can you come and play with me

Can you come out & play with me?
Hello out there.
What are you doing?
Where are you?
Can you come over and play?
I'm so alone here with
     this city full of people.
I can't talk to them...
     they have no faces.

Would you talk to me awhile?
Walk with me along some shadowed balcony...
     Swept with sea air...
       drenched in moonlight...
or perhaps a wooded vale of 
     dappled sunlight?

Tell me your dreams there;
     passions long forsaken.
I'll tell you of my troubles
     as I smile into your eyes.
Yet I can never touch you...
     mot with you there
       and me here
I don't know what your laugh sounds like.
Or how our eyes look when you cry.

Can you come over & play with me?

It's so quiet here in this thunder
So much to do all the time;
	pointless movement.
I would like to instead sit with you
in a quiet corner of an old library-
curled in a lumpy, over-stuffed chair-
fire blazing on the hearth-
the bar, a call for wine away,
     filled with lively friends-
and never be alone, never be
     too busy to listen.

But then I have to travel back...
though the energy lines...
to sit once again on my cold, hard chair
staring blankly at a buzzing screen
eyes burning, fingers cramped-
knowing my isolation.

Looking around - I see my life
     filled with platitudes
only the books and music are really alive
the rest of the house is dead.

But somewhere...
	out there beyond the waves....
I know the books make
    the walls sing
And the music tells tales in
	the endless glow of friendship.

Soon, I will return, and you will be
     sitting there at the bar with our friends.
And I will say to you....
     Can you come over & play with me?

2/12/99