Those Olive Eyes

Apoplectic lights
Burn and blind
All
Caught
Beneath this
Giant red tent,
Bar Lithuania’s finest;
Gyrating
With all the sensuality
Two teens can bear
(and bare they did
with revealing relish
before
drunken, hungry eyes,
coaxing my own).

Nicotine smoke
Pushed breathlessly out
Of strange lips
By crushed people
Inhaled with relief,
Then;
Second-hand
In its element,
So removing me
To the K-holed
Mind
Of somebody else,
Senseless
(but with more than I).

Faltering under
Those lights’ gaze
And everyone
Looks
Exactly the same
When captured
Within their frame;
The beats beat
Ever on and on
And one faceless fool
Is dragged
From this techo-jungle
Unconscious
By a friend
Foaming at the mouth.

Fear drives
The fearless
And
Fear drowns
The fearful
As one more body
And
Yet more bodies
Get dragged
From this arena
Of sweating ravers
And
Posing DJs:
And I find myself
Drowning in fear.

I twist,
I turn,
I seek to escape
Because
Those beams of light
Sear my being
And tell me
To tell myself:
I do not belong here.
But
As I struggle back
A hand clasps mine
And I am
Held
By a vision of her.

Sobriety
A gift,
Here and now,
When through
The blinding
Clarity takes form –
And she is beautiful.
Momentarily
Time stands still
As she comes
Into focus:
The caring touch,
The sweet smile,
The delicate disposition,
And those eyes…

But I am
Shaken
From my reverie
As bodies
Begin to
Collapse again;
Lights return
Seething
At being shunned
And
They cut through
Us –
Held hands broken,
The signal crystal:
This isn’t my fight anymore.

But
She looks at me,
Tellingly,
With those
Big ‘round
Olive eyes
Catching all the lights
Luminously,
And something
Commonly shared
But
Sincerely rare
Becomes suddenly clear:
She believes in me,
Utterly and irrevocably.