The cannibals only come to me
in my dreams,
when I’m breathing
another lie,
hiding behind
living seams of another life
I lay awake, while I’m devoured
I’m alive, even as I die

I can’t trust the screaming monkeys
or the elephant that sat on my lungs
or the crows that come to pick at my liver
even though the scarecrow that I erected
between my eyes is just a lonely figure
that waves in the breeze
with all other thoughts
that have drifted
into the eternal,
before they have begun

Be Quiet!

you monkeys
with long noses
what stick their face
into my dreams and
shriek at me
You’re lost in your head,
come back to us
so we can mask
your tortured screams

I’m already there inside this life
but facing a loaded gun
when every picture
that passes my eyes
is bathed in the molten glare
of an oft abused, setting sun

Each fond memory fades
into a living nightmare
I may move with the grace
of someone less catatonic
but you can see the state
of current my demise
in my vacant stare