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I'm scared, so scared, of something indefinable.
    I need you to hold me, but
I won't ever ask.

I understand the power of a spoken dream,
   A hidden longing dragged from the shadows
  To dissolve in the light.

            Tonight

I am lonely, I am hurting,
   Raked by Never's scabrous fingers,
Hungering for hope.

If I begged you, would you, could you, come?
   Spirited before me by the strength of my need?
No matter; sleep, our restless tossings
  are well earned, this is a just and righteous anguish.

We, I, you, we,
    Recognise the power of a lost, unspoken dream.
 Sep 2014 James Jarrett
Sjr1000
She comes to me
bleeding inside
from a thousand
individual scars
with pleading eyes
self contained
She speaks in gentle
refrains

"I don't know where
I'm going
I don't know who
I've become
I go through the motions
deaf, blind and dumb
I dance on cue
I stand in line
I've tried to be so
good.
I've left behind the darkness
I've forgiven the past
I'm far too aware of time
It doesn't matter really I don't mind
I wish I could tell
you what I find

The struggle between
my internal world
condemnation
irritability
judgement
fears
heartaches there, vile rages, petty hatreds
*** dancing on the head of a
pin
exquisite laughter
it's all there.

While my behavior is quite the
opposite
accommodating, loving, compassionate
flirtatious, curious
connection is my goal

When I'm alone I'm lonely
when together suffocated
the best distance is
from here to there

I wish I could tell
you that I mind

The storms still
come and go
luck rides the
tides
each day the
sunrise

This human stuff
is all too real
it creeps up on you
so you don't know
how you feel

Which is why I've
come to you to
speak my mind
they say you are the
complaint department
the garbage collector

I'm bleeding inside
from a thousand scars
that's not to say I really mind."

They say the healer
must heal themselves
so of course I ask
"How can I help you?"
Driving,
Petty on the radio.
A refugee,
I am,
not living.
A pain gnaws him as he looks out to the falling day.

On this land of dimmer glow and vaster stretch

stings him the thought

separation could be such unimaginably painful!

From the beginning he had dreamed a resemblance
had hoped for it

between this world and his

but his wildly scanning senses
keep bouncing on a dead wall!

He remembers how he missed home
from a few scores of miles

and when younger

even five hundred yards from mom
was enough for tears...

Here he’s away five hundred light years!

The night dawns with the blue moon sphere.

He has to live from now on

*his worst nightmare!
I came to a courtyard of my own making,
To a cottage by the sea at the worlds edge.
I furnished it with my left over life, complete,
Barren and colorless and I wrote the newest
Book of psalms out of tinder and flame, a tome
Of grey and useless poems, unheard of songs
And reams of flesh.  There in the lightest dark,
By the Druid stone that was placed just for me,
I planted a creeping yew tree.  And the moon
Sang in celebration and silence like a fallen
Priest.  
                    Under the covering hazel trees,
That sprung to life after the longest winter,
Which taught me to forget my name, I now
Struggle with light and my body, warring, torn
Is fading slow, like the always arriving, down
Turning solstice, the climates of the mind,
Where it is digging the never ending shallow
Hole only the spreading eternal yew, that I
Planted, will ever know and only the Lazarus
Moon shall ever rise above.

I came to a courtyard of my own making,
Was it dream that led me there or my eyes?
that the blackness in my heart, pours out of my voice when I speak.
That it was like an ink, that could bury the room so fast that the doors would all simply disappear.

Ironic that I never had this before I met you.
Watch him twist, watch him squirm,
Watch him catch the early worm,
See him writhe, see him turn,
He’ll take your soul,
then watch it burn.


© H V Swan
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