now those eidolic dread horses have scarred your slumber, passed 9, passed 10,  and even your furniture has silent, open mouthed, nightmares over the too soon dead, dead school friends who never ended their crossings, and see, see, she stoops, in shroud  ghastly knelt as in prayer, but you can’t see, see through the tricks  of light that scream “she is there”, your crumpling chest  boiling as the bones in your legs subside while those, without body,  cross the empty room, no need to surmise that which lies bereft and restless may yet have something to say and you, you are the luckless soul who lives upon their byway and now,  now the voices, the voices start, those grody sounds, that won’t stop, stop your heart, beneath the floor, within the walls, the precedent for dull footfalls calling, calling to us one by one with no clear sight of saint or villain, a spectral round of hide and seek, directed by a floorboards creak, each time we search there’s nothing, nothing there, but of this guest we’re so aware, who was first, it or us, we can’t be sure, sure it wasn’t brought  from distant shores, for it never raised its head or voice before, before that gift from land of Vlad was carried over our threshold and ushered in something, something cold,  the bearer of an ancient fear, something as of yet unclear, or are we in thrall of phantoms more explainable  


This is a combination and refinement of what were two separate poems, previously published, to make by far a more satisfying whole. I believe it more convincingly captures some of the fear and panic I was trying to convey and should be read in a breathless manner as if you were living in a world that was entirely scripted by Samuel Beckett

When the hour turns twelve,
I turn as the nightmares start to dwell.
    It is the only time I accept
that I create these horrors by myself.

Caution is something right man repeats;
(just as the doors all open
the rooms turn and shift
   and the dead starts to speak)

Left man is firm, ethical by all means;
'There are boundaries to humanity'
I betray them all in here
consumed by vibrant insanity.

'I feel like God' I admit.
My hands dipped clean
My tongue so gentle,
  as the phantoms
       all scream.

  Left and right are silent
when the basement door rattles
A den of demon and monsters,
waiting for me to unravel.

'Sometimes we tame monsters
like lions in a den'
Left man resists,
"These are not animals
     meant
           to
              be
                  free."

Right man says none.
His head hung and his eyes calculating,
(because he knows that)

Sometimes I create the monsters,
And in the end

                         They're all me.

i'm not superstitious
so i don't believe
in phantoms

but yesterday
i came face to face
with the ghost of
who i used to be

*i'm not so sure any more.

You walk the whitened snow
in overcast-shadowed delight
You look back seeing
where your tracks traced you
from where you were before,
like words written on
snowy white paper
holding memories
gone by...

Your mind slowly
backtracks
to places only moments ago,
where small inclined drifs
on each side
reminded you
of miniature mountains,
you were a GIANT
in the middle of a tiny valley...

Sounds became muffled,
your planet became
transformed into another world
Silence prevailed,
brief shrilling sporadic gusts
nipped at your nose, nipped at your cheeks,
and had painted
your living portrait red...

You had felt your feet
crunch down
on the newly
softened snow,
its sounds created noise
that crunched LOUDLY...

In some places,
your wider lifting strides
became arduous,
they became wider in deeper spots,
but you did not mind...

This whitined fact
almost held by fantasy
ridiculed everyday life,
silhouetted trees
reached their bare arms upward
like black grayish winter phantoms
against the white horizon,
against the gray sky...

Tiny windy whirlpools
-ever so often-
danced around your feet
in a soft swirling
celebration
of your delight...

Charmed by your exploration
you had embraced every moment
Clever in your adoration
you now invoke this poem,
distinguished only
for the astute...

...Provoked by this flurry
wisdom and wonderland,
you now turn slowly
around then forward
Now realizing you have
just left your memories
and poet's signature
within those very backtracks
you have just left behind...     .' .' .' .' .' .' .' .' .' .' .' .' .' .' .' .' .' .' .'

You're so broken you're on your knees
You're alive but not living
If I could I'd bring you back to life
And that's a promise and definitely a lie to be told

You are your own resurrection
I cannot help you at all
If you fall I will try to catch you
But how can I catch you, if you are only a phantom of what was?
You'd slip right through my fingers like grains of sand in an hour glass
Just like you did with my trust
It slipped right through your phantom fingers

How did I ever think you were real?
I should have known those whispered words were nothing but wasted air and time
I could have sung songs of whispered broken hearts instead of listening to the nothing that is you
So from now on I will sing of phantoms, phantoms like you
The ones that use souls up and tell lies and break people's trust
*I wish I knew just what you were from the start
But how could I when I was blind from seeing right through you from the heart?