighting and a family around a tree a Christmas,
An odd time to receive it,
In doses that were unfamiliar,
And yet ordinaire was my fear.

My senses so wrong as a child,
Hear I every sound a house can make,
See every shadow that partake,
In every nightly ritual of sleep.
As I slip further into nocturnal ways,
I recall being so young faced, fresh skinned,
Sat upon the padded seat of a warm family restaurant,
Busy on a weekday summer evening,
And my body ached with fear,
Ached with being sick of being in fear.
And suddenly life around me was but a question,
But a question of where in reality I really sat,
If my mother and then-step-father really sat before me,
If any of these people were really here.
Where in parallel did I lie?
And if so why, when in those arms I miss, did I feel so almost alive?

I wanted it all to stop,
And I prayed upon myself amnesia for a very long time…

Years, my years,
Only almost twenty, barely scraping it’s milestone presence,
And already my mind is that,
Of the girl who walks the city at night,
Clutching a cane,
And considering the sky,
And breathing most deeply when the moon reveals itself to her,
Whether close to the rooftops, halved and tinged in gold,
Or dead centre the sky, hanging full and ominously pearl,
My own footsteps my company,
The sounds of the earth around me.
Rustling come red come gold come dinge of the waters that travel around me.
My own gentle hum the only apparent sound.



The way the rain may make me feel,
So very early houred morning,
The way the crowd carried me that night,
And dropped me back on stage,
To the last I’ll hear his voice again through mikes I’d always known.
I’ll never know this feelings,
Unless I’m walking alone,
Glancing up to the church I live beside,
Seeing hours only I seem to know.
For spending this autumn walking along side the pale,
The ‘one’,
My eyes may be clouded,
My vision rotted,
Ignored,
My previous admiration slanted.
I must see these things, whilst I am alone,
For if the next one has me looking and only looking at so,
Then perhaps beauty will leave me in toe.

3.55am, September 7th, 2009.

A venue, a pale black light tries to pollute the effort of a spotlight beside the speaker,
The same spotlight that, behind a veil of wispy smoke,
Holds the silhouette of the one I’d call a lover.
Hung in a shallow blue, his profile standing above his guitar,
The music hasn’t started yet.
Two elbows on a chrome Bar, I stand in waiting.
His heard lyric rolling absently through my mind, mingling with the murmur of a crowd in apprehension.
I feel like tonight is all mine.
Whether he looks at me or not.
Directly across a post-warehouse he stands,
The evening air barely venturing in,
His shadow turns my way but the faceless always remain the same.


He’s waiting out by the church,
She’s searching for another name,
All the while knowing who she wants tonight,
But everywhere else holds the anticipation of a romanticizing technique.

Dreams those night,
Of making love to nothing,
But feeling more toward it than any thing
Writhing around and wanting more but finding no one there.

An awkward conversation.

There was a dull chill in the air, a handful of stars in the sky. Her skin had taken on a pale defence to the night's weather, and yet still she sighed contentedly. She must've been sat on this mound for around four hours, more or less. Her legs had become slightly numb, but she needn't have realised for lack of movement.
"You don't always come here, do you?", Came a sultry Voice without intention, as though it had always been there.
"Well... no", she replied rather obviously, glancing downward slightly to the mound on which she sat.
"Oh", came the Voice once more, as though expecting much more of an answer, "Well... You aren't planning on leaving?".
"No actually", she replied wistfully, her colourless eyes fixed upon the few stars and the lack-lustre blue beyond it.
"Well it won't go away..." came the Voice, now seating itself beside her, though she paid it no attention, "That is to say, it won't come back? Well you know, that, that down there... it won't go away, but, the thing that it was, well... it's... gone. Yes. Quite gone".
"Aren't you supposed to be a little more... informed on this matter?", the girl asked quite naturally.
There was a pause after this, in which the Voice sat quite calmly at her side, imitating the girl's glance toward the stars. It shifted it's weight upon the earth now and then, and applied itself to an itch upon it's arm, but otherwise it was rather still.
"It just becomes a little bit of all the same... if you follow?", the Voice queried as an unidentifiable bird swept past heavily with one lift of it's wings.
"I don't I'm afraid. I'd of only assumed you were here to offer me something".
"Offer you something?", the Voice's velvety slithering tone took on a slight crackle.
"Well yes, advice, a choice, an offer, an exchange... Is that not how the stories go? The stories I had read as a child...".
"Well that should tell you it all! You were a child when you read them, things have changed", the Voice came with a classic huff, had it have bothered moving it would certainly have folded it's arms and turned it's head at this point. But it's ancient-tones shared enough.
"I am eighteen years old. And these stories have been passed to my school from the Greek times. I do enjoy reading you know", the girl maintained her wistful tone, her eyes ever upon the blues and silvers of the night.
"Well... do you not suppose you should be at home, reading then? There is not a sweeter way to mourn than to read into another view of life that you only wished was yours!".

Her expression did not change, but she said no more. A desperate and rolling cry came from somewhere nearby, of which the Voice assumed to be that recently passed large bird. It ceased, and the general clatter and scurrying of the middle of the night (which It was so very used to) became clear once more.
The Voice rolled it's hands around one another slowly, and glanced back to the mound on which they were sat. The girl had slightly sunken into the fresh mound of earth, having been sat on it for so long. Little tufts of grass from either side of the mound were poking through and swaying in the breezeless eve, and the stone of which the mound leant slightly against glistened silently and still in the silver glare of the moon. It looked alone, and for the briefest of moments, the Voice felt rather sorry for the girl. But it passed, as it always had done.
"Look", came the Voice once again, after a long quiet, "I didn't mean what I said, I suppose, well... you know... you've got that job at that bar and... well, don't you just get irritated when customers tell you how to do your job? Not to say you're a customer... Or even a client, I mean, this is different...".
The girl looked slightly toward the Voice, and sighed. He really was mumbling on about nothing, and with her view on life as it currently was, she was aware that she no longer had time for such rambling.

"Suppose I were to just stay here with you", the Voice's classic tone said later, "Suppose I never bothered others again, nor stalked the night, nor exchanged anything or made any deals..."
"Have you not collecting to do?".
The Voice went to reply, but for the first time in history, was politely interrupted.
"Excuse me for stating, but in all the stories, in all the books and the unwritten legends... you are rather important. You are feared so much as you are necassary, or something along those lines. If I were to grant you to sit beside me forever, mourning upon my loved one whom you did not even know, I would not, in some twisted and strange way, be doing the earth any favours".
"But I'd be doing you a favour", It said rather simply.
"But you do not grant favours, you only exchange them. And any way, I never asked for any company tonight, I was quite happy to be sat upon this heap alone. Thank you".
"It is only a dog you know...".
"I beg your pardon?".
"No... no, I didn't mean that either, I know it's a human. I apologise. That was uncalled for". The Voice began to wring it's hands again, referring it's glance to the mound and the stone. "I suppose we could carry on arguing though? For quite some time?".
"You really dislike your job, do you not?", the girl asked the Voice, pushing her feet comfortably into the disturbed earth.
"Yes. Quite.", Came the Voice.

~

Unedited.

Magic Men.

Written around two and half years ago. And 'saved'.
It may as well be fiction, for I remember so little of any of it, that it couldn't have truly happened.


~
I crossed through the festival aftermath,
Queen's Square a massacre of litter and lights.
I ran my thoughts across what may have been there when the goers were festive.
Selling hot, spiced foods,
Knitwear and balloon cartoon characters.
Strong scents of roasted nuts and foreign cheeses,
Children screaming and people laughing,
A hum beneath them wavering from a guitar and a long-haired man on a large stage.

Just weeks before I'd sat on a bench in the centre of this then empty park,
Not once, though having seen in, believing it could hold so much and so many.

I walked, paced if you will, gracefully and slowly.
My own stride in a silk skirt,
Those around me in reflective jackets de-erecting the skeleton that was left of the stage.
All that was left of the stalls, now just white, flapping tents,
Stood like a dozen crime scenes.
Everything doused in a soft, orange, artificial glow
- One that outdid the natural Victorian streetlamps still dotted in their regular places.
The smell was damp now, as I passed a truck with many-a-cloth hanging from it's back,
And the laughter and screams were replaced by the sounds of those trucks reversing and a woman shouting across to a man, asking when Mark would return. A faint smell of boxed pizzas passed me as I did, her.

The evening before me held a glance into what it was.
I passed by, my face strictly forward, my step a side-step to dodge many prams, hippies and tourists.
But just one thing stood out to me, from all those faces, places, scents and the guy holding what must have been a thousand helium balloons above him, looking solemn.
As I came to the end of the park and the beginning of the centre, the flurry of people just seemed to rush by me, as I heard the strumming of a guitar. My eyes picked up grey and black, thick pinstripe, sat on a bench to my right. A crumpled guitar case sat merrily in the path and a foot tapped to the tune he played.
A black, tailored jacket held onto an acoustic guitar and a-top it a smartly distressed mess of shocking blonde hair was looking upward.
His voice broke into song just as I reached him, and he looked up with silver eyes, one of which winked himself into a smile within a lyric.
I can't even remember the lyric he sang.
Let alone the tune he played.
But his one sided grin and melodic voice ring silently in my head somewhere.
As memorably as it needed to be.
We both stood happily out from the crowd of tourists, locals and festival goers, and some how matched. Went together.

People passing at the same time must have thought we were supposed to meet, there and then, that perhaps (and in here, just perhaps) that we were made for eachother.
My hair as black as crows, spread out and back-brushed as the wings, my skin an olive-milk; trailing a leopard print trench coat, open like a cape. Beneath, a faded dress, doused in splashes of blended purple and white, adorned in cherubs. My legs slimmed to their tone in black, and checked shoes. My large, almost black eyes turned to where there was silver.
They returned the glance, in their pale face, paler still for the silver blonde hair quaffed comfortably upon that slim yet squared face. Those slim white arms pushed into a fitted black suit jacket, the legs could be even paler and covered slim-line-tonic in deep grey and black pinstripe. Heavy boots that could have been Docs smartly shined to each tap of the guitar he played with fine-tuned hands.

Magic Men.
They seem to come from festivals,
From the centre, by the fountains.
There's usually music and it's always dusk or beyond.

They seem to show you card tricks on the grass, spy the fascination ringing in your eyes and tell you of the beautiful places you just had to see. Places that he just knows you will love.
They'll take you only that night though, to the end of a long slab of concrete lying in the dock waters, perfectly timed to when they may show you the gold rippling line reflecting from the setting sun and the two ducks that cut into it, and cross by.

Good.

After that I was wrong,
After longing all that fair winter long,
When the unfaithful night came and the rope was secured,
And with such a distant flutter,
Now heard from these windows so clear,
I have become she looking over the past of she!
Wondering why these dull whites do nothing for me,
And if gathering the seeings of the morning come;
Brought about inspiration since gone.
And if this city has a thing left in it for me,
You must lead it to me,
You must put life back in these lips,
Into these fingertips,
For I see not a thing to write of any more,
Not next to the murky green of the waters,
Not near the same old traffic lights on any route I take,
I do not feel better expelling these words,
And not a word worthwhile.
Just faces in dreams, I wish I knew,
And the scent of the sea a few miles over,
I long for it all at my feet!
For suddenly a place means a place again!
And the summer, it can seem sweet again!
For that was my past, it was, skipping summer days,
And breathing in the summer nights,
Down by the sea,
And with a name upon it that I remember,
It's all the sweeter, see.


I found what purpose I had for being this far over,
And so sweet is he!
Such reflection I see in his eyes,
That he will treasure this ocean also,
That he might hold my hand throughout it's draught,
That he is mine!
Such treasure could not be mapped.
And so this city is stale, this city we are in,
And so finished am I, with it,
That the memories are souring,
And I needn't want them to do so,
They've just passed their time,
I waited ten years here and it all came to me,
A vision by the sea.


Oh it isnt' what it used to be,
But a name of a name can be so lovely,
So delicious is a word felt by the sea.
I want it all to pause here now,
So it is savoured and it is perfected,
To continue play by the salt of the sea!
It even makes this room more bearable.


Slowly, I pry open the supposed casket,
And let the life reign that didn't,
The late night drives that were taken for me.
And replace the fear with a homely feel,
That I was settled in a time I was too scared to be so,
And so what if the roads are longer,
And so what if I must aid my mind to drive,
And what of not knowing a soul?
For is knowing so many nobodys here such a difference?


So what if they come?
So what if I am tainted?
At least I may have had a try,
Here's to a month before it all becomes too much,
And the salt calls me back.
Perhaps he can only follow me,
Oh and true emotion I welcome thee!
Reuniting may be the best thing to happen to our stale life.
I must go!
I must find happiness in the sea's earthly glow!

But now, I've a mind of two to consider,
A mind to love and be loved,
Let it come,
Some sort of sweet ending,
For I'd rather be on that end visiting this one,
That on this, missing that end.