It’s time to talk about it,
It’s time to talk about the nightmares.
I’ve lived in fear of sleep for far too long,
Years,
A lifetime,
Struggling to make a home in my head
When it feels like a foreign country
A new one
Every night.

Something about my own mind makes me uneasy
Each time I lay down.
Something turns my stomach,
And I get a prickle under my skin.
I get cold and hot all at once,
And I can’t get comfortable,
And as sleep creeps over me like an island fog,
I shudder,
Knowing,
Feeling,
Sensing…
They’re coming.
The nightmares.
Nightmares…

Ironically,
They don’t only come at night.
They come when they please,
As long as my guard is down,
And my subconscious at play.
They jimmy open the windows
And crawl in under the shadows.
And when they’ve arrived,
They seize me,
And I’m trapped in slumber,
Awake enough to be terrified of what they show me,
Just not enough to shake them out of my head.

Odd lights swing about as if fixed to the roof of a dancing house,
And bizarre scenes are partially illuminated in the infrequent light.
My memories betray me,
Morphing into something monstrous.
The worst of them-
My arms in a grip stronger than mine,
Cold eyes looking at me flatly
As words come out
Evil and wrong,
And me,
Paralyzed.
My father,
Dying in the living room,
Everyone prepared,
But no one ready,
And me,
Knowing what was to come from a dream sent to me,
Gentler than the rest…

They’re not always memories.
On occasion
My imagination runs hand in hand with my fear
And I become a victim to one crime after the next.
The villain is anonymous,
Or sometimes someone I know,
But they’re always armed,
Grinning cruelly as they berate me,
Hurt me,
**** me.
Natural disasters destroy my home,
Wars commence,
And animals speak,
Surreal chaos reigning
Until the ring of an alarm
Or a gentle shove
Awakens me.

My head throbs and my chest aches and the visions continue to play silently.
The nightmares fade excruciatingly slow,
A faint reminder that they will return again.

you suffer,
and so, you learn-
talk about stars and lovers,
through scars, and
how they don't burn anymore

dreaming eyes,
dream about the dreadful lies;

the man in the sky,
isn't here sitting besides you-

the woman you pry;
maybe she's slick and sly,
it makes you sick,
and you wonder why ?

maybe it isn't about
love anymore.


the world has summer,
and it had your winter-

autumn withers'
spring too;

and the man in the sky,
he isn't sitting there anymore

the child you could see
in the mirror, died;

he's no more, maybe-
only as much as you are today;

and the bird you
could've freed;

you placed silence by
its side, and a song
on it's beak, so bleak-

bleached by the solemn
good-bye, and a seed,

praying, it becomes a tree,
and not a storm.

You’re a queen,
with a beautiful flower crown -
A queen who could not see my love,
and so she had it buried in the ground.
I wish you would see it,
but for as long it lies in my hands
It will sink through my fingers,
and be forgotten quickly in sand.
All of this because you do not see the wonders I see in you.
And it’s so difficult, love, to keep it from you,
because you’re a wonder, from your sparkling eyes to your curling toes. You’re the source of my dreams and my love lusting woes.
There is something so beautiful in you,
as if the wind just guides you to and through-
the gusts just pull us together, me and you.
I wish you could see it, we’re meant to be, but that’s your only fault: You cannot see.

You cannot see the way the angels have blessed you, but you do see how the bitter detest you.
You cannot see those who respect you,
but you listen to those who wish to neglect you.
You cannot see those who love and have confessed to, but you still long for those who have left you.
You cannot see me, who only wishes to protect you, but you are so blind that you must still guess who.
You could not see me and I became the one who was forced to forget you.

But the love will stay with me forever,
until the calendars reach the date: never.
It is a love I will take with me as I am buried into the ground,
the ground from which will sprout your beautiful flower crown.

No matter the ways we choose,
the ones we did not choose will be more numerous.
There will always be more personalities
than the ones we decide to wear.

I live as a boat that departs without announcing a destination,
choosing along the way which port to anchor on,
always regretful for the ports I did not choose.

I take with me a small piece of everything I have known
(and how could I not?)
so my memories cannot betray me,
so the places I have been can leave a footprint on me.

I follow this path blindly,
heavier at each step
(or with weaker muscles, I could not tell),
with burdens getting loaded and loaded,
with fears from other roads,
missing passions from other ports,
with nostalgia of passing landscapes.

I keep on walking to keep on living,
I keep on choosing some paths, abandoning many others,
Sad with every time I detach something,
Sadder even for the choices I did not make
(but did even if I did not want to),
I keep on sensing smells I never experienced,
touching flowers I have never seen.

I do not renounce what I leave behind
(Like Drummond: "from everything a little remained"),
but the directions I did not pick,
the river courses that never came to be,
the dry branches never to flourish,
the futures made impossible by my choices.

As I wash my hands on rough waters
I leave some of what I was,
some of what I think I am.
I let me go just a little
to keep on going.

All this ballast, this will to take everything with me
can do me no good at all
if my weight restrains the places I could be.

What callow and dead words have you written?
Your sword is but a nub; a shadow of the weight it once held.
Deftly attuned to the foray of maladjusted thoughts
That seeks an ending but can stop at nothing
At one time, feelings were sharp and new and uncontaminated
Yet further on it is shaved down
An inner core as black as the raven’s eye
And when the nub has lost its reason to yield
Will it be retained for posterity?
Like the memories of the freshly dead
Your written words will decay into oblivion
Until a new soul is shaved sharp
Forever willing and ready and equivocal