You scared?
No...
Liar
I know...

But dreams can't last forever
As I thought once upon a time
When your heart held mine

Tears fell only to be wiped away
By your hand
Now gone

As I, breath in the lonely darkness
Of the room that was
At one point ours
But now mine alone

And you
Of course have gone
As only dreams do

Leaving me
Eye to eye
With my fear

Of life
Without you

YOUR eyes were gem-like in that dim deep chamber
Hushed and sombre with imprisoned fire,
With yellow ghostly globes of intense aether
Potent as the rays of pure desire.

Your voice was startled into vivid wonder,
When the winged wild whining mystic wheel
Took flight and shot the dark with frosty crashings
Like an ice-berg splitting to the keel.

Your flesh was never warmer to my passion
Than when, moving in that lumor green,
We saw with eyes our fragile bones enamoured
Clasping sadly on the pallid screen.

You seemed so virginal and so undreaming
Of the burning hunger in my eyes,
To peer more fever-deeply in your being
Than the very death of passion lies.

The subtle-tuned shy motions of your spirit,
Fashioned through the ages for the sun,
Were dumb in that green lustre-haunted cavern
Where you walked a naked skeleton;

Slim-hipped and fluent and of lovely motion,
Living to the tip of every bone,
And ah, too exquisitely vivid-moving
Ever to lie wanly down alone--

To lie forever down so still and slender,
Tracing on the ancient screen of night
That naked and pale writing of the wonder
Of your beauty breathing in the light.

Sleep has been restless,
lately.
Rest
Less.
It is neither conscious nor unconscious,
and the undreaming is an issue.
My dreams have become
dimly lit hallways
through which I walk,
unsure of myself or
of my surroundings.
It is a dream because
my body is not quite there,
it is caught between the waking
and the sleeping.
I feel the sheets of my bed
and their maternal embrace
clinging warmly to my summer shade
of dark brown and olive,
yet I see the hallway,
dimly lit.
It is a dream because
the people I knew
are other people as well,
are ideas and thoughts--
passions I hardly knew
both good and bad
that dangle on the tip of my tongue,
waiting to dance off into my body below,
down the passageway of my throat,
dark and
dimly lit.
My mind has blurred out their faces,
though I know there is only visual blackness
behind my eyelids,
has littered their words or meanings
with the trash of reality,
the inferred paranoia that
masks the truth,
dimly lit.
These ghastly haunts come
to greet me by my bed
each and every night,
blank silhouettes desperately trying
to tell me something,
something not very important,
anyway.
They mouth the words
and I go with the actions,
but my understanding is vague and doubtful
and my comprehension none.
Maybe I should care more
about what they have to say;
where is this hallway,
why my vision is blocked.
But, I'm far too tired,
in these dreams,
too exhausted and
rest
less
to care.
I am never replenished,
never renewed,
only further fatigued
by the dark and
hazy ideas the ghasts leave behind
to wander
neither conscious
nor unconscious
in the corners and passages
of my brain,
dimly lit.

The euphemism goes―
beyond the soft
feather, becoming weightless.

You must put it in
the hysteria, after the
laughing gas was released.

The triumph and defeat
of the rising *******―
ultimately gave in against,
the coronation.

The brooms were in plenty
to sweep the rubble
after the sky fell―

between the old
and young.

A bridge in Vermont
is not a bridge too Vermont.
It's a postcard
with heart-red snow
and the white knuckles
of an orphaned babe...
twitching in a manger...
but singing.

All glory to the smoke
and the iron sun; too blunt.
It's a porcelain shard
of hard-dread luck
and a dark hustle to the bottom
of the sea... in waves -
wishing even stranger...
but undreaming.

yet amazed.

II

We are the brick and the butterfly.

You migrate
as i nest in a shambles.
As i launch -
into stuck.
You go from shore to shore
above me.
As I plunge into -
stealth at rest.

III

We are the thing that ponders -
the other thing that wanders off....
And we know the color
of our grief.

It is Ironically blue
and rueful.
But it smiles inside -
Like a dairy cow
with idiot teats.

We are unfit to miss the Other; Forever.
But our astrology is fickle as a lamb
at a crucifixion.
We have our gods, but cannot barter
for a Lesser One than Love.

So we're condemned to our devotion
like a locomotive heart
to a groove in
a chasm
at last.

And just enough.

It is a fine, fine line
we use to place
good and evil apart
a fine, fine line
by a quill sharpened to
draw on vellum creamy white
a path hewn between
the road we should take
and the undergrowth of doubt
impenetrable and dense
and dark, so dark and deep
dream on it
draw in your mind
that fine, fine line
slide the golden nib of imagination
across the  parchment of your conscience
free and clear of prejudice
free of ideas preconceived
free of what others will
invariably choose to perceive
draw the fine, fine line
and use it as a guidance
for your continuance
the fine, fine line
free of suggestion’s nuances
draw or paint
with pencil, pen or brush
that fine, fine line
between the music of life
and Death’s deep, undreaming hush

The tender tree-- o’ wooden babe--
Blooms fruit of Simple Thought.
Here sweetest wishes ripen
By uncaring hands ne’er wrought.

Tender hands tend tender tree--
How foolish they must seem!
Those who care for wishes;
Those who pray upon a dream.

So long sweet fruit did fall
Untouched but by the ground
Undreaming-- you are lost
By simple mystery confound.

I have felt that feeling again tonight
Saw the eyes of my father in my friend
Heard the four
Most evil words
from a trust, I felt sure in
“If You love me…
there is in it
a gamble
not worth pursuing

it is to tread waters of solid friendship
how it bends
for one need not another
I do not want to bend
Nor can I any further
The arch in my back holds a boulder on a twig
In the mud over a racing river

are the tears of now worth it
Do I deserve this?
For proving my worth
Or are they
wrong for testing it?
I wish she knew of my heart ache
Of all my weakest moments
But most of these days
those moments belong to her

To what do you owe your savior?
Did they really save you?
Or are you now in a new kind of madness
Trapped in the same game but a different classroom
Never learning how to ask for an exit

Ill give you a hint
They never built a savior or an exit
You are your own key
And prison

Now I sit in my sanctuary
Undreaming dreams and unfriending thieves
That I no longer wish for
Away from familiar

I see that I am always the same
Will always be the same
Just less and less
Hopeless
Less of service
Less capable of letting you behold it

My key
My prison
You may no longer be a hold of it

I know a certain kind of sadness
That does not want to wallow
It nurses your bruised frame
And lets you release
Whatever you found to shackle yourself with

Out there, in that cold inhuman space,
Some will never return home to loved ones,

Tonight, they sleep the sleep of the undreaming,
Their lives exterminated by bullets fuelled by hate,

Butchery raged in places of peace and serenity,
The songs of children strangled by a merciless darkness,

Know this, know this, you who sow terror and division,
Your barbaric symphony will never tear us apart,

Mercy is our song, Love too,
And we shall stand together as One.

morning tapped
the window

go see
what night has left you

                                                       (along the strand
                                                   waves in bright sways)
                                                     )pitched salty sparks
                                                      in pounding sprays(

do not
always choose comfort

or seek the familiar
it is fine

to ignore routine
to hold hands

with spontaneity
to wake

from a sleep
undreaming