I swear it seems like I can never escape this rut I fall into, always digging a little deeper, slowly losing sight of the light, no ladder to pull myself out, so I sit in this rut, cheeing my nails until they've bled, racing my thoughts until I am dead. I am so sick of feeling high and then low, high then low. I think if death a bit too much, as if today will be my last day, one swift move of the wheel and BAM! I am free, but really I wouldnt be free. I'd be stuck once again in a rut, called my grave.

Waves unfurled like the backs of whales
Rolling in a tempestuous sea
With cresting foam like the heads of sails
Straining to break away free

The clouds bow down to touch the waves
The waves ****** high above
The wind whips up a howling dance
As sea and sky make love

Cori MacNaughton
25Mar2000

it loomed like a ghost in the falling day.

an hour past the town on the way
the old man's eyes bore surprise

i wouldn't advise it, sir, not wise
waking them up is no sport

they who're sleeping in the dead men's fort.

All along i've been a phasmophobic
they ceased never to rule my head
lurking in nooks and under my bed.

it sounds nice to talk about spirits and souls
but at nights when hollows of burning coals
mistily appear and not in a dream
choke me out of scream
to that terror i fall an abject slave.

but my companion on that dusk was brave
looking at those eerily towering spires
he said let's try meeting a few vampires.

there was no door opening with a creak
but inside was a musty dark hole
where daylight made a quick retreat
as if to let the dead peacefully stroll.

we climbed up stairs strewn with dry leaves
amid sensing a storm brewing on the wing
for the awakened dead in anger seethes
to have their rest broken by the living.

soon swept us a gale of the squeaking dead
driving us out of that well occupied well
surely startled by the intruders' raid
the winged vampires were fleeing like hell.

Tea taming the light
Misty magic
Crawls up the spine
Birds through the looking glass

She opened the book
Absorbing every page
Each chapter a gateway
Musing on those she knew;
Represented by numbers
Individual, yet all the same

Your days are a never ending struggle
Rare in and of themselves
Bringing trouble;
Dog eared rationale

We seekers of solace
Take refuge in books
Understanding
Demanding
The next installment;
Flooding our lives
with fantasies
Cocooned
In our chrysalis

Reading brings change
And knowledge
From page to page
We analyse
Plot, scene, age
Apply the theatre to our lives
And sit, thinking for a while

Read between the lines
Crime, thriller, romance
Happenstance

That could be our lives
Yet sky so grey
Overcast
Reprimanding
We sit, dreaming...

Some day.

I enjoy the solitude
The drawn curtain, being alone

I don't need a friend
Unless the shadows count

I can smile, have a conversation
with myself

A guitar in my lap
A song in my head

I enjoy the solitude

chorus:*
Why did I worry
And why did I sin
And why was I just so conceited
And why did I roll in the mud of the world for so long

Why was I angry
And why did I cry
And why did I judge those I hated
And why did I waste love on those that I didn't care for

Even when darkness knew what I feared
He knew what I needed