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.

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.

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.

Our Day Will Come.

The nights are sweet, in other rooms and between our beds,

Not a sight familiar, not a permanent chair,

I've washed my hair in several showers,

We've attempted dining at all sorts of tables.

But of course each object melts in comparison,

To my strong image of you.

I made myself sleep this morning, I dreamt and was aware, I woke and refused to give in. Back into the dream, it took me to other worlds, it swept me up and attempted to drift me out to sea, it took sun from any sky and put hate in the voices of others. Oh it threatened me with faces and long gone places, but I slept. And this time, I woke when I wished to have woke.

Yes, as I swung my legs round the bed, I collapsed to the floor on a numb leg, but all the pain of yesterday and the rest of today has been beautifully worth it. Not long, I keep on, not long here again. Only I find it hard to picture my kitchen, my wallpaper, these days. And I've never really been one for 'seeing to believe' in the physical world.

Too awkward to kick back, to uncomfortable to fall asleep on the sofa, I wait with tense bones by the window - not for winter to pass - but for my season to guide me to my next destination. Perhaps make a home, oh can I even?

Am I scarred and unable to settle, is it just the new I seek now, now that I never pitched camp?

Keep the future painted with accents of a past I never had, it would do me well to actually drive on with it all. Is it that I have waited too long, that in the porch of next year, I long to just step in and not wait a second more? Am I angry and impatient, oh patience of 10 years! Patience! What am I now, that I've never known impatience?

Nothing manages to freeze over in the city, I see no glittering webs and dusted hedges?

The leaves do not crunch here, the sludge slipped in with the rubbish just slips -

I have waited so long.

Do not let it just be words! They can be the fuel, they can tie us together, oh they can slip into physicality but if I ever stopped talking just for a day, would I crumble in your eyes?

And yes, how I stop myself, and yes how I hesitate! I disgrace my own wants and knock on my own front door!

I've much to pull through to,

And much that I want to,

It's you in every mirror, in every photograph, in every suit! It's you,

And it will be tomorrow, I can be tomorrow!

So let it be today, dear body, let it!

I've needed all of this,

I've need, fed and swam into!

I remember being told - both in the morn'.

I remember treading carefully through the snow,

Rocks turned over, twigs peered through,

Leaves lining the trail of foot and paw.

I will be joyous again.

Our day will come.

'Write & I...'

"You spent it beside the sea..."
"Can't say as I remember..." She responded, with time. It seemed she was delving as far back as last week, and yet the deep of her eyes forever remained. Not once since arriving had she looked to him when speaking, yes, her eyes had turned upon him if he mentioned any thing of a romantic nature, and any thing of home, but it was only these glances which he had been given. She was 'away', as ever she had been all the years before.
"The scent of the sea would creep through our window each of the mornings", he tried, "The evenings would shimmer against a black ocean, the sands would turn unnoticed and laughter could be heard upon the pier from our garden. It was quite a beautiful time."
"But I cannot smell the sea, not now", she offered, gently, folding her hair behind her ear, of which half of the strands immediately escaped back to the pale of her face.
His hands clasped dryly together, he studied her for a few quiet minutes. Glasses touched in the building, the simmer of quiet conversation around them faded in and out, the occasional rush of a car passing by below audible now and then. A woman laughed quite heartily for a few seconds, and this event was the only thing that seemed to stir the girl sat before him. She had returned to a shell from which he had once extracted her long before.
"There was lightening one of the nights", he almost sighed. "It shook even the oldest of the coastal buildings when the thunder arrived, you had noticed it coming long before I, almost as though you had sensed it's damp in the air. We never heard of any disturbance on the news, in fact, we never really watched the news. We just watched as it rocked the ocean, the poor ocean that had been delving sweetly into the evening horizon. The boats clambered about upon the waves, the gulls took from their perches and disapeared into the coming rain.
You and I, we remained as others walked to the dry, walked from the noise. I remember... the cool of the salty air, the damp at our feet and clash of the rain at our inappropriate shoes..."
"We never spoke", came her voice into his trail. He looked to her, and found that the browns of her eyes were settled upon his cupped hands.
"We rarely did", he responded.
It did not pass between them verbally, it was not heard by others eating nearby, nor did the cars passing below ever know they were up in that window together; They had both known then in that moment, that the sea never spoke, that the sea never cared for their sitting beside it and whistling to the bay, it never felt as she had dipped her feet into the salt every so often.
It had only been them, and because she had left her memories on the shore and never looked back, they were no more, and never to be seen in her mind's eye again.
His hands dropped one another, and with this motion, left in that resturant the hope that she may ever see what their eyes had once seen together. Like a worn book left to the sun, she had faded. Like the rose, she had wilted before him, parts of her gliding to the sand. He had never known more of a love, and she, she had never remembered a day passed.
"It is as though you do not have a face, not in my mind", the easy cool of her voice let, finally sounding as she had once before, if just more careful, "I have not forgotten the words, my dear, they have settled like a white feather on the water. They have lined my heart, bled my veins, that clatter of letters. I see nothing, but I read it all. My mind is only pages, not a camera. I've only the feather, not the shutter, and in word I may still love, as inhuman as it may seem. And I have never before known the love I do!".
The image of her rolled before him, her mouth did speak and sound did once rumble the silhouette of heads about the resturant around them, the lights passing below did ignite her complexion now and then, her eyes did still shine in his mind's eye.
But he never wrote it down.

The Steam Rail.

I have been asked for fears,
I have been confided in.
I have slept uncomfortably,
My bed has been the floor.

Of all those pale fears,
I have seen within my rooms,
I, today, feel scared of you.
I twiddle my finger beneath it's ring,
And I listen to the Japanese speak on the telly.

I have seen days far more beautiful than this,
I have had evenings of sweeter engagement,
And yet there is something so quietly sweet,
Surrounding our presence where ever we may dwell.

I have been many things, and I have been told many stories,
in the quiet of a cafe upon such rainy days.
I have been sick of my writing, I have drawn so terribly,
But beneath your eyes, still, I see admiration.
I see honest opinion.

I have led myself upon this track,
As if putting the gag in my own mouth,
How I have tied my own hands so tightly,
How the approaching steam once held romance!

And yet still I feel it, still i wail indignantly,
I feel like you could save me,
And yet you really needn't have to.
You are tied beside me.

By you.

Breathing,
Oh dank hang the words so strongly felt,
Another pause followed by voluptuous guilt.
Skin scrapes skin,
Oh no a second more.
I fear above all, that this night should suddenly lighten,
That I cannot see a star in the sky,
Fading red clouds lay motionless at head,
People seem not to take another step.
Our still, our nothingness,
Two of the dead slip past.
Just stay, no other words,
Not a drip of water runs beneath this bridge.

No sound passes by,
Just silent padded paws.
Oh a bike, Oh a car,
Can I not simply have them both?!
With eyes that understand as such,
I tear another nail toward the bed,
And linger there, in bedless, sleepless lay,
Had Tchaikovsky begun to play?

Rest does not play to eyes that have no seen their fill,
Like filling a bowl of flour with the butter,
The sweetest twist,
The warm rise,
Oh it is I who ache to take deep breaths,
I who spy alien ginger cat upon my garden, fresh cut.
I who seek to close the blinds before the light reveals my eyes!
Give in to none!
I cry and pull at my own cracking spine,
But my cage, it does lurch forward,
My neck does turn, my teeth do slither.
Oh throwing a television into the back of a van must be easier!
The shatter upon the tarmac below, was not I!
For i turned here with you, i pulled here and I have nothing left!
Am i alien now to the feeling emitting my own skin?!
A child first attempting to write,
The baby's cry leaking into the night,
Pulling paint down wood for the first time,
Kneading dough into ball for the fifth!

And where, upon corner of each eye,
Do my illusions come end!?
In night gown that have seen death,
In gloves so slim to fit?!
Have you seen the delicate slim of silver,
Protruding from the china sugar bowl?
The scent of pastry baking,
The slightly-to-the-right tie of the bow on apron?


And then I lay back down, all in one lurch i pulled from you,
Each image a blur through my minds eye,
And seconds brought it you!
And the image upon corner of eye became true!
And you awoke me by forehead, by cradle!