Vertigo

Shadow and light across your face

Like pictures in a dream

a face I've never seen

A creature of the night

Reality fades away without a sigh

When thoughts clad such as you go by

Mesmerized by motion on the screen

Of movie-mind we play our scene

And always lost I chase the morning mist

In desperation lusting for a kiss

When tantalized I think I've touched your breast

You laugh and fade--the mist your breath the rest

Some ghosts are made by action of the mind

Illogic--leaps of faith

a precognitive wraith

An intellectual shade

Bot normal trains of logic don't apply

To shadow-nymphs who live untouched by time

It's clear your being has never borne a name

Nor was a language ever spoken by those same

Alluring lips

at least not of the Earth

But maybe in the flames upon the hearth

The fire it spoke of passions such as thee--

Bt more to sparks to air than e'er to me

O heart that beats and claws at flesh

to find the land that lies forgot

no passion burns so strong as that

which feeds upon the moon lives

between the clouds and rests

beneath the fog so be it that

Emotion here defeats the waking mind

Her tempest-towers tall

with feeling hold it thrall

The thought-winds blow so sere

But you my love have never known that blight

You flee the clinging trammels of clear light

You touch me where my nerves may never go

You tease me and you laugh at me as though

You can't be caught you can't be hurt

With stormcloud kings you dance and flirt

With blades of ice and fire I'd cut my wrists

If only I could find you

in the mists

Christopher J. Cramer

February 21, 1984