Just lie still, please
Sleep will come, I promise
You only have to fight until it comes
Your mind will slow, the voices will quiet
Eyes droop closed slowly...
Your limbs will relax...
Your breath will even out...

But, I need you to lie still
Please, Lovely,
Don't reach over there
You don't need it
You'll be alright
Just lay still
Succumb to gravity
Until the warmth of the night
Wraps itself around your mind
And the voices will go silent
You will be allowed rest

Just lie still for me, alright?

Have you faced a fear and known the power of its defeat?

Did you find that your new fear is the not fearing it no more?

Replaced now by a fear of the known roads that lead you to be that brave again and the knowing that you can?

I have drawn back from a world where those roads are where I am compelled by choices not my own.

Instead through isolation I choose not to defeat that fear again. Along that road I know the destination that awaits.

I fear those roads and those who would lead me there.
And as with you and your fears... it is from them that I hide.

I know my own bravery and the point at which I break.
That road for now best avoided and the one way sign well marked.

Absorbing everything all at once
How I wish I could not
Feel like floating away
Out of control and it hits me deeply

Down from the bottom
until it gives me endless shivers
and my head rolls like a thunder
weakness starts to tingle
but it lingers to me, it's inevitable

Another day again
Dragging with ball and chain
Whether to let it all sink
But how I could not think?

Everything is so shallow
But I am drowning below
Leaving me breathless
Stranded on the ground, helpless
It is killing me but I am not dying

The deepest hole where I could escape
There is nothing much I could erase
The turbulence of serenity
Has been buried deep down in me
Nothing I could do now to outwit sensitivity

What is this search for,
when the dirt poor explore
the locked heavy vault doors?

What are the blind trying to find,
when all roads lead to
streets where lonely-hearts bleed through
before they ever get to meet you,

a place where the closest thing to an angel
is that strange human being
who drops off a few essential things
for the scattered flock of forgotten
flesh forms who follow the hollow
and hard streets            
to find a warm and semi safe place to sleep,

where stop signs and streetlights
are the most productive spots
for the needy to plead freely
with cardboard requests
to ease the hunger pains, they are feeling.

What is the point of this struggle?

Does our Hello-Poetry website
enable poets
from all around the world
to read each other’s poetry
and develop cross-cultural understanding
thereby facilitating global peace?