Thursday, December 29, 2011

Glasgow


You can listen to Coltrane - After the Rain as you read.
(video below post)

Glasgow

Glasgow was as dark and murky as a scene from a Dickens novel. The rain was coming down so hard it splashed up from the ground to soak pants and shoes and the roar of it gave everything a "film noir" mysterious aura.

Outside the Glasgow train station I stood soaking wet and shivering with the cold and I watched you. You were propped in a darkened doorway like a knickknack in a shadowbox. Bless, you looked lost and confused and slightly wobbly. You stole a bit of my heart that night. I looked at you and made eye contact and that is exactly when you stole it from me. I felt a jolt inside my chest and became giddy like schoolgirl. I wanted to play with you. A stranger in a strange country, had I lost my mind? I wanted to take you home and lock you in my room and keep you all to myself like a secret souvenir. My hands wanted to smooth your wild copper curls, my lips wanted to taste your lips. Your lips were full and ripe, that's not something I have ever thought about a man's lips, but yours did look deliciously ripe and I wanted to taste...savor them. I wanted you. Apparently, you wanted me too. I had a six hour layover.

It was crazy really, I hadn't thought about a man in...well honestly, I don't recall. Maybe the job was getting to me,  I had been traveling so much, I wouldn't even know I was in Scotland if it wasn't for the sign hanging over the station door, maybe I had travelers lag, I don't know. I do know I will never regret a moment of the evening.

Whatever excuse I give myself for the way I reacted doesn't really matter now, it has been almost three years since that night and I still wouldn't mind taking you home and locking you in my room.  I hope you will take care of my bit of heart. I cherish the bit I took from you. You're my special curio.

Dark and murky Glasgow holds a special charm for me.


Wednesday, December 28, 2011





TO SOME I HAVE TALKED TO BY THE FIRE
by: William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
      HILE I wrought out these fitful Danaan rhymes,
      My heart would brim with dreams about the times
      When we bent down above the fading coals
      And talked of the dark folk who live in souls
      Of passionate men, like bats in the dead trees;
      And of the wayward twilight companies
      Who sigh with mingled sorrow and content,
      Because their blossoming dreams have never bent
      Under the fruit of evil and of good:
      And of the embattled flaming multitude
      Who rise, wing above wing, flame above flame,
      And, like a storm, cry the Ineffable Name,
      And with the clashing of their sword-blades make
      A rapturous music, till the morning break
      And the white hush end all but the loud beat
      Of their long wings, the flash of their white feet.
"To Some I Have Talked With by the Fire" is reprinted from The Rose. W.B. Yeats. 1893.