The nightmare will not cease
The nightmare will not relent
The nightmare feasts
On fear and regret

The night is swiftly drawing near.  
Within my heart a stroke of fear.
What world awaits me when I sleep?
What gorgeous terrors my mind keeps
From me until I close my eyes
And leave the waking world behind!

In dreams a false reality:
What gives me strength to let me fly
Past crescent moons, through airy lakes,
And watch the heav’nly light rays break
Through clouds of cotton soaring high
Above the fields of warm July?

This realm I pray to never leave;
Its absence I so sorely grieve
When, more and more, I seem to find
The inner fabric of my mind
Distorting into something base:
My dreams now seem to wear your face.

For no amount of light can ease
The pain from dreams that will not cease.
In sleep, or wakening, I know
Your Devil’s face will always show,
For like a sunset in the East,
You’re like a never-dying Beast.

Rainy nights, cloudy skies,
chasing me all through my life,
This time I've just had enough.
People always said, 

“When you get older, It'll get rough.”
But I didn't realise just how much.
When childhood memories are all you've got,
every day you're telling yourself, you can't give up.
You live each day, the way you've been, taught.
And you placed your trust, in the ones you love.
They don’t seem to be receiving your call,
this time nobody's here to break your fall.
It just tears you apart.
Every time you play this part.
You’ll never be a work of art,
nobody will ever see, 

what lays inside of your heart.
Oh, sweetheart, you'll never top this chart.
Give me the morphine,
so I can't feel a thing.
Take some more sleeping pills,
to get me through this.
Just let me overdose,
I've never been this close.
Put me to sleep, sleeping beauty,
I've taken my vows,
it's time to make these lights go out.

©2017 Written By Benji James

her mind
wove assorted ornaments
          of vivid hues

each stitch
      an alternate reality
a story she wished she knew

her view,
a distant spectacle--
a casual onlooker
upon the lovely scene

emotions spin
      making its own ball of yarn
a tight knot forms

she is
her own
great nightmare

distorted reflections
grimace in horror
                her own doing

a black sea
bubbles and gurgles
liquifying sensual sins

beauty hides
the facade
         of her own madness

(b.d.s.)

Rooms filled with fire compelling the darkness,
burning on light, emptying the room. No
hearing or seeing or smelling, only
tasting the smoke of my friends burning, feeling
the flames licking my cheeks. The faint sound of
wood thudding into a skull reverberates
through me. So far away yet still here.
The light comes back to see the bodies
of loved ones falling, skulls caved in. Bones limp
and eyes sparkless. Dead. I hear laughter as
palms hover over candles, seething and melting
skin dripping from their hands, faces.
Mouths misshapen and crude, jagged,
cruel. Skin drained, white as bone, red eyes of blood
dripping with death. Your soft body approaches me.
All is calm and well until your body
merges with the rest of them and you condemn me
with eyes of rotting flesh.