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.

And indebted.

And to what do I owe,
This beauty that has surrounded my waking hours of late,
The nightmares that lay in the resting hours laugh!
Yes, the words that surround me are of different voice,
Now my familiarity,
The world at my window now that of crisp, clear horizons,
Of the new, the west and exciting.
What power has given me what I once dreamt of,
Only to taunt at sleep, to claim that I owe?

''Oh hopelessness, oh loneliness, to search the ends of time''.
It sings, so quietly in the back of my mind,
It lay undisturbed, long gone in green light.
How might I go about clearing it, the dwelling and the dust?
What has nuzzled into my vein today is sweet and harmonious,
What lingers from before bitter, and alone.
Still i feel the clutching fingers, not cold, but slick and of grease,
I attempt reconnecting with the world before me,
It laughs behind my back and wills me to join it.

When you have lived a life, in the dark of the back street,
In the dim of a room well hidden by bed sheet,
The moon a beacon with vendetta;
To have a light, so graceful, not white,
Appear before you,
In welcome, in slight appreciation, in wanting of you,
You must owe.
There must be a force that has worked out a click in the pattern,
Has mis-stitched too late,
Has moved the stars ever so slightly,
So that you may indeed be granted a life like the other,
And you must owe.


The photographs of my loved ones must be stored for today,
I feel a slight shame in their gaze,
For here is the girl, who sort of disapeared,
And, really, was found too late.

I slept in my old room last night.

Easily, done just as.
Walking along side tarmac and the odd growth.
My feet ache in broken shoes and i can't seem to see an end to the ocean.
Perhaps the sun is setting a glare into my eye,
or perhaps the earth really does bend,
and beyond what i see is merely water collapsing over the edge.
There's a rythmatic collapture to it, though.
Disgustingly sweet vocals etched into a microphone.
I sat up all night wondering just how those who served me there,
would never know my name.
Outrage and catastrophic emotions were the latter today,
He kept asking if i could hear him.
Moving oceans, water folding, took about preoccupying my attention.
Though my eyes constantly altered direction.

~
Beneath such darkness, the moon acting as a sensor light within a long hall.
Much like the one in the corridors of Lauren's flat,
flickering to attention at the remotest sign of your careful tread in the dark.
Desperately trying to aid your vision, but lacking the means of motivation.

Light coming and going so, it appears you are a character in a flip book comic.
Or perhaps this was only emulated in the outside world, due to the trees i passed beneath.

Words rolled across the foam, on the edge of the waves,
I heard nothing but mumbling,
And nothing convinced me to lean closer.

I'm forgetting what days lead into which.
A blur of a memory reveals to me, that once i used days.
I used them to divide
and to remember how long had passed since when.
Now a week since special don't really cut it.
And now my eyes are closed for most of what they call 'days'
And my skin got so pale since no one came home.
I slumped against a curved seat on a bus, and the time passed me.
God i don't know how i got away with one thirty,
and such charming smiles of drinks i never tasted.

Darling won't spend the night outside
Bitter-larity made sense when stood as high as round the corner took us.
He said, 'tell you what, we'll get past three'.
I said we'll go as far as the sun coming up.
So warmth beneath a duvet and a matress without a sheet,
just that light from through the blinds,
and half drunk cups.
My eyelids never felt heavy, and i thought i could lie there all night
The last matress was covered and i cried to stop myself from sleeping beside him.

Can't they wait, til i get gone?
Leaving became such an easy thing when I subjected my bones to accepting the light of day.

Shadows turnt my eyes to such sweet things.
I couldnt' see.
And i needn't look at any imperfection here.
Oh great, another one full of words.
So i stopped in the cold, and watched the breath throw itself from me
And all i could see were stars and orange lights.
They lined the horizon and were divided by trees, and the irony had it that i preferred these divides to that of the days and so i stayed where i sat, and let him go on.
For his words would run dry soon,
i to be left alone again.
And wait upon the next sorry soul to sit himself beside me
and claim beneficial
A pathetic substances to the meat on my bones.
Only whispering in the dark could make me pursue
And perhaps a push from a good claw.
I sighed in the dew
and i dragged my face through night time's grass.
And he was just like all the others, his footprints in the mud.
So dampened down the grass, i couldn't spot the moon.
I think the other one stole it,
when he left before even words odd.
My sky was barely litten, so it glowed an orange pollute.
And my sincere eyes were tainted in thoughts of what i could do
Had i stronger arms and firmer fists.

By now of course, he was in some next girl's bathroom.
And i was on a train.
But never some where new these days.
My night times were such waste.

Just because his lips were full, and his bowtie wasn't scew.
I had to stop before i got old.
Before i told him my name.

Beauty ran into a diner, and drank halves of tall glasses.
Secondly it made it's stand, and thirdly shocked the nation
I wished, and pondered, upon particular key attributes to this
And noticed in my haste,
that beauty got on it's way again, before the day returned.
And so i said from there, or mimed
Let me be as such, in time and
wait for no one, judge less so. For he'd already bolted the door
Before the end of the garden path met my feet.