Sleepwalking through life.
Sleepwalking through strife.
Daydreaming about happier times,
Then you came into my life.

I've never known this joy
Stemmed from the love of a boy,
Who holds me close and makes me smile--
My heart he won't destroy.

Stay in my life. Keep me awake.
My heart is yours; it's yours to take.

My reviver-- that's what you are.
My awakener-- brighter than any star.

Sleepwalking is no more because of who you are.

For me, love has always been like sleepwalking. I never remember how I get there but there are always footprints behind me in the snow that appear to be the same size as my own. Somehow I ended up there again, with my face turned upward and the wind kissing it. Whoever compared love to warmth was lying. It is cold. It is the inch between solid ground and frozen lake that you can't see. It is the fog that clings to the tops of trees and softly whispers your name. It is the frost on your window that reminds you how easily things can break. The worst part of falling in love is falling out of love. The worst part of sleepwalking is waking up.
You woke up.

I

She’s sleepwalking again,
my nine-year-old daughter,
who shares the bedroom
with her sister down the hall.
She’s kicked off the covers
and wandered downstairs,
somnambulant, her bare feet
moving as though in a dream
across the kitchen’s linoleum
floor to the back of the house.
The porch door smacks shut—
a gunshot—and she is gone.

For a time, I watch her from
the open bedroom window.
Her diaphanous nightgown
absorbs August moonlight.
She steps slowly, a pale flame
floating across the back field,
the wiregrass up to her knees,
avoiding a copse of redbuds,
skirting shrubs and stones.

When her small figure succumbs
to shadow at the edge of the trees,
I put on my bathrobe and follow.

II

At first, she is lost to me.
I break into a delirious run,
scratched on my cheek
by a redbud branch.
Reaching the tree line,
I see her standing still,
shoulders stooped,
a luminous cattail
bending down.

She hovers above a sleeping fawn,
the warm bundle curled at her feet.
I contemplate the white spots
scattered on fur, thinking, velvet stars.

But when I place a hand
on my daughter’s shoulder
I see blood flowing fresh
from the doe’s abdomen;
red entrails slipping out,
pooling on pine needles.
Stepping closer, I remember a moment
earlier that evening: a jar of preserves
spilled carelessly on the kitchen’s stone counter,
the soft dishtowel soaking scarlet in my hand.

At the edge of the creek, a second doe
watches us with opaque, joyless eyes.
My daughter puts her finger to her lips;
the doe tenses, blinks, and bolts away.

I lift my daughter and carry her carefully
home, her head buried in my shoulder,
blades of grass clinging to my bare feet.

III

My daughters' room:
holding her in weak arms, poised
to lay her on top bedcovers,
I notice her sister’s empty bed,
neatly made, the blankets smooth
and tight across the mattress.

An anemic moth bangs
against the window pane.

The light flicks on and suddenly
I am awake, remembering all of it:
the dry diagnosis, the slow whir
of hospital machines, the smell
of old flowers, and somewhere
in my daughter’s stomach,
the cruel mathematics
of cells metastasizing.

My wife stands in the doorway,
her hand on the light switch.
My arms are empty. I gaze
down and see our daughter
nestled under covers,
breathing softly, asleep.

I see the pale white skin of my clean bare feet.

You’re sleepwalking again, my wife says.
She touches my unsullied cheek, hooks her
fingers through mine, and shuffles me down
the hall to bed. Head sinking into the pillow,
I gaze out the open bedroom window and weep.

The moonless sky cradles its constellations:
bright grains of salt scattered on soapstone;
my hand trembles, unable to wipe them away.

there was  little cow he was black and white
and he used to sleep walk whenever it was night
he wandered all around walking in his sleep
all around the meadow then in among the sheep
he wandered through the dale and all along the glen
then he would turn around and walk back home again
back in to his bed the little cow would creep
the he would settle down and fall back fast asleep

I awake to the midnight morning

of sleepwalking



the thumping of my soul deep in the

morning twilight



children slumber under their

dark covers as I emerge



from dreams of hope and despair

under my bittersweet tongue



their slumber

and mine



expectant and hopeful

anxiety ridden in our own way



blessed am I to unfold

during the AM hours



of morning radio

cold floors and



oil black

coffee of the watchman’s variety



alive to hear my strange thoughts

and my children safe but for a moment



as I sleepwalk

in darkness

You’re searching through my bloodshot eyes, trying to find me.
You’re staring right into me,
but you can’t see me clearly.
Knocking on my door,
there’s no one home
and there hasn't been for a while.
I left a long time ago,
slowly faded away without a single soul noticing
until it was too late.  
You’re right in front of me
so why don’t you reach out and pull me back in?
Can you hear my desperate cries for help?
I think you’re touching my face now,
it feels like you’re trying to reach into my brain;
you’re trying to figure what’s going on inside my mind
but there’s something in the way.
Something’s taking me over and not letting you in.
Who am I?
Baby, do you know?
Do you remember who I really am,
the person I was before the poison,
the man behind the mask?
You’re staring into me with those eyes glazed over
and I die a little more with each passing moment.
Baby, I'm begging you to please save me
but I know all your efforts will go to waste.
I’m stuck sleepwalking
and no matter how hard you try,
you can’t wake me up.

i write about these things,
because in all honesty?
they don't matter to me.

you can call it assimilation, then you'll call it
   i'm making a worded salad, so it doesn't really matter
whether i speak the language or not,
being native you'll tell me i have to be a diacritically
riddled over-laden version of you  nativeness...
you'll basically tell me i have to speak a worse-off
native than you didn't bother to grasp...
after that? i turn Sioux and scalp you.
  because that's what you deserve.
i could have come up against you
in the thick of night and turned you into a kebab,
and do you think anyone would have
cared? is it one thing to assimilate,
and another to assimilate into a skin-head culturalism
implosive that's brimming to the full with your patriotic
hopes as being acted upon? i can speak the perfect
English and still be more welcome in Scotland
than in Kent... but that will not not do,
not until i shave my hair off,
grow a beard, and runsack my skin
with quasi-Hindu ******* tilts...
           and when this foreign legion
of Swedish journalists bemoan why
their **** ain't where their heart is?
have you seen the *sienkiewicz"
trilogy of *potop? you want history?
how about: in the beginning
there was an invading horde of Swedes
that tried to topple the proto-commonwealth
of Poland and Lithuania...
  even how much i cared to learn the tongue:
i'd be left belittled by ugly accenting
stereotypes...
                          i'd be Islam of drunk,
while the engineers would be left saying:
and unto us amphetamines,
and Mamelukes were never Egyptian...
because Egypt was what Egypt desired...
a quasi thingy... then i turned my ear
to Macbeth, and earned 70 years
and a Spartacus' worth of ears to my nearing 31...
                   i turned to Macbeth the theatricals
silences, and let, the music... play.
i can learn the language, but i am expected
to push the natives from a career of criminality,
i am expected to become the criminal,
i've learned the language beyond the natives,
what else?
   to learn the debasement of the natives akin to
every other culture? am i to become the
criminal statistic of the ruling political elite?
so they can "know" but that they merely quote?
   i owe my ode to Macbeth,
for Hamlet can become tiresome aligned with
Sisyphus in hell...
              we'll have builders by the end of
the debate...
     how much more do i have to learn?
is language not enough? then velkommen Syriac!
               is it not enough that i know the tongue?
must i be jeopardised by using it,
and say that universality is to be excluded,
simply because it does not abide by an utopian
ideal of pure English sprechen pure English?
         there are scapegoats to be festering upon
the spike that's readied to be fried...
but come on... is this deutschesprechen?
              it can't be! if i pretend to be Malcolm...
you pretend to be Duncan,
but nonetheless the speech makes us both truant
ghouls and guises receding
   into the demands of operatic - kindred to
Lady Macbeth (a protestant, or should she be
known catholic: McBeth) -
      as Glasgow religion of the coliseum of the times
testifies... celt and ranger... green & white vs. blue and
   black...
     lady mc.: what beast was 't thou,
        that make you break this enterprise with me?
(no matter if you killed a man, of whatever
stature he be worth, what beast are you to suddenly
cage my heart, when having agreed to make my heart
and feeling thus: storm the heights of Ben Nevis,
and descend as angrily as a woman might please,
  and with her whim, descend from the mountain
as if a mountain descends into desert?! what
courage, ye! to throw a woman into such woe
and leave a man's promise, the very least
a man can bestow upon this earth: but a woman
yet to come to correct!) so thus the elvish Anglican
was spoken, and thus continued:
- when you durst do it, then you were a man;
   and, to be more than what you were, you would
be so much more the man. nor time, nor place,
did then adhere, and yet you would make both...
  from his boneless gums...
nor have i understood Hamlet as the model student,
the puppet if not the mere mascot...
for the Freudian couch... then again i navigated
past Kant with Macbeth,
having yet to complete reading the critique...
       i took to maturity, and said
what others wished upon: there is true
adult agony in a well versed poetry...
       more so than adolescence in what's deemed
a maturation process...
             perhaps i should have served the concern
for Hamlet and laid bare upon the psychoanalytic
couch... but Macbeth: of said
sepia as copper, so said of woad as in aquamarine
surrender... led me to cite...
          for i was never bound to own the tongue
i would acquire... i was told:
   well, hello there, dishonourable squire...
ah... the queen's majestic airs...
    will make any Irishman desist from the republic's
gaze...
             and sloth in a respectably believed state
of consolidatory affairs under the kites of Yates...
   but never you mind the Silesian consumed
by former guardian of the coalmine...
or what L'vov wouldn't say in Ukrainian...
mind you Nevada and Lasso Vegan...
mind you that...  for that speaks biblical studies!
i will never assimilate, in that i will never be
allowed to own this tongue...
            and if i am allowed to own it...
i am but a furry-faced-bloat of faked pleasantries
   and closet nationalism...
        i wish i could own this language as if i
might own a typewriter... but i'm apparently
not welcome, by the pseudo-irish who
mediate the English assertion of the understanding
of the dover sieve...
                 ******* leprechaun mafia...
  paddy paddy oo too the butch-faced freckled girl...
   it's as if the Italians have Manhattan,
    and the Corke conglomerate prescribed
everyone a pint of Guinness rather than iron-pill
supplements...
                 well: and so the Titanic bellows
out an oceanic morse code of tantrums on
the accordions.
                      which sorta soothed the mermaids
digest contemplation for the vegan accomplishment
of shrimp... and over seafoods...
being digested.
         now i'm apparently not speaking English,
or i'm speaking English and i don't understand it,
or i'm understanding how i'm speaking English,
and how i'm supervising all things uranium
                               bound hallucinogenic...
or how, even though urbanity took off and
the countryside disappeared, you think you'll never
meet peasants in smirk attire to condescend you
gravity toward theatre or opera...
     but peasants are reall... you can recognise a peasant
the minute they don't recognise you insulting them;
it's a bit like telling a very witty joke...
         i don't get witty jokes because i tend to treat them
like a siegl heigl salutation...
   and i respect the memory of Octavian...
                                 it's the wittiness that comes into
contact with actually not telling a joke: and people
end up laughing... that's when you spot the peasants.
    so you see... i speak the ****** language,
but i'm sorta denied the access for drinking a cosmopolitan
at a Shoreditch pub...
                        which makes all arguments
for learning the language obsolete in terms of gaining
a "fair" advantage... and this is European to
European lingo...
        didn't i ask that Swedish journalist
ingrid carlqvist to watch the trilogy, including
potop about the war between Sweden and
the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, and ask her
about what's to be culturally inherited?
**** me... maybe i'm sleepwalking...
                     dodo zombified or something...
                                     oh wait...
                                         if ever there was a regressive
reparation policy in a country:
i'd hear: guilt from western countries taking the bribes
of the Marshall Plan...
      and overt pride from countries post-world-war ii
being prescribed communism, as a way to rebuild
their nations: for fear of having to commit to
hara kiri... or *******...
                                         as said: becoming
the easily bribed convenience...
                              the concept of assimilation
within the construct of selective migration has transcended
the mere acquisition of language...
  acquiring a language isn't enough...
         the reverse policy of colonialism is hushed-down
ethnic cleansing...
          which goes beyond language per se,
since it goes beyond dialect ex lingua...
              it is a necessitation of also acquiring
national stereotypes of unengaged in dialectics...
it is one thing to rhetorically assert a need to debate,
and another to understand that dialectics ≠ debate;
but rather a service to prompt and engage thinking,
rather than debating... dialectics is an art-form,
     it's intended to encourage thinking,
rather than the continuum of polarised / schizoid
debating: debates never accomplish a convergence...
whereas dialectics is intended to establish
a convergent pinpoint... as Socrates said unto the young,
so i find myself talking to old men and being
in accordance to have shared a park bench,
one sunny afternoon at the nadir of summer.
                why is it that acquiring language is not
enough these days?
       or why is it that a poor acquisition of a language,
or acquiring a language without correcting
accentuated stresses particular to a tongue
are given a freer access to labour, then
acquiring a language to a standardisation of
mimic localisation, and fence: a faking of
a faking (ad infinitum) or locality?
i.e. overly-successful assimilation?
             overly-successful assimilation is punished!
   it is punished by speaking as a fluent native
might... but having no discriminatory biases
that could enable one to be completely native...
and this is punishable!
             by a stance that it's a robotics project,
that one is nothing more than an a.i. enterprise...
even those dearest to me acknowledge me
as a robot... an a.i.,
           but they can't seem to understand that
artificial intelligence, and authentic intelligence
cannot be superficial intelligence of
natives... for the natives have a placebo
to what is otherwise a Pompeii resurrection
to the volcano-dynamic of analysing-ergo-synthesising
           ana ergo syn           which
constructs the opposite of thesis and antithesis,
given that the equation combines two adequate prefixes,
ana- and syn-...
                      "against" therefore "with".
isn't that how we cling to social pressures
or prejudices and still accumulate 8 billion examples
of a comparative e.g. that's a John Smith?
     i have yet to come across a contemporary that
might become as if fatherly...
   i just see opportunist buckling down the M25 of
encircling nothing more than a venture into
gaining a quick buck... and it could, it could
almost be sad... but it's not...
              it took me almost 13 years of synthesising
the English language: synthesising i.e.
mimicking - before i started analysing it...
      and when i say the groundwork for any
theory on the subconscious is to focus on grammar
and grammatical word interjections into
a Joycean stream-of-consciousness...
                              for that's worth the upper-tier
working from the sub-level...
                          of utilising language:
then the unconscious is far from dreaming...
it's equivalent in seeing how i acquired a language
at the age of 8 to synthesise / mimic what the children
around me were saying...
   but that it took me so long to analyse the language...
which the children around me acquired within
a reflexive bias to later strand such reflexiveness into
a divergence of calling their angular retraction
philosophy, linguistics, poetry, psychology...
whole all i had to do is to appropriate a reflective bias to
later strand such reflectiveness as to say:
of my mother i say polski, of my father i say:
             ojczym - and i can reflect upon him,
foremostly his diacritical lack of the wriggling-blagger's
economisation, when due coinage is needed.