Last night in the wine bar bistro, I saw right through your dress.

Though you didn't feel me staring – doll like figure, white satin,

And certain curve in your hair.

You looked at me, caught the corner of my eye,

but I'd past the gaze back over to normality.

Straight back into conversation, with far out theory friends -

I wasn't there to my shopping.

 

Another man was though, from my own table.

His pupils searching out ingredients, for what he had cooking -

a connoisseur. Oh! You knew it too because when I look back,

You scan his class, make, model and type, optically complete.

Still, you pass his auction, settling for most other bulls in the yard.

From head to groin you rated them all,

then you were gone in the hands of a long returning husband.

 

Casually drinking and quietly thinking away from the chatter,

of a misspent youth, seeing patterns in my pint or two,

the next one came in. Quick gaze to that entrance,

Another flavour, this time in red and I thought of that dreaded song.

I saw your bar-code, as a mate pointed out to me with a

'she's past her sell date', look, as you telescoped us all from left to right,

then found your rendezvous. Exchanging kisses, laughs,

and then your Gentleman went to the bar.

Your eyes roamed about wide and far at other angles.

Where you finding a frame?

 

You didn't mean to do it. I didn't mean to be noticing.

They all don't mean to do it, but do it we do - and when you're unaware.

 

Then as I moved for the bar, my pockets in fear

of my shout for beers and dry roasted peanuts,

I was edited by a group of sisters, feeding on the night.

Spied right through my thin Perspex, invaded as one threw a smile,

8 out of 10, but the others reflected their zooms to perhaps better prey.

I think I scored a double zero in their books.

 

I X-rayed back to the one that smiled, but I had better things to do,

like the ‘clink clink’ as I paid, then carried off with the munchies and drinks,

back to the table, back to the mates, that where still several million miles away.

 

I made for the toilets passing expressions with clumsy highlighted profile,

Eyes follow the room every time there is movement.

Talk about business, leisure, and love. Sport, pleasure and sex.

Some with 'come to bed eyes' and chemically greeting - hormones all over the place.

None could stop their wandering lens, locked to ‘suss’ out a stranger’s eyes.

Some fell for those instamatic charms, shoving memories to the back of their shades,

With new light being craved from out of a darkroom.

 

Call it nature; call it human, ancestry ape, call it what you will,

But deep are the window sills of an evening’s gaze.