sleep  hides in dimmest corners of the night

refusing to reach out and hold us dear

for far too long our fears and pains seem bright



like scars of whiteness injuring the sight

bringing so many distant horrors near

sleep hides in dimmest corners of the night



while on each eye some terror will alight

so waking mind can slowly shred and tear

for far too long our fears and pains seem bright



thought after thought revolves upon harsh blight

and inner rack we’re thorough-cooked by fear

sleeps hides in dimmest corners of the night



options seem few and hope reduced to slight

expecting that the dawn might bring cool air

for far too long our fears and pains seem bright



yet there are answers left to turn times right

repairing rest while giving breath to spare

sleep hides in dimmest corners of the night

for far too long our fears and pains seem bright

Night witches own the dark, as they sweep the skies on their knotted broomsticks. They take to flight, in pairs, under waxing or new moons, when the sky is darkest, the stars at their dimmest and gloom the deepest. They steal souls, drink warm blood, gather teeth and fresh, human meat.

They drift, smoke-like, with noir-intent, chewing their charcoal treats in that imperfect silence that prickles with all the sounds of the earth: growing plants, creeping insects, rustling leaves, and shivering birds.

Although their stygian laughter is frequently mistaken for cat fighting, they are soundless, becoming the shadows that disturb, that draw startled glances from the periphery of vision.

In their dark-passing, a mother will check her sleeping children one more time - dogs will whimper and fathers, the hair on their neck standing, will check already-locked windows.

Are you meandering out this night - to walk the dog or check the mail? If so, look to the sky. A little decision can be the worst mistake of your life.

The slightest smile
The quitest laugh
The shortest kiss
The dimmest light
That touches your eyes
The small moment of happiness
That fills your heart
Savor it while it lasts
Because it might never happen again.

It was relegated to the old root cellar
Dropped in haste in  forgotten storage
Where dimmest beam of shafted light
Kept it 'live in yellowed life , weak and twisted
Root and vine, seeking sickly , striving life
But now it's out in planted field
Furrowed in and giving yield
Vine and bud quickly growing
Spreading out and surely choking
All the other crops of life
Air and water , precious light
Strangled , starved , beneath the blight
It feeds upon all below
In rapid spreading nourished growth
Soon to cover , spread to all
Like a **** , all fields will fall
So grows the tyranny imposed on men
Carefully planted and watered in

through an open window
when a bulb burns out
a sliver of moonlight turns
tiny eyes red
and on little feet
the dimmest of dreams
from a corner
comes crawling.

when the night comes
through eyes closed
the room turns inside out.
the heart pounds away the seconds.
the edge moves closer
and the clock smiles.


when the night comes...

on the corner below my window
shadows whispering gather.
broken clouds
rolling dice that will never fall...

and on my knees
praying into the void
the toilet don't flush,
the toaster won't pop...
i grab the smoking toaster
and throw it out the window
the corner boys look up
the corner boys
are rushing up the stairs

me and the rat
waiting for the cops to come,
me and the rat
when the night won't leave
at 3 a.m.
eating donuts.

i'm falling into walls that appear to be rising above me

Turn out the light and let the darkness surround you.
As the darkness floods in, fear consumes you.
Fear of the darkness; of the unknown.
You stand there for a moment,
paralized by the shadows in the darkness.
What or who they might be. Soon enough though, you push aside your fear just long enough to run.
Where you are going you know not.
Light is all you want.
Light, the ability to see.
Even the dimmest of light will do.
You just want something that can push away the darkness.
But there is no light to be found.
Only darkness all around.
Now you've fallen and lie face down on the ground.
Fear now turns to dread as the realization that the light is gone sets in.
The darkness is now darker than the darkest of night.
Not even shadows are visible.
The dread turns to miserable nothingness as you give up.
Letting the darkness consume you, you now become a part of it.
Your mind goes blank and you just lay there, waiting.
For what, you know not, but you continue to wait.
For something
Anything.
Finally, dawn approaches and light fills the darkness.
But it's too late.
The darkness has already consumed you.
Though you may be lit up on the outside, inside you are still darker than the blackest of black.
Yet you continue on.
Hoping one day that darkness will be filled again with light.
Even the dimmest will do.
Until then, you continue on in the light,
while you're filled with darkness.
Waiting.

The quirky signboard said it in bold
Welcome to the house of Sweet Fragrance
Here your hair will be shaped in the finest mould
While you relax in blissful trance!

I stopped by this name cute and smart
A hair losing shop called Sweet Fragrance
Tempted to go in though I needed no cut
Too impressed to keep a distance!

I stepped into a house with the finest smell
With the pretext to unburden my head of some hair
It was a Garden of Eden away from hell
A dreamy languor pervaded its air!

There wasn’t in the glasses a face to look
The place seemed a haven for the peacefully mute
I was offered a chair in the dimmest lit nook
To surrender myself to the forbidden fruit!

Time stopped blurred away my sight
I felt such bliss had no second chance
Knew why Adam embraced his plight

*Succumbed to Eve’s Sweet Fragrance!

Dimmest obscurity
the depths adduce.

Awaiting
an impatient pulse.

Dazzling light
the ocean floor conceals.

Its rhythm
slowly accelerates,
yet alone.

-Risk is to be taken.

Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-west died away;
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;
Bluish ’mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;
In the dimmest North-east distance dawned Gibraltar grand and grey;
“Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?”—say,
Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray,
While Jove’s planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.

At an angle of ninety degrees,
two trees share the same plot.
This one grazes the eaves,
seeking vain attention in the window glass.

The other, its grey ghost lazes
prostrate on the herb garden, reveling
in secrets of lemon balsm and thyme.

At night, the first becomes demonic,
obliterates the universe,
branches scraping the pane, scratching
like fingernails on slate,
its coppery leaves trying to get in.

Its partner slinks to earth,
seeking solace,
wringing conterminous roots till sunrise.

I've had my fill of these unrested moments
fighting the pillow, not settling.
There is no joy in seeking stolen stars.

My dilemma grows horns.

I half dream of ******,
at least amputation.

But even the dimmest light shines in the dark -
I consider its tormented destiny.

At daybreak, like a ****** I scale its gnarled branches
ridiculously one-handed,
the other a keen-toothed weapon.

I am an agile goat shinning upwards
feeding on dreams of peace.

Lost in the sky, I become sap,
melt into its arms,
(a vertiginous release)
I become a curved branch.

(There's someone standing in my elbow!)

Leaves helix down, settling on autumn crocus.
“Look!  Gold on gold!"

The grey ghost yawns, grows its shadow,
waves its arms demanding justice.

I wave back.

Suddenly terrified, I secrete an invisible scent.
The branches contract, tense as ligaments.

My heart plummets, rolls out recumbent,
presses heavily on the earth
listening to fleshy roots recede.

A few deft cuts......

Sun gutters through bereft spaces,
striking the window.
Both trees a shade lighter, a lighter shade.

Tonight I will dream under visible stars,
feel the moon's half-light slide over me.



copyright © Caroline Grace 2012

Embraced my chaotic waves
My mess after madness and
Braved my sullen storm
Reaching out your hands to
Accept the broken me
Calming my hysteric nerves and
Eagerly sailed along  
Deep in the darker side of me

Mysterious our horizon may be
Even in these surges of uncertainty

My soul felt a different you
Only one who truly understands
Ripples of memories behind, that
Even my dimmest night will end

I am the coy smiling handsome man
and my feet beat the darkness away when I rush.
And I rush, in the alleys, sightless,
an actor led by lines of wilting dialogue.
And jasmine litters the gutters, fit to be dredged, the
aroma and the petals streaked with reminiscence.
I rush. I am the man toward an apogee,
a scalpel, with tastes as keen as winter lavender,
and eyes that feel the weight of tastes behind them.
As I dredge the depths for rarer tastes
I rush toward the gutter.
And like the gutters I thirst, in the levees and fen-
In the fen the rush of prey caught
Idling fills the space inside my eyes like oil,
and I dredge the lake for traces.
I am the actor, the dredge, my wit rehearsed
and I am acquainted with the lady of the night.
I smile as she caresses my oily deluged eyes-
And her eyes are filled with bile,
accented by jasmine, even
in the dimmest light of
gutters are rushing to an
apogee, fiercer than I'd like them to
appear, but I am the scalpel, to incise the insincere-
I am the prince, an heir to exacting the coerced-
I watch her eyes like windows from the gutter like a vigil
and hold tight to her breath.
I pour her blood in paper cups
until her breath is weightless-
And I rush, an actor, in the scene that we portray-
I am the giver, the oily deluged eyes that close around the flesh
and rend the fruit from the rind.

I've spent too many hours trying tower my accomplishments
I stole this art, replaced my heart with everything that's opposite
reverse the hearse, this inner peace is quite a compliant
my yin and yang are but centerpieces upon a ledge
if they fall off, these elements will simply crush a head
solar optimist, a bi-polar writer with floppy-disk
decoded so you can't comprehend

no counter weight for this heavyweight of a mentalist
as I pick up the pen you can see that a flame was lit
since this is my movie, let's keep it groovy and toss the script
I can't wait to show the world what the **** monumental is!

this flow is brilliant to extravagant
I guess what I'm feeling is happiness?
no resilience happening?
Still, don't know who my pappy is

happy pieces of laughy taffy
enough motion from the potion
will have a girl callin me pappy quick

I stay railing like locomotives
the motive is, I'm to motived and focus with all this poetry
unleash my inner locust, then leap on to new pageantry  
I'm well adapted like strangers blending into scenes
I gave her the wood in return we nurtured a tree
its double sided girl this **** isn't ever free
If you don't like the price
there's the door you can leave

but look
I know I don't have a car
but soon I will buy a Toyota
pick you up so you can sleepover
I have a super cobra that shots like a super soaker
whenever you're doing yoga
Hulu view for the two,
Youtube view interlude
Netflix an Chill for the mood
Tv on dimmest setting
an inner room lit like the moon
smoking **** watching views
give me snack like I'm ****** do
I just want to lay with you

I picked you out of the many few
from the ocean of this social media stew
girl, what would you like me to do?


November 22, 2016 / Tuesday 1:37 PM

The street is illuminated in that shade of orange
that makes everything liminal
and we move in an opposite direction as the runners.
It seemed funny back then—
like fish veering away from its school
and maybe that’s what we are.

As we sink our feet in the slightly muddy field
and we sit without care of our light-colored jeans,
the fireflies light the dimmest corners.
We ooh and ahh like children
and maybe that’s what we are.

Boy and girl with no faces, no names.
I know you by a monosyllable
still I come, still,
like strangers made bolder by the circumstance
and maybe that’s all we are.

Her honesty is a thing thats rare,
a thing that causes most to stare.
Strangers hear of her akward jokes,
that may be acceptable around only blokes.

The smile that can lighten the dimmest of days,
only surpassed by the music she plays.
She gives and gives till she cries from stress,
which sends me into rediculous distress.

I cannot stand to see you sad!
for without you with me i look mad!
So heres to my friend,
who follows only her own trend!
Kay your great!
and a fantastic mate!

Spectacles slipped into the mine-shaft of mine own thoughts.
What was I doing leaning so far over, looking down the mirror?
To dig them out again, is to reach into my innermost and cry with vengeance sought
after fallen imagery.
A downy trap to trip me,
crawling,
to the bottom of The Well.
It is well-thought to pick up the spectacles before climbing back out again.
Naught but a pinprick of light, a shining shaft,
to guide me.
The crevices of luck leading back to the place where my spectacles can be of use.
Here? It is the climbing, dark, murky
Raiment of the rocks around me.
The dimmest glow surrounds,
and   I
               climb
                               UP

as if i can't read through the cellophane-covered love letters
from the boy who fingered my throat and saw stars therein
the one who can peel back white paint and whisper into the eaves
and leave in shambles a once fiercely built sanctuary

i prayed to the ceiling in the dimmest of the nights
to uncurse me, to sew me back like sally, sewn like you couldn't be
evidence from your hapless choice to take me in
your chest exposed itself: stringless, veinless, merely a wire-board

fourteen does not forget
don't say i miss you, baby
when you only miss my simultaneously
shut and open jaw

Someone's taken a serrated blade to
the core of this night
It's moon, shrouded in a widows veil
forms the dimmest of halflight
As the stars all seem to weep its
passing where they fall
And I,
I don't want to sleep with you,
I just want to stay up and talk
As the sounds of the street resound then
fade through this tiny boxroom
The silence filled with comfort as the blue nile
soothe on late night radio

Our view, 
a city landscape towered by the now
idled dockland cranes
Do they dream to escape
to the endless deep blue
like you and I
Or do they cower in the darkness,
longing for morning and
a purpose once more
That dawn jolts as its light reflects
sharply to my eyes from
your stainless blade
But I wake alone, with you lost
to the thoughts and dreams that you are
As the cranes begin to clank
to a meaning they crave,
I cower alone and
accept my fate

You fill the dimmest parts
of my saddened soul with light.
You picked up my
torn and tattered heart
and loved it unconditionally.
You tell me I'm
beautiful, perfect, flawless.
All thoughts that have never
seized my mangled mind.
You're just who I needed
and
I'm just who you needed
when we both needed it
the most.

"It's the only color I call home, because where the flora is green, life will always be seen." By K.A.S.

The storm ebbs,
Always at the very edge,
Teetering off the very ledge.
The storm flows,
But it just never moves,
It just never goes.

I remember when your words dressed me so proudly.
I remember when your eyes said love so loudly.

But I guess I was right,
Because every sunshine day ends in a cold dead night.

You never knew what I meant
When I swore every breath of yours was heaven sent.

But I guess I was always wrong,
Because we just sat in silence,
Forgetting all our words,
And forgetting all our songs.

But I still love you from the highest sight,
I still love you to the dimmest light.
I still love you every day,
I still love you every night.

But if a time should come
Where our future is unclear,
Know that I love you always,
I'll always be waiting right here.

I think
You might think
That maybe I didn't feel when our ship began to sink.

I think you didn't notice
The break in my heart,
And in all my other parts.
Because you turned away
When I started to decay.

I don't know if you'll ever tell me
Where we were led astray,
But I know, now,
Nothing green can stay.

Yeah. Nothing green can stay.

Doom laden
Light my way
With candle of blackest tallow
And flame of brightest white
I follow my nature
My gravitation
Without question

Godless and lawless
Out of the wild I came
Still wet and trembling
Hairless and bared to all
I lived off the fruit of the land
And open to the sky
As is the way of my kind

What did I know of fences?
Or of lines on a map
All I saw was plenty for all
I knew nothing of money
I knew only being fed and being hungry
So they called me thief
They called me savage

Doom laden
Light my way
With candle dripping tallow
And flame of dimmest red
With hesitation I follow
Stumbling and lost no doubt
Yet still I follow

                              By Phil Roberts

I was bathing in the sterling, fawning light there dimmest be when I came upon a phenomenon unbeknownst to me.
Quiet, bluish lights dancing in the pale, blinking every time -again and now but a chorus faithfully throughout.
What was this, a faerie funeral?
Perhaps a will-o-wisp walkabout?
Fly, oh, the Valkyrie, I feel you may 've missed you two or three.
What is this hovering, waving sight -harbingers of ancient light?
Stole one from a widow clothed in black, turns out they're bonny baby fireflies, imagine that.

Hour by hour the moon continues to rise.
She's way too bright and he's as dark as night.
Oh what big lies you live.
Why are you both so deceiving?
Oh look how hard it is to forgive.
Where's your excuse for leaving?
Run away, get away before he swallows your sanity.
She's built her argument on vanity.
You found love in the darkest parts,
The place where you can't have a heart.
She built it on a dream and a delusion.
He grew out of that plot and that illusion.
She loved him true, the only love she ever knew.
In her safest hour on his dimmest day, all she wanted was for him to pay.
He meant no harm and she did no wrong.
We know they hurt and they're not strong.
Little red, my friend,
there is no need to pretend that you didn't know this would eventually end.
At least in fact, you're both still intact.
You're not the victim and you're not the villain.
Both born of moon and light, they would always fight.
Now the wolf and red are in separate beds.
Their story together is a memory.

Walking alone, an hour after midnight
Was the first time I heard my world go quiet
The first time I
As I watched the planets go by
Under the moonless sky of July

Only the deep rumbled scattered through the silence of the night
As if the world I walked through mumbled drowsily as it slept
Or perhaps, it was the 1 o'clock train mowing across the night's horizon
No matter
The night's dreams offered a flurry of lights and sights
As the stars danced

I never knew that this world
A world I struggle to live in
One stricken by grief
Could be so silent while asleep
That my broken realm could be at peace
As I skimmed deeper beyond midnight
I finally understood how even while shrouded in gloom
Even with the dimmest of glimmer lighting the way
I can still be at peace

I know why the joker
  Doth smile and jest,
And laughs so gleefully at thee.
     Thy spirits, he soothes,
      With frolicking moves;
The way he sways is so lovely.

   The cracks that he'll take
  Are enough to make
The dimmest and dullest of minds
      Feel stricken and stabbed
       With all that he's jabbed:
His kicks are gained heeding your bind.

   Showcases of joy,
  He seeks to employ:
Even if it's at your expense,
      He'll take your dismay,
       And cast it away!
Despite his obvious offense...

Doom laden
Light my way
With candle of blackest tallow
And flame of brightest white
I follow my nature
My gravitation
Without question

Godless and lawless
Out of the wild I came
Still wet and trembling
Hairless and bared to all
I lived off the fruit of the land
And open to the sky
As is the way of my kind

What did I know of fences?
Or of lines on a map
All I saw was plenty for all
I knew nothing of money
I knew only being fed and being hungry
So they called me thief
They called me savage

Doom laden
Light my way
With candle dripping tallow
And flame of dimmest red
With hesitation I follow
Stumbling and lost no doubt
Yet still I follow

                              By Phil Roberts

with tinfoil teeth and steel wool hair
silver feet and iron stare
the coldest one, the coldest one here
conducting light from the horizon into my bed.
i need the sun to feed my head.

but you know me so well for
bolting shut that iron door.
i never leave it exposed,
my mechanical heartbeat
nobody has to know.

my metallic heart is the satellite
my metallic heart
reflecting the dimmest of lights.

2:03 am

the skyline of the city illuminates my mind.
the skyline of the city is my mind.
the brightest part of the city is where i keep my memories of you and i.
the dimmest part of the city is where i keep everything i'd like to forget.
the wind sweeps through the city the way you sweep through my mind.
it sends a chill up my spine and it pushes in between memories.
you're like the wind;
no matter how hard i try to avoid you, i can't.
you're everywhere i go, so i may as well enjoy it.
like kids fly kites on windy days, i hold your hand on chilly, winter days.
you shoot me a look and i'm shrugging, 'it's cold.'
the moon towers over the city like some sort of all knowing essence.
(i guess if i believed in God, He would be the moon.)
the moon always reminded me of my sister.
watching over me and understanding when i thought she wouldn't.
smiling down on me and coaxing me to believe it's okay.
you can see the river from the balcony.
where i drown my thoughts.
eternal river of the spotless mind; i'll forget you if it kills me.
you won't come back.
i can't stop staring down at the city.
and i'm thinking, "i wish i could go."
i wish i could escape.
anywhere, everywhere.

the city is my mind.
i can't stop thinking.
and i'm wondering if it's possible to leave your mind.

Identify at once
The words jumble in my throat
Retribution shock
Governing by my ticking clocks
Spewing wind to fill the sails

Empty boats
Floating down
Glinding along gilded banks
Wheat can seldom feed a soul
Only bloat the burdend mind

How does the horizion break?
When did all my buds bloom
Long into the night
And slowly wither away
But never die

Change is mine
And when it comes to me
My will I cannot abide
There will be no sacrifice
I live my life by the dimmest light

The words I could speak
To blow it out
Flowing over the tip of my tounge
But Seldom ever spoken
Silence is golden

And the danger may be closer than it appears
And you'll never know if the end is near
And the ones i loved, cherished and relied most heavily upon
Can slip god through my viens...

And yet the new ones
The immitators I've neglected
Seldom speak to me, irony a bitter curse

And up untill this day, and onwards down the current
the words still escape me

even the dimmest light
on the darkest night
shines bright

Doom laden
Light my way
With candle of blackest tallow
And flame of brightest white
I follow my nature
My gravitation
Without question

Godless and lawless
Out of the wild I came
Still wet and trembling
Hairless and bared to all
I lived off the fruit of the land
And open to the sky
As is the way of my kind

What did I know of fences?
Or of lines on a map
All I saw was plenty for all
I knew nothing of money
I knew only being fed and being hungry
So they called me thief
They called me savage

Doom laden
Light my way
With candle dripping tallow
And flame of dimmest red
With hesitation I follow
Stumbling and lost no doubt
Yet still I follow

                              By Phil Roberts

Tawny days hanging from the sweet autumn breeze are sheltered in corners of my mind I just can’t dare to go to. I hide from them, never closing my eyes—never looking inward. I open them into another haze, though. The dimmest streetlight in the most darksome alley. But between blinks, my eyes burn in golden, and images of remote places flicker in.

Patches of brown leaves on the ground, fragments of Shakespearean poetry carved on trees, a lonely grove between mountains, and a magic lake by my hiding place…

“You would never understand,” I had said to him after weeks of sleeping under willows and sneaking in the cottage through the window. “You don’t know what’s it like to be chased for crimes you didn’t do!” The soldiers had been drawing nearer to the towns about, and I had been left with no choice but to flee from the fate that being an outsider threw at me. “Don’t go,” he had said before my fears revived in my head, killing all peace.....