All I Want

I don’t want to revel in my own isolation by
sitting in the dark watching lovers falsify their pleasure.

I don’t want to help the poor by giving them change
and soup and my own time when it makes no difference.

I don’t want to earn millions and become lost
in the excess wealth always brings to the greedy.

I don’t want to earn nothing while losing forty hours
a week doing a job I hate for people who hate me.

I don’t want to start a project and cease a project
and continue in this futile vein because it’s expected of me.

I don’t want to perform before crowds of thousands
who only know my name and my face but not me.

I don’t want the adulation of millions of strangers,
nor their claims of undying love in blindness.

I don’t want the vented fury of those same millions
when it all goes wrong because I am human to their detriment.

I don’t want to travel the world alone in pursuit of
‘wisdom’ that will only make me bitter in the end.

I don’t want to be stuck in this dead, dull place
if it means my own existence has to die with it.

I don’t want to be known by name as the greatest
of my generation in whatever it is that I do.

All I want is to find one person and make them so
indescribably happy that it re-ingnites the life inside me…

Then I could die a happy man.

Turquoise

I take your hand, lost in your turquoise eyes,
Heading to the floor, no more compromise.

Arms around my neck, body to body,
Intoxicated, nothing could stop me.

As everything else falls away, we dance,
Beating heart, I lean in to take the chance.

When our lips touch, your shock is evident,
Until you smile, as others circumvent.

With eyes shut we kiss, missing in the crowd,
First moment of respite, you laugh aloud.

No-one prying, hands wander to caress,
Ours unite to pull down your rising dress.

Other thoughts drift, savouring this sought kiss,
The past gone, forgetting our last near-miss.

We stop again, your laughter fills my ears,
In the corner they watch, with drowned out cheers.

We sway together, move through the masses,
In each other’s arms, we flee their chassis.

Blinded by feeling, your infectious smile,
I disregard morals, drunken denial.

And all the while, lights in strobes shadow us,
Hiding, becoming bright to break our trust.

A startling luster sheen, they all disperse,
As they do, the night’s end I spit and curse.

We let go, minutes for eternity,
So long, so short, too fast for you and me.

Bright Nights

The disappearance at night of your wonderful bright light,
Doesn't stop your entrancing voice whispering to me during the night...

During those dark times my hearts calls out to you,
Even then, I see that magical smile belonging to you...

It's not the dusty bed sheets that I smell when lying there,
What I smell is the scent of you and of your luxurious brown hair...

Even when I hug my pillow so tight to me,
I imagine it's you squeezing me just as tightly...

So when I wake up hoping to see your beautiful face,
I'm always sad to find only a pillow in it's place...

I hope one day that it will be you who is lying next to me,
Then my nights will be just like days, shining just as brightly...

(Bright Nights stands for two things - the first sign of change in my style of writing, and as an example of my supreme naivety upon entering college).