"hypnagogic" poems
I saw my world again through your eyes
As I would see it again through your children's eyes.
Through your eyes it was foreign.
Plain hedge hawthorns were peculiar aliens,
A mystery of peculiar lore and doings.
Anything wild, on legs, in your eyes
Emerged at a point of exclamation
As if it had appeared to dinner guests
In the middle of the table. Common mallards
Were artefacts of some unearthliness,
Their wooings were a hypnagogic film
Unreeled by the river. Impossible
To comprehend the comfort of their feet
In the freezing water. You were a camera
Recording reflections you could not fathom.
I made my world perform its utmost for you.
You took it all in with an incredulous joy
Like a mother handed her new baby
By the midwife. Your frenzy made me giddy.
It woke up my dumb, ecstatic boyhood
Of fifteen years before. My masterpiece
Came that black night on the Grantchester road.
I ****** the throaty thin woe of a rabbit
Out of my wetted knuckle, by a copse
Where a tawny owl was enquiring.
Suddenly it swooped up, splaying its pinions
Into my face, taking me for a post.
7.9k
The sun tipping over the horizon
Lifts my lids each revolution of this Shady green sphere...
And for a few brief seconds
The fingers of sleep
Drag me back.
Warm pressure on my eyes,
Pooling, (re)opening them to the last
Paradise;
The only oasis where your eyes are not closed
And your bones are not dust somewhere
Mingling with the soil in Pittsburgh.
Just the same, I know you're the product now
Of some hypnagogic state;
Of the last traces of theoretical DMT swirling in my brain
As is leaves Morpheus behind in the shadows.
You're just the most beautiful hallucination
The truth in the chaos of dreams
Cluing me into what I've been denying
For 13 years.
Impossible that I've preserved you better
Than any mortician could have
In the recesses of my mind
You are a perfect replica
An unholy copy of the original
All creamy skin
And ocean eyes,
Full-lipped smile tipping somewhere between
Arrogance and joy.
"I'm gone," you say. "I'm dead."
Repeating what I already know
"I'm dead, I'm not coming back."
On repeat like the worst kind of ear worm;
A carousel of sound that dips and weaves through every filament of Unconsciousness.
Denial; like reaching out my hands
I shove against the reality, against the unreality
Against the prison sleep has woven
And crash forth
Damp and gasping
Like breaking the surface once more
Teetering over the horizon with the sun
Into the waking hell of another day.
The carousel makes another revolution.
See you on the other side tonight.
Nov 11, 2015
Nov 11, 2015 at 10:08 AM UTC
lonely lonely,
you leave me so,
inside out watching
the stars burn out
in an emptying
of cosmic sorrow..
and tomorrow I know
the sun will smile at me
your kisses will taste
like honey and
the birds will romance me
with slaughtered butterflies
and sweet lamentation.
But today,
I've been tuning radio static
to white noise and
flashes of Chopin,
trying to recreate a feeling
from shadows and memory.
don't leave me lonely,
dear, make love to
me in the hypnagogic
stare of the rising sun.
play me soft as buttercups
and foxgloves;
piannissimo,
gentle as death's
watchful eye.
Nov 5, 2012
Nov 5, 2012 at 12:19 AM UTC
A palpable discord keeps me
turning all through the night
until the late rays of Sun
shine by again
I want a dreamcatcher
Feathery-spider web-
To keep my hypnagogic rest
sacred to me
And then I can wish
him closer...
Without a separating sea
I reserved my sleep to calmer
nights where my dainty ribs
caressed an incense-ridden
wind
My dreams are a shade
happier than me
I found my wrists
bedecked in fine jewelery
There's no chiming of antique
clocks in my sleepy
subconscious knots.
My eyes were not
corrosed over
so when he spoke I
comprehended
with crystal orbs
I'd hoped I find him through
disheveled bedsheets under
the waxing moon...
It illuminated my skin and sent me
soundly reveling in the hazy countenance
To me he's Elvis' love child
He's a wish fulfilled to me
I discovered an idol
I write letters,
coveted, held close
I worship what I
know of him
My thoughts are almost this
tangible-thing like a rope
I could grab and
make a knoose out of
perhaps it's time to slay
the golden bull
I struck his wayward glance
by some silver spring of snow
He's travelled to the ruins
of cathedrals with
chipped limestone on
the doors arched-shape...
darkness on the otherside...
Mother Mary follows,
walking through some threshold
hallway
Crooked stem, bent leaves...
A pruned up crackled rose
for me to eat
Those eyes...
dark brown, almond-shaped
Squinty with sparrow-feet
I'm waiting in the mountains
Clouds covering my eyes
Ocean blue in the stark sunshine
blinding me and enveloping me
when the music dies
Sep 15, 2017
Sep 15, 2017 at 1:20 AM UTC
Do you perceive the deep crack within the fulcrum of the universe?
Daylight and darkness blend into a hypnagogic and hallucinatory kaleidoscope, where the art of fantasy rises from oceanic depths in the form of a seductress who rides upon the wings of a horned god.
We could even enter into meaningful discourse, as we contemplate psychoactive echelons of spiritual intensity?
Are you hungry?
Dec 5, 2013
Dec 5, 2013 at 10:08 PM UTC
In your ship of
white sheets
you set the sail
you leave the shorelines
of consciousness
and begin to drift
from the docks of reality.
First you cast your fantasies
then your visions
in hypnagogic imagery
cast you
as you wait for the winds
to take you
into the currents of unconscious seas.
what do you see?
what do you experience?
Those living memories
of
other places
other times
other lives
a string of faces
a hotel with many rooms
and no exit signs
and
as you open doors
on different floors
you find
yourself
at different ages
on different stages
familiar terrors
sometimes vivid
make you shutter
falling into
quicksands of blood.
On the roof of this sea
you take flight
and are free
when you hit the heights
you're in your car
with a stranger and me
we give you directions
and
at each turn progressively lost
panic sets in
late for work and can't find the way
your GPS
keeps pointing to the fact you're here.
Small craft warnings come and go
the lighthouse beckons you back home
to the shoreline and the dock
but first you crawl into the
arms of the sexist soul
you know
as your finger tips touch
this night's
journey is done
as
your alarm
sings out
The Four Seasons.
Headlong to the shore you ride
your breath is taken away
you throw your rope to the dock
of reality
and have that moment
of longing and wonder
when dreams can be life
and
life can be dreams.
A big sigh.
You've bought your ticket
for
tomorrow night's voyage
where it will go
you just don't know
but
when you get there please let us know.
You get out of that
cozy warm white sheet ship
and
put on clothes
with the sunrise
and
the half cut moon
your traveling companions
into
your awakening.
May 10, 2014
May 10, 2014 at 12:15 PM UTC
In times of solace and even not,
when the world shrinks at the corners
and the all-seeing-eye winks,
the hypnagogic takes over.
I disappear into my unconsciousness, and
I see all the beauty in the world.
I see the galaxies exploding;
impending rebirth in a
pastelar-spectacular combustion of planets.
The mechanical love-boat springs to life
and all the lovers,
with their brave questions and
buoyant expectations,
float, fly, free-fall into the fervour.
I see the promise of the future.
Yet, the desperate preservation of history;
drawing trees on paper (oh, the irony),
searching for the genesis in the fallen.
The black and blue pale moon
bruised by the cosmos
is waiting for something
(other than metal and bones).
I believe the bold hues of my being are
moments passed on the shores of promise,
but I know this is how we were meant to be.
I rest my cheek on Orion’s belt and
sigh at the splendour.
I see the ebb and flow of the heaving ocean
that I fear if I looked long enough into,
Neptune himself might drag me to the
wellsprings of youth and miracle, and
well, I might not want to leave.
Apr 8, 2013
Apr 8, 2013 at 8:00 AM UTC
Captivating, conspicuously charming
A fragrance so enthralling
Bewitching the senses
Enticing the unfocused soul
Hypnotizing, hardly hypnagogic
Such unparalleled grace
A peculiar dancer
Coaxing the mind to perplexity
Anodyne, aberrant anesthesia
Resembling an ethereal angel
A touch appealing to tame flames
Surreptitiously gathering fuel
Sacrosanct, superficially sacred
Donned with deceptive modesty
An ambiguous spark
Threatening to begin a wildfire
Efflorescing, escaping encumbrance
Soon, a firm grasp on freedom
The freedom so prematurely served
Too early to be maximized
Incantations, whisper incantations
Silence the demented demons
An unconventional ritual
To fortify the continence
Ebbing continence
Another attempt made
Stall the impending debauchery
Enunciation is needed -
Esurience is never innate, but provoked
Jun 9, 2015
Jun 9, 2015 at 5:06 AM UTC
After the day is over
And the thrush begins lullabies.
I need to escape from this tiredness
By going into sweet delight.
Softly like heaven's fleece
Those eyelids close in thought.
I'm in a state so easily forgettable
Yet one that I like the most.
Aug 6, 2021
Aug 6, 2021 at 9:43 AM UTC
i.
Last eve', whilst mine Filipino rose
Was falling deep into her slumber;
I started to doze off, into hypnagogic state
I wasn't sleeping, nor was I fully awake.
ii.
In the midst of this hallucinatory reality
I couldst discern a tender mild voice, betwixt this actuality;
The strong yet forward word's spoke as this to me
Brandon, "doth thou want to cometh home to JESUS CHRIST" ?
iii.
As tis the word's JESUS CHRIST were in italic bold font
From the way it was saidst, it was sung as an angel wouldst singeth his name up in heaven; someone, not knowing whom, asked if I wanted to cometh home, was this an angel, or a dream?
iv.
Ive hadst encounter's with demonic being's daily, as tis I've had angelic encounter's as well, wouldst twenty seven be mine last;
As I've thought of this a many whilst's, as tis every musician of mine I've loved died at this age, as two plus seven equal's nine.
v.
Nine, mine favorite number, mine sport's digit always chosen as a boy, nine, the number meaning completion in all religion's;
The figure representing the completion of life's own cycle, as tis so many star's completed their journey at 27, was I being called?
Ivi.
Didst someone asketh me to cometh home? Back where I belong? To the star's? To God's son? Number's alway's meaneth something; in mine bible, in all religion's, in all thing's, as tis angel's speaketh in front of thee or in dream's, was that mine angel? Calling me?
Oct 12, 2015
Oct 12, 2015 at 9:44 AM UTC
no one laughs the dead houses
line the streets i
never had anything
before the ritz and lsd
funnelled into shopping malls
hypnagogic life
taught whither wither
a dying world.
Oct 6, 2017
Oct 6, 2017 at 7:13 PM UTC
Society, the nectarous drenched **** of gregarious giving.
Or so we think..
One must be diligent to not consume to the point of overweening upon her intoxicating milk.
"You can be anything" she coos delicately stroking your forehead.
My bleary scruffed state prevents me from feeling her venomous *****
I am rendered limp set agog by the hypnagogic melody of society.
Then there is you...
Your Wild renegade eyes pry me from my cemented prison.
Your Voltaic energy seeped in the poetry that coats my marrow and enamel, the substance of my soul.
Such beauty estranged from society? How can that be?
Was this matronly epicenter all farce and rigamarole?
I clamor in search for those eyes to appease my pain.
I search in vain..
until I face the mirror.
Those eyes belong to me, the remedy to society is the awakening of yourself, the claiming of your poetry.
Nov 2, 2016
Nov 2, 2016 at 12:00 AM UTC
Opulence surrounds you, overconfident in your approach
the golden lust of your ego projects
itself in the driver's seat with that tiny smirk
here as we drive on
at a adrenaline inducing speed
the sunset caught between leaves and branches
of these trees.
I am
baptized
in a hypnagogic state
dreamy
but
still here.
"let go"
I say to you
oblivious
to what is right in front of you.
"let go of the wheel"
because
it's too beautiful
and because
I think I love here,
as I close my eyes and
letting the wind toss my hair about and
letting the stroboscopic flicker
tease the petals of my face and
forgetting about what matters and what doesn't,
more than being here with you to be honest.
Apr 15, 2012
Apr 15, 2012 at 2:27 PM UTC
Life is war,
my hands are hypnagogic,
so far from refuge.
The purgatory salesman,
an enemy with antlers,
speaks in hostile slogans:
create, destroy, rebuild, repeat.
My friend coma,
blunted and paranoid,
has lost her vital signs.
But Television says differently,
calls this an elegant demise,
you touch the screen
like you're touching God.
The immortal world
I'm hoping to collide with
is beautiful and closed to resistance.
But there are cracks in everything,
the snowglobe army
granular and brittle,
the constant uncertainty
of your universe
becomes a hiding game.
Take me with you
my halation angel,
to migration salvation.
We made our history
into mythology,
a mass of disconnected facts,
the stars may be dead,
yet, we're here
and we've stopped time.
Tonight I'm breaking
through the gates,
tonight I can see around corners,
suddenly, forever makes sense.
Feb 25, 2024
Feb 25, 2024 at 2:51 PM UTC
I am half-awake in the August rain,
the last strain of summer squeezed
into my glass and cooled with ice.
It is nice. To be up this early with
the morning news, Palestinians and
Jews at war over berries and wheat
in the broken streets of Gaza.
The cats are sleeping on the suite,
ears pinned up for a flash of sound
or stench of meat. My brother is
planning his moves for the future
against the ways I have failed in the past.
I have been half-asleep in debt and
addiction. I have buried myself in a
dream of words; into worlds of
all-talk and no action. I am no longer
a fraction of beer bottles and ashtrays,
fantasies of easy lays, or notebooks left
incomplete and full of cancer fears.
They are in tears; brown-skinned and
forgotten rights, a desolation site
of ground-zeros and a desperate fight
for life. Depleted uranium laces lungs,
as well-versed tongues in heavy suits
kiss the shoes of the corporate brutes.
As empathy trickles down in political
verse, a hypnagogic curse for liberal thought
and consciousness. They are forecasting
sorrow as the sun comes up, to detach
from our Earth, and the late summer rain.
Aug 14, 2014
Aug 14, 2014 at 6:06 AM UTC
I like staying in hypnagogia--
between sleeping and waking up.
I feel happy,
not conscious,
not dreaming.
Because the thing about reality is
it's not a dream,
and the thing about dream is
it's not real.
(fohn)
Dec 28, 2017
Dec 28, 2017 at 12:08 AM UTC
I met you twice.
Once in reality, once in my dreams. Your skin tasted like the smell of the humid air after the rain, merging both lives into one the noir dreams and the reality of nirvana.
Hallucinating each brain cell into this delusional taste of your soul that despairs me of processing what my pupils can see.
The incantation your fingers played is like a loud instrument awakening my hypnagogic illusions.
As we fall, in between you stand precaution to plunge into the eroticism of your soul and governed by your cerebrum.
Dec 18, 2014
Dec 18, 2014 at 6:53 PM UTC
Staying afloat on a low note
a lost man crosses crippled bridges
carrying a turtle’s shell and flour
Singing off pitch, making leaves shrivel
Off abound, forbidden from sight,
glass air pierces his stale soul.
Wonder yonder he thinks to fire
of foreseen history pocketed in a square
while passing a brown polar bear
He hears nothing but bats communicating
when he saunters the woods at night
In the middle of his sleep
his big toe squeaks and the bed shrieks
and the frigid air nips his shriveled lips.
He once made friends with
a single blade of grass in the desert
but it died the day after they met
In the grand scheme of irony
he doesn’t see the reason for pancakes
They make his taste buds scream for quiet.
Whether or not he sees straight
is an entirely different question
If he comes to a fork in the road
he tends to keep walking forward
As if he thinks there’s not much difference
between right and wrong in present tense.
There’s too much for him to understand
in an overwhelming world; an abandoned creature
under starlight in a red sky reverie
he seeks rhythm from deflated composition
but fears that tapping his foot
will crumble his hypnagogic melody.
Jan 3, 2017
Jan 3, 2017 at 1:46 PM UTC
Hypnagogic amour
Reached high between cumulus pixie dust
No throw aways of letters
Cheribum
Seraphim
Musk!!!
Shuttle like emotions
Pouring as tangerine rain
I'll be here for mine amour
Tis amare shalt never change
No pains nor leaving
A wedding
Tis
I seek,
Without her I'd loose mine brains
These muscles would grow weak
Her smile giveth me oomph
Her laughter giveth brio
Herself I just want all
A nuptial agreement
True and real!!!
Jun 16, 2015
Jun 16, 2015 at 12:07 PM UTC
Duja Ve
am I an anti-schizophrenic
or just a hypnagogic ****
because all this never happened once before
you might say I am pathetic
trying to make your sweet ears perk
this is the first time I've seen you walk out that door
well according to the academy
it could be to much caffeine
the reasons are just way too many to recall
no contrasting dichotomy
slick head like Mr Clean
I have to go badly and there is no open stall
could it be I just forgot the words
my memory has been so keen
thirty lashes with a noodle seem to be in order
different than many other birds
the songs the nightingales sing
have never been captured by my recorder
it seems these things never do repeat
at least I cannot find the reason
is it possible I may have gotten too much sleep
sadly I do not have happy dancing feet
my secrets no cause for treason
maybe I should count goats instead of sheep
Gomer LePoet ....
Oct 26, 2013
Oct 26, 2013 at 8:25 AM UTC
The mind does not reel
It Clacks
At or near the frontal lobe
A temple eroding, I suppose
Destroying by the speed of the whir
A millisecond vertigo
Terrorizes for seemingly endless minutes
Wrought iron right neck muscle
Climaxing in a hypnagogic spasm
That levitates the body for an instant
Copyright © 2009
May 14, 2011
May 14, 2011 at 8:30 PM UTC
On an old windowsill of a crooked windowpane in a beaten house
Lies a window-moth on a ***** window cloth.
drained, defeated, and done
Time and again,
It tattered its wings and shattered its face,
plunged at the glass, losing its grace.
She's drawn to a dim light
spilled through a cracked window
into the darkness of the room.
Like a waking terror of the night,
With one half there and the other out of sight.
Hallucinating a pathway through fantasy
Seeking clarity in rays of insanity
Contained by a glass and wooden frame.
painfully numb,
with an urge to move forward
A consuming obsession,
to make it to the Moon.
That lambent orb in the skies
A brilliant ball full of lies
Ignorant to the impenetrable mass,
or the number of miles between the moon and glass.
No matter how much it desires,
No matter how much it tires,
Nor thee amount of blood she taranpires,
The glass is unbreakable,
the goal unattainable,
The truth unbearable.
The Godforsaken feeling,
of seeing, and believing,
yet never achieving.
Jul 15, 2018
Jul 15, 2018 at 6:46 PM UTC
In under three days
You'll peel my skin away
My flesh seeps menthol and freezes in your pores.
Beneath this embrace we'll sojourn
Between threaded calves and ankle-bones we breathe faint snores
Clenching our eyes against the rising yellow of morn'.
Within three weeks
I'll have forgotten to eat
Your caress rattles my bones and sparks a flame in my spine
Curving against your slender torso in transit
Your clockwise caress on my scalp bowering your fingers in vines
Planting a firm kiss on my neck as if you're sowing a gambit.
Entwined with the grey dawn we became aboriginal
Beguiled in our hypnagogic state, candid and inexplicable.
Nov 4, 2014
Nov 4, 2014 at 4:18 AM UTC
It wouldn't be
my place
to tell you what
you want to hear To
play with your delusions,
make the devil's horns appear
I'd rather be a figment of the thoughts you never seek
The ones
that won't betray you when
you've fallen into sleep
At ease with all the pressure
there's enough of it to
****
To keep you in your
head until its growth is stunted, still
you never thought you'd see the heavy future
you can feel
But there is nothing else, today has
never felt so
real
Dec 4, 2014
Dec 4, 2014 at 5:02 PM UTC
The mind does not reel
It Clacks
At or near the frontal lobe
A temple eroding, I suppose
Destroying by the speed of the whir
A millisecond vertigo
Terrorizes for seemingly endless minutes
Wrought iron right neck muscle
Climaxing in a hypnagogic spasm
That levitates the body for an instant
A moment?
May 22, 2010
May 22, 2010 at 1:43 AM UTC