I thought I knew you.
I thought I knew what you liked,
What you knew,
What you were.
I thought that you knew your limits.

But now I wonder
If you were ever that person at all,
If it really was you,
Talking with me,
Laughing with me,
Making me feel safe.

But was I ever safe?

I try to think about how
I myself have changed,
And I can't even figure out why.

Everything is abstract.
Can change in a second.
Doesn't need to follow a pattern at all.

Knowing that I may never know the true you
Ever again
Scares me more than life itself.

There are parts of me that
lay unrested - they are ghosts
in hallways, they are smoke
suffocating in locked rooms.

Sometimes I can feel
myself fading and it takes
all I have to pull myself
back from the abyss.

I'm walking on ice, yet
to find a stable foothold in
life seems unprecedented.

I still haven't learnt when
my hands began writing
rather than shaking.

Even at my age,
I see mountainous lands in the sky,
Languishing among towering clouds,
A lofty empire, lost kingdoms,
Perhaps a strange magical realm,
Thriving with dwarves and giants,
Maidens in towers awaiting rescue,
Where lone horse warriors wander,
Maybe observing us, far below.

Must be a poetic creative thing,
Or simply the child deep within,
Viewing through the eyes of the man,
Dreaming ancient days of long ago,
When the child yearned to be grown,
To know all there is to know,
Never appreciating escapism,
The chance to drift within time,
Ponder upon distant, aerial, worlds.

Or maybe I’m just a dreamer,
That and nothing more, hmm,
Telling myself, I am a poet,
A procrastinating creative spirit,
In love with the trappings of art,
The child asleep within wisdom,
Languishing among towering clouds,
I see mountainous lands in the sky,
Even at my age.

©Paul M Chafer 2015

It was shallow water, rippling
a watery moon quivering
on the surface seen
It was night fire
burning water into steam
gray smoke screened
It was willful drowning
upon a lily bed of lies
parched a wilted garden
slowly withers, dies

you used to write the words that would take
my breath away and they
are engraved in my skin with a kind of ink that
keeps me alive and you used to call me a ghost because
of my pale skin and you would write metaphors
just on that alone
you still do actually, but now that you write about her
i find that your poems half as good