there is joy in this:
that you woke up this morning;
there's breath in your lungs.

I was never afraid of ghosts
before I kept seeing your face
in every mirror I passed.

The past kept you silent.
Locked you in a casket
and buried you in a pile of
faded photographs and
ink that bled recollections
across blank pieces of paper.

Now you are the thunder
that comes after lightning;
you are the shards of glass
after each mirror b re a  k   s.

Cue the banjo solos
and the violin swells.
Sleeping children in
withering weeping willow
high chairs
covered in creamed carrots.
Young cherry blossom lovers
shout curses,
shatter floodgates,
let tears flow;
petals are brushed away
by the wind.
Widows and over-easy eggs,
crossword puzzles and
sad irony on fifteen across -
"Murdered, 'Ides of March.'"
The weight of their fatigue
growing dark and heavy
under their eyes.

A waitress breaks silence,
"More coffee?"

A sleeping child awakes,
crying under the brightness
of the morning sun.

I fell asleep against
the stained glass that painted
the ground with colors that
children only see through
the lenses of kaleidoscopes;
vividness that blind men
only see when holding the
warm hands of their lovers.

I woke up to the bells
singing tunes of the eschaton
and the priest muttering
damnation upon the half-empty
bottle of Jim Beam resting in my lap.

"Want a swig?" I asked with a stagger.
"No," he replied.  "Whiskey is the devil's elixir

and besides,
there are plenty a bottle of Christ's blood behind the altar from which to choose."

In my anxious sleep,
I dreamt of a road
that divided the ocean
into a Northern Kingdom
and a Southern Kingdom.

I started my journey from the shoreline.
As I stepped onto the path
my legs began to move on their own accord,
as if they were magnetically attracted
to their final destination.

I moved without haste,
with a tempo of a maestro
conducting the symphony of a chaotic Armageddon.

The waves crashed against the road,
but my feet were warm and dry.
The sea creatures of the deep emerged from the abyss,
but my body was at peace.

I saw the lighthouse-
the journey's end;
she gleam resplendently
on the opposite shore.

I sprinted toward her
through the soles of my shoes
down to the bares of my feet.

To be in her light again...

Only to be awoken by my anxious consciousness
in the darkness of the early dawn.

I see a girl
jumping from the Big Dipper
onto the object to which
the action of the sea is directed.

She takes flight,
with the boldness of a Willow Ptarmigan,
and soars high above
Palmer and Seward and the bowl of Anchorage.

She lands atop the snowy slopes
of Denali and carves her way down
into the withered trees of Ghost Forest.

She swims among the Aleutian Islands,
floats on the waves of the Turnagain Arm,
and basks in the waters of the Gastineau Channel.

I see a girl
whose eyes sparkle brighter
than Klondike gold,
and whose voice whispers more beautifully
than the wind that blows
through the great land of Alyeska.

A nightmare kept you awake
last night.  I can see the
dark recesses in
your eyes where rest
used to be.

You dream of a sinking ship.
Its captain submerged under the waves,
thrashing his arms
toward the water's fleeting surface.
You want to plunge your filthy, filthy, hands
into the water, but you see
the man's face as your own.
And you watch as your lungs fill with liquid,
your eyes closing like curtains pulled
on a cold winter's day.

Oh! you wish for dreams of the shore!
To hear the lark overhead!
showering its song upon you
as a lullaby for your hollow eyes.
But you are drowning.  The lark does not make a sounds.

It's not making a sound.  You are drowning.