Between the conception and the creation
                                                        ­                Falls the Shadow.
Blinding lights, a crowded terrace,
Flickers, music, ballroom dance
Suddenly, the image shatters -
Darkness, rest from unknown lands.
S-spiralling-ing down to nimbus
Infinity yet to explore
Commotion woke me from my dreams
and left me yearning for ____

Semi-conscious, muddy clarity
voices like static
buzzing, monotone droning
singing, sustaining single notes
whispering their sinister intentions
or moaning, screaming
“Who am I, what am I, where have I gone?”

A single voice to clear the static:
“I’m right here.”
A pause.
“Right behind you.”
Unsettling and dark
dripping poison on his lips,
a serpent, fallen, far from a protector.

Breathing ceases, pulse increases...
So this is what it’s like to be seen by demons.
He stares into my soul, the deepest recesses
the darkness dressed in best intentions
the gilded rotting apple of my heart...
A final chilling stare
he fades away to haunt me in my sleep.

Sweet beautiful machine behind the woods,
chuckle with tears and carries a barren womb,
"Do you regret the Unlife?". I shouted.
And a soft voice whispered "No".

I have not seen the crows singing to the corn,
I believe in nothing, and nothing at all,
"Do you fear the sky?". I thought.
And a soft voice whispered "No".

Your harmony pleases the pace of the trees,
I have forseen all of this inside of a dream,
"Are you even trying to see me?". I asked.
And a soft voice whispered "No".

Spreading those legs of yours around my neck,
I kiss the cave of wonders as if were a threat,
"Is everything fine, my love?". I licked.
And a soft voice whispered "No".

Somewhere between my subconscious and hypnotized reality
I sleepwalk down the memory lanes
Amidst the darkness of a lost cause
I move in circles searching for something I can't remember
Is it the perfection personified or just my memories of you
A soul so pure and a heart so warm
A beauty so rare and eyes so expressive
A touch so caressing and voice so soothing
A fragrance so sedating and a presense so completing
And in the shimmering lights of your glow
I move my tremoring hands just for a touch
For a belief I would trade my chance to be with thousand angels
That you are real
But it was just a shadow I was touching
You vanish like the ripples in the mirage of uncertainty
And I keep following you in circles till eternity

I am half-awake in the August rain,
the last strain of summer squeezed
into my glass and cooled with ice.

It is nice. To be up this early with
the morning news, Palestinians and
Jews at war over berries and wheat

in the broken streets of Gaza.
The cats are sleeping on the suite,
ears pinned up for a flash of sound

or stench of meat. My brother is
planning his moves for the future
against the ways I have failed in the past.

I have been half-asleep in debt and
addiction. I have buried myself in a
dream of words; into worlds of

all-talk and no action. I am no longer
a fraction of beer bottles and ashtrays,
fantasies of easy lays, or notebooks left

incomplete and full of cancer fears.
They are in tears; brown-skinned and
forgotten rights, a desolation site

of ground-zeros and a desperate fight
for life. Depleted uranium laces lungs,
as well-versed tongues in heavy suits

kiss the shoes of the corporate brutes.
As empathy trickles down in political
verse, a hypnagogic curse for liberal thought

and consciousness. They are forecasting
sorrow as the sun comes up, to detach
from our Earth, and the late summer rain.

Remember this day,

Like worn off tires
I woke up without opening my eyes
Under the guise, known faces did not rise

Talk empty speak
Movement past motion
If you told me I would not believe
The life I would live

Ghost of the past they shall not revive
Rejoice the wise whom present connive
Lucid veneers
Through memories, oh sieve

The non-touch of its kiss
Bare bodies, voids of peace
Caprice longing never to cease
Awake still at sleep.

My depression is a state of craving eternal sleep.
   but in a constant hypnagogia's state.
Every night I cry and die, and in my eyes,
   all I see is you, in all life's glory.
   all I see is you, in all death's torment.

Trapped in enteral song,
     of 𝓭𝓪𝓶𝓲𝓷𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷

gather up the things you lust to love
and become the world's loneliest human
just for a night
in a room with blue lights
where so many others have once slept
as simple cloud sheep
when the eyelashes filled themselves with hypnagogia
late late late at night
ad slowly poured (and poured, and poured)
somnolent paint onto the walls
which fainted and licked the floors
rabbit and ft

Trapped in Autumn
Space between a blink and a tear
Your nails across my skin
You never read what you've written

The time period between being awake and being asleep
This mystical place that so little beings remember:

It's the place that I could live in for the rest of my life
For it is neither reality or a dream
A time that is neither dark nor light
Neither good or bad
The world of in between
Everything is neutral
It is the world of calmness
Nothing to worry
Nothing to be afraid of

It's the only place I can find solace
The place without sadness and loneliness
But also free of the nightmares
Undisturbed by the morbid images my mind creates
And untouched by the anxiety, loneliness, and pain of this cruel world
A place where no person can take me away from
A place where no creature can lay a claw on me
Gates between consciousness and unconsciousness
Guard this place of sanctuary

I would like to stay here,
This, I would want to make my home
But waking is too demanding
And sleeping is too necessary

I wish my home would be Hypnagogia
A place where you never sleep
You never wake
And you never dream

stuck in an hourglass of identity,
muffled hustling around my eyelids
head buried deep in the shifting sand,
my body wrestles with the happening

stiff legs pulled by horizontal gravity,
brain soaking, turning into electric mush
my eyes bleeding in black as it is
only in my dreams, that I can feel alive

lied naked on the slippery floor of reality,
dipped in and out of the pool of mind
fractals slowly falling off from my vision,
then swaying freely in the air

freed by a different form of mortality,
face sinking, melting into familiar figures
what's hidden below and behind evaporates
to every corner of my shut, rapid eyes

I feel every fibre of peace,
every time the world disentangles from its name
knowing they are all but shapes projected
for the hazy buzzing screen,
that is my present

Language
has come & gone
without
sophic discernment
for the fluidity
of her archetype
or
the stain of her touch
she-wolf in pain
but in love
in wine
or poetry
she becomes
a hundred thunder blessed
tongues
smoothing stones
in river beds
yet to be ******
newly hatched moments
in time
have missed the salvo
of rain
turned instead
pixels to temples
hypnagogia learned
a new dialect
oh yes
language has come
and is gone...
she slit our throats
whilst we dreamt
in the bliss
of ignorance

© Amber Dawn

I like staying in hypnagogia--
   between sleeping and waking up.

I feel happy,
        not conscious,
        not dreaming.

Because the thing about reality is
        it's not a dream,

and the thing about dream is
         it's not real.

(fohn)

That night, the moon and stars were barely visible through the clouds. That night, you said you were glad that neither of us were in our own beds. The words came out slowly in broken fragments and your voice was raspy in hypnagogia, yet somehow it still sounded like a euphoric dream. That night, every inch of our bodies were touching and even when it was almost physically impossible, I somehow still had the intense yearning for you to be closer. Now it's 1:13 AM, and tonight, I am in my own bed, feeling empty and craving your arms around me. And you're in your bed with cloudy thoughts and constellations made of cravings I'm unsure of...
*Is it selfish of me to hope that we are seeing the same moon?

(the book of hatchling)

sober: girl with a stuffed bear won in a raffle at a children’s museum. her mother is still a child. hell hides in her bedroom wall and her step-brother has this zombie arm he got from a cousin-bite. the girl wants to name her bear amen but her mother says that’s dumb. the girl names the bear bear instead. later bears would get real names. would be less soft

not sober: god
i hate bears bearchoice bearfire bearhurt bearrape bearcost
-
so i think
we go together like a gun and a mouth. heaven

has a sleep disorder.
i can tell hypnagogia from the devil’s wallpaper
-
no poems here
in the dreams
but poems here,
in the dreams
-
do you want me to read your tarot cards?
i need permission,
the color of your eyes
and the forgotten hand of god

(mine shake like my beaten moms)
-
my feet hurt. i tell god i never wanted a job. i wanted to be a princess, or *******. tasteless, the bowl of fruit. display only. circles swallow wants, i guess. i remade the word want. the word sad. the words rib and hip and fatten and busted lip on ***** bone. all flowers without vases. without dirt. remember, god, when i couldn’t have ***? like, years. i gagged on my toothbrush. i clawed out my eyes. i wrapped duct tape around my mouth and my thighs. and this all garnered an audience. and because i was being watched i tried to do it pretty. it wasn’t pretty. the bear left, and then the bear came back, and i’m to blame for it all. i’m the body. i’m the vase. my flowers have no home. my feet hurt. dresses