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.