I'm scolded even in my dreams
By the inner me who judges
Everything so harshly.

All I do is try to help
And even in my slumber
This is not allowed.

Sleep knits up the raveled sleeve of care
So Shakespeare says
But I unravel in my dreams.

I'm lost, I'm chased
In in a house of many rooms
And cannot find my way.

The clock is running out
And I'm not ready
So the wedding will not start on time.

And though I look, I somehow never see a bride
As I am searching for the candles
And bows I need to do my job.

Variations on a theme
That always spells inadequate
And failure to my sleeping mind.

Why am I so mean to me
Am I so bad, compared to all-
And who must I live up to.

What angry fire burns deep inside
That nightly roasts my spirit
In the oil of it's incompetence.

Why can't I ever win the race
Or find the prize in question
Or be the one to take the bow.

I am my own worst enemy
A therapist once said
Why didn't I believe him then,

Forgive myself and let me be-
To see if I could build a dream
That ended with me smiling.
                    ljm

We were on cloud nine,
You called me sunshine,
but that was when
you were mine.

You hide behind the words.
It was my priviledge
to start the fire.

Looking at the bare moon
in black sky,
you open the blue veins―

to explore the anatomy of
pain. Sometimes you want
to suffer in the hands of impossible.

Life wants its share of death,
when you were playing autumn,
frightening the lantern.

A nameless breeze offers
the whiff of a musk deer,
that lost the tree for scent-marking.