'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.

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.

Everything was white when I awoke this morning. And i mean just the air. And i mean the second time i woke (well, fourth, if we are talking technically, for panic had me at one stage). I adore the snow, and Winter feels so far, and yet I awoke to the treasured glistening some how. It was there like a lingering spirit.
Winter is tainted, it is true, in my previous two years it has been something of stress, sadness, grief. And yet i long so to be back in Winter, and return it to that which I am in love with again!
This morning, as i turned in the pale, his photo was prominent. It stood out like it had not done so before, not since I placed it upon my window sill. Suddenly it seemed just weeks ago, suddenly i was so young again and the usual presence lingering around the photographs had disapeared. It wasn't there. It seemed it was at home, in his body, where it should be.
Of course the daze of waking subsided, and i returned to rational thought rather quickly, but the air still was white, and so I swept legs over sheets and took the photoframe into my hands. In one, he gleamed a smile and bore a kind arm upon father, the second, he had whisked a snow white into his arms, his face firmly protective.
The selfish in me still says, it still says, 'Why are you here to protect me no longer!'. Its bitter, a voice inside constantly weeping and yet growing weak and tiresome. It's throat a mere ache to the strength it was in the weeks post-leaving.
Yes, many will have stopped reading now, and yes, I am aware I am forever talking to blank, dully painted walls.

But it will never go, not from mind, not from skin. Your colours are bleeding into me still.

Cherished, was I?, at such early hours. And cool, was I, to wake later in solemn still.
Today, I miss him. I have missed him, and always have before his leaving even. And yet, today - I miss. I truely miss. In the word I feel guilt, for today, although she is also missed, the fear that she will some how find out sits irrationally upon my shoulders. And yet, even beside me now as she could be, I feel she understands.
Today is his day. And my heart, it does wilt.
Photographs for me are such a drug. They provoke thoughts left upon dust coated shelves, they excite memories long since played and they bring me to be uncontrollable in emotion. They bring tears to eyes once so dry, they bring sweat to skin and pants to low breath. They live, to me, so close am I with the memories I hold.
For a moment, I've no words. And so i give.

~

You and I, must make a pact,
We must bring salvation back.
Where there is love, I'll be there.
I'll reach out my hand to you,
I'll have faith, in all you do.
Just call my name, and I'll be there.

I'll be there to comfort you,
Build my world of dreams around you,
I'm so glad that I found you.
I'll be there with a love so strong,
I'll be your strength, I'll keep holding on.
Yes I will.

Let me fill your heart with joy and laughter,
Togetherness, is all I'm after.
Whenever you need me, I'll be there.
I'll be there to protect you,
With an unselfish love, I respect you.
Just call my name, and I'll be there.

If you should ever find some one new,
I know he better be good to you (This, is where I gaze upward, always).
Cos if he doesn't, I'll Be There. (I, this time).

I'll be there, I'll be there, whenever you need me, I'll be there.
Just look over your shoulder honey.
Just call my name, and I'll be there.
-Jackson 5.


- Written Tuesday, May 31st. 2011.

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.