Fragment

Found this fragment I wrote some months back and think I should work on it. Wasn't sure if it belonged here or on the scribble scroll. I know the place is based on a real experience, but by now I'm not sure about the rest. Ah well.

That was the first time I saw her. Sitting at a high bar stool, across the room.
Even in the half-light, she seemed so fragile, so out of place. So utterly... indefinably peculiar. Alien in an inhospitable landscape. Lost.

It sound like a cliché as I try to capture it in words; remembering it like a waking dream. The clink of glasses at the , murmuring of the crowd. The throbbing noise from the floor speakers belting out some wild manufactured synthetic sound.

There are disembodied statue heads decorating the room, fish circling nervously in a recessed trench in the floor. The cold metal edge of the tall table on my wrist as I cradle the curve of my glass, droplets of condensation crushed wetly into my palm.

I mentally deconstruct the view into wireframe. Seeing through the shapes of people. The bartender has no legs.

(guide notes for wrestling a damn idea into shape later)

(I)

I am mesmerised by
... the unguarded boy, i saw
in your eyes

today.


In a brief moment
Beyond the fog of recitence
Behind your iron veil.


It makes me smile unconsciously,
glad of heart
just to recall
the thought
of your open gaze.



(II)

Yet it was I who fragmented the moment
I who broke my gaze
before the barest flicker of recognition
could chance into your eyes

It was I who looked away.

Afraid.

Afraid to see a closing door
afraid to see the wall return
afraid I would be turned away
by a look, made unwelcome


(III)

i would have liked to stay


(IV)

The next time I saw you,
The ice had glazed over once more.

W.I.P. notes

There's an aching emptiness where you used to be
And in spite of myself it's upsetting me
in spite of everything that I have done
to try and convince myself you're not the one

the Lighthouse

Fixt at the edge of sky and sea
a lonely lighthouse calls to me

If I could fly, or swim, that far,
I'd gladly reach it's twinkling star

And over rocky barren shore
Climb its twisting spiral core

And find my soul in solitude
Healed, whole again the broken rood


Far down below the blue sea crawls
Silk-wrinkled, rippled, beneath the calls
of stately-winged, cliff-nesting gulls
borne on the gusting windy sculls

Warmed by the sun these weathered walls,
Of rough-hewn, stone-built citadel--
Warm 'neath my hand as I ascend
up to the tiny, topmost den.


To pass a space in solitude
Of quiet days in dwelling rude
Where each night's labour'd task doth good
And do not make a fellow brood

Nor question his place in the sun
Nor wonder, if his work is done
For all things here seem as they should
Within the sphere of lighthouse crude

Yon there between the sky and sea
The twinkling lighthouse beckons me.