Shepherd Tones

Chairs have been sitting on me

with jumping beans flashing green,

just sleep and you will see

I can only live what we can dream.

I'm not sorry for my smile

but my bleary eyes say otherwise,

let us rest for just a while

and we can sing to the sunrise.

Not Ready for the Songs

The span of the season's wings en-

gulf my shaky sense of safety:

they drag my being to their nest.

Though I'd welcome to be nestled

within their feathery embrace

I would much sooner welcome rest.

So the robin that chirps for me

gleeful on those frosty mornings,

please leave your song until later.

They say it's the most wonderful

time of the year and yet the sense

of weariness is much greater.

Day To Day/Overwhelmed

Wilted and worn                           with little want
from the whirlwind                      stirring in my bed
of a day to day                             overwhelmed by life
tilted and torn                              by a feeling of can't
from the neglect                          that I've been drowned by
of a day to day;                           overwhelmed by life;
an overwhelmed life -               a day to day
with much to do,                         with little respite,
there's a drowsiness                   of mal-hydration
in a jaundice hue                          and a lack of light,
yet I can't keep up                        with life to live
when it comes to you                   and sleep to fight.

Waking dream; Working dream.

Sleep steady,

sedated by the bright midnight

waking hours

find me heavy eyed

drifting into

nocturnal dreams

of existence,

reflections

down the darkest shard.

A luciform logic

malnourished by choice, working on caffeine

to hold a roof above my head

the rain already

falls too much

and the alarm calls

for another day.

Night Gifts

Those gifts we sometimes receive in the night

are met by an audience expecting

to see on our faces, signs of delight,

but find the scattered wrapping perplexing.

There's no doubt thought has gone into the gift

and it is something we will come to need

but when there are presents through which we sift

never is it the instructions we read.

So the gifts are collecting dust, somewhere out of sight

and each one is in need of dissecting

but there's a danger that would cause a rift

from a prior warning we didn't heed.

Since, I've paid great care to each gift I've got

and rue every gift I have since forgot.

Noctambulating

The thrill when

wandering the streets

in the dark

and passing another,

a walking shadow,

in total silence—

both thinking the same thought.

Lost in the solitude

of a lawless and loveless

drowse.

The Sound of a Human

Do monsters ever cry at night in bed, snoring fast asleep?

Do monsters ever stop  and think of who they're going to eat?

Roar goes the lion;

growl goes the bear.

What sound does a human make

sleeping under there?

Faulty

The light powdering

through the hole in my head

can be seen through the hole

in my feet for I am hollow.

The fact that sleep

won't fix these faults

can only seem to add to

my drowsy sense of sorrow.

Floating on Rolling Hills

Cradle me in your codeine

cuddles

as multiples of

my out-

s  t  r  e  t  c  h  e  d

arm reaches to

yours, lain cold on the carpet; pressed against glass

doors, spilling over green

fields,

meandering rivers,

and lonely roads alike.

Waves of Wires

Waves of wires,

wrapped and tangled,

all worn and thin at the ends.

Waves of wires,

my brain has just wrangled

an hour of sleep til it mends

but world of worry,

restless and rotten

is an hour I can no longer spare.

World of worry,

too heavy to be forgotten

my wires are all burned and they're bare.

Another Day Done

I excite myself

with the promise

that with renewed vigor

I shall attack the day

when I rise to engorge

myself upon

what I cannot

this eve.

The deep and

profound need

to ingest

to imbibe

the new excitement

the newest marvel

the words that spill

from pen to pad

that reach the

toneless ears

of those

that lack the

remorseless hunger

of the novel.

The passion of interest itself

unbound

unheeded

untamed

must wait for

me to rise

again.

Such limitless drive

strains my drooping eyes... To bed. To bed.

Drifting

All is painless as I drift

into your

delirium of dazed delight,

lips clamped and shoulders frighteningly

still,

barely escapes a b^rea>th,

now wide eyes

[the teacher sensing the irony that he couldn't control his pupils]

I recognise the rhythms 

only your hollows make so well.

Shine

Dusty light filters through;

eyes wide,

lips spread,

rolling over shut out

of my head.

The echo resonates

soothingly

with the tremolo

fading; longingly

mellow.

Clouds and Cliffs

A landscape of clouds and cliffs

lurid in luscious green,

and sandstone rolls and lifts

into the twisted perception of dream.

Yonderly Shores

The susurrus brush of sinuous waves,

systatic with the siccaneous sand,

is soft in her sun-clad syzygy

guided by the virason's weathered hand.

The fusillade of over-turned fossils

foraminate the fool's merry frescade—

a farraginous flânerie falls short

of foaming footprints he's now forced to wade.

And so the shore laps up the shingled kiss,

an insatiable disregard for man;

insidiating with the sea to spoil

his own lecanoscopic day-dreamed plan.

And so the shore stops his saccharine kiss,

the velleites of man in ignorant bliss.

Helicoid

Sunday's splintered sunlight

punctures panicked moments

that the mind construes as truth.

A subconscious retelling

of Monday's mundane memory

that manifested in my youth.

The authentic narrative

from a nebulous night

in a morphinic stream

is surrendered seconds

of a worn-out waking life

wound up in last year's dream.

Sawdust on the Wire

Here it is, that feeling.

Starting at the centre of my sternum,

where I keep store my solemn secrets.

The same scene floods back.

Starting at the centre of my sternum

and, working their way up to my brain,

the same scene floods back;

sawdust on the wire.

Working their way up to my brain,

the new pills soon take effect.

Sawdust on the wire

dissolves in the synapse.

The new pills soon take effect.

Here it is. That feeling

dissolves in the synapse,

where I keep store my solemn secrets.

Cloud Walker

I dance only with colours

but the world's all black and white;

I laugh a lot in dreams,

but I can't say that of real life.

So I dwell on the threshold

of phantasmagorial bliss—

noctambulating my nepheloid nights

with feet rooted in the sun's kiss

New Year's Resolution

The universe becomes differentiated by day and cohesive by night.

Walls convolute into cloud
rather than clear figments of colour and orchestration.

Night is the synthesis, the absolute plan in its final form.

Solidarity of darkness awaits us

when human life has blinked out with no more left to offer.

Why then progress?

To know an end of darkness (a finality) is better, to some,

than to flounder in flux for eons and ages.

People who spend so long searching

just have to look when the corpse of day rises before the eyes—

it raises nightmares because it tells us of what is unification.

Unification is the constancy of dullness.

Unification is such an unsightly concept.

We want a human whole working in tandem together.

That is unsightly.

It denies that the world consists of an autumn:
vivacious leaves scattering in a tempest of close to no significance.

That is why we are taken by sleep in darkness,

because when faced with Unification
we turn away into the splendor of our own minds.

We want the time after the splitting of the tongues.

We are made for divergence.

But now I know that being human, a seeker of divergence,
is an ungodly chore of wasting.

A painter who paints constantly without rest

just to pull his eyes away from the terror of a blank canvas; the horror vacui.

This year I will reach a resolution

that transcends small fallible goals of self-improvement.

I want and will be unified with darkness and maybe a finality will be reached.

I hope.

Dream Life Away

Lately, I've found more meaning

in my dreams

than during the day's dreary blur,

so tell me

why bother to wake up

from a lucid life,

worth much more than living?