Poetry: a stroll down amnesia lane

Christ, but I was a portentous and pretentious sod when I was eighteen.

The Party

As the late-sipped glasses passing to and fro
obscure the vision from across the room
to meet with some unlooked-for hands, to show
that guests are getting merrier as midnights loom,
I catch your eyes held in some coyness, low


as if the eyelids were weighed down with lead,
all blackened by mascara, hid by space,
all for a fleeting moment; then, a head
comes right in front of where I stand; the face
turns away to someone else. I tread

across the gaudy carpet, to the beer
and pour myself another, trying to
forget the thing that has just happened here,
as all around me kissing, dancing too,
fills the music-haunted room. I veer

away from where the people fill the floor,
left wondering by you if it were chance
that then we had noticed one another, or
if it were different from another glance
which happened by coincidence and nothing more.