Eyewitness
Still waiting for my saviour,
storms tear me limb from limb;
my fingers feel like seaweed...
I'm so far out I'm too far in.
I am a lonely man, my solitude is true
my eyes have borne stark witness
and now my nights are numbered, too.
I've seen the smiles on dead hands,
the stars shine, but they're not for me.
I prophesy disaster and then I count the cost...
I shine but, shining, dying,
I know that I am almost lost.
On the table lies blank paper
and my tower is built on stone
I only have blunt scissors,
I only have the bluntest home...
I've been the witness, and the seal of death
lingers in the molten wax that is my head.
When you see the skeletons
of sailing-ship spars sinking low
You'll begin to wonder if the points
of all the ancients myths
are solemnly directed straight at you...
Pictures/Lighthouse
(Eddies, rocks, ships, collision, remorse)
Eyewitness
No time now for contrition:
the time for that's long past.
The walls are thin as tissue and
if I talk I'll crack the glass.
So I only think on how it might have been,
locked in silent monologue, in silent scream.
I'm much too tired to speak
and, as the waves crash on the bleak
stones of the tower, I start to freak
and find that I am overcome...
S.H.M.
'Unreal, unreal' ghost helmsmen scream
and fall in through the sky,
not breaking through my seagull shrieks...
no breaks until I die:
the spectres scratch on window-slits -
hollowed faces and mindless grins
only intent on destroying what they've lost.
I crawl the wall till steepness ends
in the vertical fall;
my pain has sailed into the sea:
no joking hopes at dawn.
White bone shine in the iron-jaw mask
lost mastheads pierce the freezing dark
and parallel my isolated tower...
no paraffin for the flame
no harbour left to gain.
