I see you sitting beside the road under a tall Elm tree
Near a thicket with a stream running by at  your feet.
Your head held up by the one hand
With your elbow resting against the tree.
Your body turned away from me on one side.
Dressed in a velveteen camisole top with a white skirt – all alone.
As I approach you - you turn your eyes toward me
And say, “Shall you not leave me too, my love?”
Looking into your eyes I see somehow that I must be invisible
Because your question was not meant for me.
It was for the very thing in the essence of love.
Tears trickle down your cheeks
As my heart and soul sits down beside you.
You allow me to wipe the tears away
And I watch as they reappear one by one -
Falling ever so slowly into my offered handkerchief.
Then I set my handkerchief into my own tears and
Then back into yours once again.
All the while feeling the most
Indescribable emotions – ones for which
I have no way to dispose of or account for.

Taking you into my arms I say to you:
“Yes, I am positive that I have a soul within me and
All the scientists, nor all the learned professors
Or all of their books combined could ever convince me otherwise.
I know it must be true, dear one –
Because you could not be so lucky as to have the only one.
If ever love does leave you –
It will be to go to heaven to make sure that
Your place is properly prepared for you.”

You lean into me, holding me
Like a lost child in a never ending maze.

And then I awaken…
Another night passes into the morning of the never was.
Are things the way they seem
Or are they simply unfinished lines - just because?

.
The menace emerges from the shadows,
a barked order, but unintelligible.
Then the soft steel kiss
slicing through flesh into entrails.
A fist connects with a crunching face,
legs buckle with pain and blood-loss.
And the Darkness of Death takes me,
like a comfort blanket of soft wool.
My Temple violated and de-sanctified,
the blade withdraws with a whisper.
Darkness cuddles
and welcomes me with a smile.

The morphine haze
keeps me inert and motionless,
but makes my mind giggle.
It wanders aimless
through psychedelic chapters …

This place is sterile, white, drab.
My eyes move slowly left.
There is something in a doorway.
The door.

… my head flies to a Poets Banquet,
where I am the bones thrown to the dogs.
And the wood grain in the door moves,
a cascading chocolate fountain,
over and over again,
flowing, melting like molten lava.
They taught me to write,
then cut off my hands.
Obscurity is purity;
fame is pain.
So I penned a letter to the dead.

My eyeballs are all that move,
floating in mid-air,
but still connected and transmitting
drug induced images.
I remember the assassin, the blade,
the darkness, the sirens, but no pain.
Images but no feeling.
They move right to a cold bedside table,
and then I think I cried.
Somebody Knows me.
No chocolates, no flowers.
Somebody Knows me.
No fruit. No magazines.
Just …
a pen and a pad.
Somebody Knows me.
I did cry, someone remembers me.
And each teardrop contained a thousand images,
a thousand stories, a thousand poems.
Inspiration. Illusion. Insight.
And the Darkness of Sleep takes me
like a comfort blanket of soft wool.
The morphine haze retreats
further into my mind and I dream …

of ambulances and white walls
of green gowns and bright lights
of scalpels and scissors and surgery
of needles and nurses and nightmares

… I dream of Poetry
in colour.
I see worlds in the sky
and words painted on clouds.
A kaleidoscope of teardrops
dripping images into my mind.
A fountain of mist cascading,
seeping into a memory sponge.
And I feel; somebody who Knows me
gently wipe away the tears.

© Pagan Paul (04/06/17)