“Are you afraid of the dark?”

No. Not at all, in fact.
I really don’t mind
A pitch-black room.

What I am scared of,
Is my dark.

The dark that swallows my vision
When I lay down at night to sleep.

This deep, dark dreamland
Is far more severe
Than what any nightlight could fix.

Sleep is a tsunami.
I am a swimmer in the middle of the storm.
With each paddle, I am taken out and under.

Insomnia is my buoy.
The constant rattle in my head
Reminds me of the tempest to come.

Nightmares are like sharks.
They eat and gnaw on my thoughts
Shredding my soul to pieces.

A leaking clock keeps you
nose up with eyes peering
through night-flooded sky
towards glow-in-the-dark
stars, childhood mementos,
to keep those other shapes

from seeping in, like snakes
slinking over drawers when
they were socks left hanging,
or a hand haunched achingly
through the wardrobe door
was only a shirt sleeve, but

now light escapes the curtains,
becomes a silhouette of a man
out of the second-floor window.
It's ok, you remind yourself.
You roll your head over to
drink, drink, drink in the ticks.

You aren't trapped in darkness
You are simply hiding from the light
Taking a break from being seen

You had a lot of fears. From the day that I first met you, you told me you were afraid of many things. I thought you were overreacting since that was one of the things you usually do, but I had a glimpse of realization when we were in a room one night and I turned off the lights, you touched my arm and asked me to turn it on again. When one afternoon we were about to watch a movie and the only choices were a horror film and a sappy love story that was just 11% on rotten tomatoes, but you still begged for me to choose the bad one. When your cousin was rushed into the hospital then you saw a patient that had an accident being submitted into the emergency room, you suddenly walked away. And when we went to the cemetery and suddenly you told me you were sort of feeling uneasy. You said sorry to me because I will be loving a person who is a coward, and then you started explaining me your four phobias.

Nyctophobia.  A phobia characterized by a severe fear of the dark. You couldn’t sleep with the lights off that’s why you always had a lampshade by your side. I always preferred darkness, and you preferred the opposite. When we were sleeping and I was facing your back, I asked you why and when did it start, you just said with a cold voice, “Everybody hates darkness. People's darkness, all kinds of darkness, especially mine.” I told you, “Not me.”, only to found out you were already asleep. And yet I still did it, I looked into your darkness and explored it. I didn’t see pure darkness, what I saw were tears formed by solitude, your past that you were trying so hard to forget, your broken pieces that you abandoned for they could never be fixed, and stars. My love, I saw stars. You thought darkness consumed you so much that you didn’t have light in you anymore, but you still have. Your soul was the perfect combination of lightness and darkness, and I loved them both. Even in your darkest times. I loved it even more when I came home late at night and was surprised it was all dark, you didn’t have a lampshade beside you anymore.

Phasmophobia.  Fear of ghosts. The word originates from Greek word 'phasmos' which means 'supernatural being/phantom’.  That’s why we all had movies and books with all genres except horror, except the ones with ghosts. You had a nightmare back then, filled with ghosts, I held you and assured you they aren’t real. While crying, you said, “They are. And the worst are the ones you never expected.” I didn’t get you that time, but I did the moment I saw one too when we went back to your old neighbourhood. They were the ghosts of your past. The ones who left you and still visit you in your sleep. And the different thing here, is that you never treated them as ghosts, instead you treated them as angels. That’s why whenever they scare you at night you mistake ‘guiding’ from ‘haunting.’ But you see, I promise you, that I will never be a ghost of your past, because I am your present and your future. I will also not be your angel because I will never be one, but I will be your someone. Someone who will help you overcome your fear of them, someone who will hold you tight every time they come to you, someone who will make you forget that you even had ghosts in your life. I may be just a someone, but I will be that someone who is always there.

Hemophobia.  The extreme and irrational fear of blood.  You wounded yourself one day and when I was healing you, you kept your eyes closed, because you don’t want to see your blood. You hated white sheets with passion and refused to have them anymore, for blood becomes more visible when it drops on them. And when I was throwing away the sheets I started to realize, I am the girl who bleeds poetry but falls in love with someone who is afraid of blood. You hated red for it signifies pain, you hated blood for it is a reminder that somebody or something hurt you so bad. So I wounded myself, I bled with words that could save you, I didn’t care how many scars I will be getting as long as you know that this blood that is pouring is not caused by pain, but by love. And when my wounds became severe already, you were the one who healed me, the healing didn’t really help that much since you weren’t looking. However one morning, I woke up with my scars getting better and a new bed sheet, it was white.

And your last fear, necrophobia.  The fear of death.  That was the first fear that you have ever told me and I asked you, “Why? Everyone will go there at some of point of their lives. Even us. The thing is you should not think about it.” But you said it was hard, you said it was hard to not think that one day everything will be over soon, that you will be buried to the ground and after some time, people will forget about you and will only remember you when they see your tombstone. I never understood you. I never got to. And that was also the only fear that I didn’t help you overcome. You never did, instead, you accepted it. I knew it by the moment you asked me,

“What are we?”, while playing with my hair.

I sat straight and looked you in the eye,  “We’re in love. And that’s like dying, isn’t it?”

Your beautiful smile vanished from your face and I looked down, knowing that is your greatest fear. I was surprised when you said these words with the voice that I have never heard before,  “As long as I’m dying with you, everything is fine.”

You looked at me like I was the only one you have ever seen. The thing is, I don’t know a lot of things and I have no idea what to do.  But for now, baby,  let us just let love **** us both.

*(k.b)

Maybe we should be kinder
Because everyone
Is scared of something

Maybe we should dream
Drink and laugh
Like we mean it this time

Maybe it’s time
we pulled the bodies
From our closets

Maybe it’s time we accept
That we can bury our past
And not mourn our future

Maybe we should live
Like dying doesn’t matter
Like we aren’t afraid

Of the Dark.

when darkness falls
so does shadow
the veil of perhaps
washes over you and
imagining leads you to fear.
your mind starts to play games
with your eyes
you see monsters
in your closet and
under your bed.
looking is not seeing
but they seem the same
so what you thought you glimpsed
sends shivers down your spine
your pupils dilate
fight or flight
because no matter
what your parents tell you
the blankets won't protect you
and the monsters
are
real.

I am the dark,
I am the sea,
I sit in silence,
Through the cinematic breeze.

Visions of the aesthetic,
The mentalism of fear,
A lovely lullaby,
The nyctophobia gear.

I am an art piece,
Painted in black, grey and white,
Kept in the archive of the dismissive,
On spacious 104-8C.

She has the strangest
case of
nyctophobia. The Night
sends her into a hurried
hurried mess, eager to
greet again the sun

Stay with me for the night!
Be my lover for the night!

and you consider
and you surrender

because you have a fear of
The Sun. Ante Meridiem.
so give in!
        fear controls your body
and she controls your fear

Heres a fun puzzle for those who like writing lyrics or like adding layers to yoru poetry.... all musicians do this... Example.. Use the song Another Brick in The Wall by pink Floyd as a starting point... We don't need NO(Nyctophobia) education, we don't need no thought control (photo, tvs), no dark sarcasm in the classroom (catoptro, [cain and abel, the domestication of cats and dogs, hunter gatherers, farming), teacher leave those kids ALONe(ankylo… Lust Envy Greed)…. and align pairs or triplets of heavier phobias with pairs of more subconscious fears, like light (or waking up and the psychology behind that){random example, nycto, mono, auto, photo catoptro} and align each group of 5 with one of the 7 deadly sins (its 8, hubris and vein glory are split into their own group, its a trick) and get secret messages from them such as (A-gate) etc or from anagrams within each set of 5 till you learn what influences each of the 7 deadly sins.. like hubris is partially a creation of limit testing... envy is a product of identifications and dissociations (vein glory is split into one of its own because its origin is your ******* stage or when you realize your ***)…. or you can do it to Come Together by the Beatles and align the groups together to get messages from your 5 stages of your libido.... Oral, ****, *******, Latent, and Genital as well as aligning them with the 4 levels of dreams..... Condensation, Displacement, Visualization, and Symbolism and look for secret messages.... then after you get messages or instructions with the the anagrams on each level look for directions to draw and use the letters to create images, some of them are interesting

.           Nocturnal
             Insomnia
                   &
          Nyctophobia
                   a
         Stygian Saga

  Asleep full of nightmares
awake counting sheep an
owl became rooster when
    the moon, sun did leap.



15 & 16th April 2022.

PÚCA ULCHABHÁN( GHOST OWL)


"So, it's afraid of the dark y'are?"
Uncle Mikey squints at me.

I give a nod hoping
the dark doesn't hear me.

This is not just dark
but country dark.

Unable to even catch sight of
my own hand in front of my face.

As if the darkness
had solidified around me.

My body melted away
and I only a tangle of thoughts

floating through the air
being both there and not there.

"Sure don't ya know
your grandfather was born a ghost!"

Uncle Mikey attempts to
comfort my six year old self

"And sure wasn't your grandmother
a banshee for over a century or more!"

Granny in her chair
turns up her eyes.

I sit stunned at
all these revelations.

"And your grandfather
had a terrible habit of

turning into
an owl!"

I can hardly believe
what I am hearing.

"So if the dark
ever comes after ya..."

"Yes...yes...!"
I wait with baited breath.

"Then your grandfather
will give a hoot and

no one not even the dark will argue
with a  a natural born ghost!"

Outside an owl hoots.
Uncle smiles to himself.

After that the dark can't
lay a finger on me.

*

Nyctophobia struck deep into the heart of my six year old self. I was a townie and the dark never touched me until I experienced Cork country dark which was terrifying...you simply vanished into it as if it had consumed you and you were in the belly of the beast. Uncle Mikey had a unique way of dissolving the dark for me and did a good impression of an owl as well.

Shorter days don’t equate
to longer sleeps

Blackness makes us nocturnal
until the lamps are turned out

It is then that our diurnal
instincts are confused

Light into darkness should
be a graduation in ratio

Edison was an insomniac
suffering from nyctophobia.

Nyctophobia
                  a
        Stygian Saga

Asleep full of nightmares
awake counting sheep an
owl became rooster when
   the moon sun did leap.

Shinigami

           When there’s a fire, there’s
Always smoke that billows
When you feel a presence of evil, there’s
Always a Demon hiding in the shadows

When you feel Claustrophobic, you
Always seem to lose your breath
When you feel yourself panic, you
Always feel like you’re closer to death

When someone has Nyctophobia, it’s
Known as a fear of the dark
When someone has a deal with the Devil, it’s
Known as a contract with Hells Monarch

When you hear stories of deaths forest, you
Know one is speaking about the Aokigahara
When you hear stories of sudden death, you
Know one is speaking about the Mara

When Japanese warn of Aokigahara, they
Are warning of the forest dark deity
When Japanese warn of deaths Reaper, they
Are warning of the Demon Shinigami

Written By:Charles Kean
04/28/2024

PÚCA ULCHABHÁN( GHOST OWL)

"So, it's afraid of the dark y'are?"
Uncle Mikey squints at me.

I give a nod hoping
the dark doesn't hear me.

This is not just dark
but country dark.

Unable to even catch sight of
my own hand in front of my face.

As if the darkness
had solidified around me.

My body melted away
and I only a tangle of thoughts

floating through the air
being both there and not there.

"Sure don't ya know
your grandfather was born a ghost!"

Uncle Mikey attempts to
comfort my six year old self

"And sure wasn't your grandmother
a banshee for over a century or more!"

Granny in her chair
turns up her eyes.

I sit stunned at
all these revelations.

"And your grandfather
had a terrible habit of

turning into
an owl!"

I can hardly believe
what I am hearing.

"So if the dark
ever comes after ya..."

"Yes...yes...!"
I wait with baited breath.

"Then your grandfather
will give a hoot and

no one not even the dark will argue
with a  a natural born ghost!"

Outside an owl hoots.
Uncle smiles to himself.

After that the dark can't
lay a finger on me.

*

Nyctophobia struck deep into the heart of my six year old self. I was a townie and the dark never touched me until I experienced Cork country dark which was terrifying...you simply vanished into it as if it had consumed you and you were in the belly of the beast. Uncle Mikey had a unique way of dissolving the dark for me and did a good impression of an owl as well.

It was a strange sort of comforting but it worked...after that I always thought the dark was afraid of me and didn't want to argue with a natural born ghost!