Panic strikes me
as I realize that
I'm alone

Alone for the first time--
and I don't know
what to do with myself

All these people
Insistent beeping, buzzing,
rolling, shutting

My collective mind
Unraveling
Before my eyes as I have
No one to talk to
to
Connect
with

Floundering
thumbing through
my contacts
to find someone

Anyone

To make me feel wanted,
to feel that my company,
even if through a phone,
is wanted, that I am
desirable

As I fold in on myelf
the Layers turning inward,
eating themselves--

The waitress leans down and asks:

Is everything okay?

I respond, muttering:

mmhm.

It's killing me from the outside in
you know...

But I don't say that

As the layers fold,
the only thing that remains
is a scared little girl
just as frightened as she was
the day she opened her eyes
underwater
and looked around
and realized how eerily
vast and deep the water was...

It still scares her.
It scares me.
And I realize
that the one thing
I can't stand more than
Anything
more than death itself:
is being alone.

Why?

Because when I am
alone with my thoughts
That vastness
that deep ocean of nothingness
bathed in a burning, purified chlorine
Haunts me

Because I cannot fill it,
not even with the deepest of thoughts,
the most vivid sentiments
Cannot satisfy the depths
of the reflective blue against
a slate of unfeeling cement

The mists of Time are softer than
     a foggy morn or shifting sand;
Gliding by on slippered feet,
     she whispers cheating lies so sweet,
Of endless days and longer nights,
     a future drenched in rose-hued lights.

When I was young and I possessed
     all the joys of life, Time was my guest.
She sang a soothing lullaby
    and unawares the years flew by,
She eased the future from my grasp,
    and left me with my solitary past.

For what is youth that measures Time
     and thinks the years will leave behind,
No scars to mark Her passing glance,
     to show you played Her game of chance,
Now only memories linger on,
     for Love is lost and Time has flown.

She touched me with her silken hand,
     I yielded all my dreams so grand,
Yet still the memories linger on,
     though Love is lost and Time has flown.

She was as crazy as a Norse horse
with a wild bleached mane and madeyes,
always willin to do anythin for ya
with a ''come on then''
her moods would drive you insane,
wrenching compassion and anger from your heart in equal parts,
spewing venom when talking of her ma,
it would hurt to listen,  yet it was easy to see this sulphuric froth
as just rage being rage.
In her kitchen she concocted over spilling potions
banana and coconut breads, her time was your time,
her table always spread, with baskets and jars,
Valerian by the bottle she sculled to help sleep,
baskets with moss and golf *****, Scottish tat in a heap
and beliefs, worn and threadbare like the carpets
in her tiny,  orange doored flat
with a gerbil called ***** and a hamster called pat,
and dear wee Jamie who spouted that Halloween mantra ''crap bat''
we filled and hung balloons with sweets and let the kids skewer
the hell out of them, it rained chocolate in the corridor for weeks,
and that is what I loved about her madness,
is that it dived and it did, and it speaked

would we sit across from one another on trains
with bars of purple Cadburys
chocolate, squared by your large gentle hands

one bottle of luminous Rock Shandy between us
my crubeen feet cocooned in skin coloured tights,
now lodged between your legs, a gesture as natural
as our growing years, would this be
companionship at its best?

Sometimes
I imagine,
low flying gulls
pilfering dreams
then selling them
on Leith walk
for 1.50.

as you programmed us all

to meet the challenges

no mountain is too tall

no ocean is too deep

no star can be too far

not one limitation

did you impose on me

and all I have to do

is take it on myself

invested with your power

as I confront each task

with knowledge here

of faith's unfailing strength

i know to persevere

to find a way

to think as gods

and do

In the evening rush
Where frowns go past
I saw her smile
Eclipsed too fast
I turned around
And looked once more
I couldn't see
That warm rapport
So every day
I search that block
And pray she'll pass
At five o'clock
Those bright warm eyes
That rattled me
Have raised high hopes
So suddenly
A fire was lit
As my heart skips
Imagining
Her pretty lips
I long to see
Her cheeks turn pink
I sense she'll feel
The thoughts I think
I'll hunt her down
If that I must
Forever in
The evening rush