PIXELLATED

In memory of Mark McManus...

A man strolling beside the Clyde,
alone and insular.
The cameras rolling.
It's all an illusion.

He pauses to gaze across to the far bank
as if in a dream,
so deep in thought
he's oblivious to the pouring rain.

Reason and insanity collide in my head.
He just turned and glanced in my direction
and then turned back. Ah, such exquisite moment -
just he and I, here, in my living room!

And my mouth goes dry
as hungry eyes devour their Idol
(heedless of knowing looks all around me!)
while he gradually edges into my life.

And in that drab concrete jungle
the delusion grows out of all proportion.
He's still here now! The experience, increasingly substantive,
refutes the very concepts of time and reality.

Slipping into the eternal now
where our lifetimes converge,
I reach out for something more solid to cling to
as if out of depth in a boundless ocean.

And I see in this freezing rain,
beneath banks of cloud in the cordoned off street,
the shadowy idolized form - so near
I can actually feel his aura.

And I follow and follow his every step
yet can't quite catch up.
My heart is racing, pounding -
oh to be this near but still unable to touch!

Hell, what can I do? Stepping outside my head,
I'm reaching further and further into his.
Mark, I ask so little of you
and yet so much: proof that you never really died.

Fixated upon the TV screen, mentally squeezing between it's pixels.
Transfixed between crazy hope and fearful melancholy,
I finally reach him...
in Glasgow, nineteen-eighty-nine

just a moment ago.


Wishing you all a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! xxx