By the trellised entry to the lake of sleep, I patter down shallow steps of slate, mists about my feet. The closer to its shore, the more slowly I go. At last, on the landing, the waters lap as I stop in doubt. The way back is onerous. I am in thrall to the pull of the dream sea.
Despair
Tonight, again, she called me from the lockup. Afraid of the phone police and the Tylenol nurse and the mumbling man who speaks through the ceiling. And I want to help, without humouring her or being false, for these things are sensed. But I fear to look into that laughing mirror.
Untraveled
On the road this day, I am headlong for a leaving. Grasslands vast and even. Lily ponds, and bridges over fens. I count the curves to my rented bed…to its deep dream of riding on ocean swells. I feel a thing, and name it: the loom of Jupiter.
Sun King
Dream-
The birds of year million,
and there were still slopes of pine
and motes of spirit afloat.
Gone, we were,
to make ready for this new King.
This furnace of a star.
This bright host.
***
Image source: http://www.un.org
Marlena
We called her Shadow,
for she had eyes that you couldn’t look into.
Ones that made the Sun stop short.
Once, she seemed to disappear into a colder realm.
I made her my study-
her raison d’être my fool’s fetish.
Was she waiting for some singularity
into which she could step?
A therapy of softness
On this night, sleep is in want of accoutrements to buy its acquiescence. At best, though, it is cumulative and marked by awakenings in cold sparkles of pain. Sensing a summons, the somnolent cat comes, lends its warmth and the balm of its lullaby purr.
Art by u/tuftofcare (Reddit user)
The beast
What I would withhold from you
is twice withheld within my selves,
for the soul’s captain,
unwilling,
must drag along the unruly beast
that licks itself
and revels in its hideousness.
[Art by Allan Swart]
Hidden in Childhood- A poetry anthology compiled, edited , and published by Gabriela Marie Milton of Short Prose Fiction
Hello all… I am very proud indeed to be one of the contributors to this beautiful book that’s due for release in late January! Thank you, Gabriela, for your gracious acceptance. I look forward to reading it!
Going away
She is disappearing,
your Mom,
said the Dad to his son.
And all of your anger with her-
arisen out of fear, sadness, and helplessness,
is not wrong, though it hurts.
She is consumed with another realm,
and you speak only to a placeholder
who grows more listless with time.
Apart
Night splints hold teeth in position,
I believe.
There is a baseless fear of dismemberment,
of awakening without the sum of one’s parts,
like the cave of a missing tooth.
I lie in bed running, and too fast.
Of what do predators dream?
Aremyfeetofftheground 