Before four

Must be some-one

Wakes me pre-dawn 

At 3

Mind a maze

Organs ablaze

Quiet cacophony

Stirring the still waters

Must be some-thing

Which must be known or

Revealed to the euphotic zone

Poetry and ghosts arise

And mingle, my solidity heavy

Disruptive to the lucid dream

Must have

Second thoughts

Choruses drone, stuck

So it seems, 

telling, reminding

Of lighter times 

Than the chasm and coffin can

Offer an anxious creature

Of habit and habitation,

A disheveled dwelling 

And the slumber until

The next hour

Or

Finding what I must be

Looking for. 

Painting by Edvard Munch - Sleepless Night. Self-Portrait in Inner Turmoil c. 1920- MM.M.00076 - Munch Museum in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

Muerto de la Noche

A solitary soul stirs
this night around
its geared dial.

Icy on the rocks,

all that matters
bends the steel air
sparks subdue any singes

While other carbon bodies
lie in their nests
heaving gentle breaths
through resting rib cages
my feathers fall out
and the kitten chases them
under the couch.

Watching the speed of time
and loaded with momentum,
and anticipation
for the light that breaks

anything it touches,

it dawned over me,
 (after all) an awareness
that all feathers fall
at the same speed coin wishes
sink
under the weight of water-

sometimes out of sight.

The brown widow and I weave
simultaneous gossamer threads
from what we have left
of the night that never
imposes its intimate knowledge

without our consent

and an entwined desire
to witness this place
we seem to not belong
but are required to prey in
for survival.

The kitten purrs in a ball,
the humans snore, fetal in their beds,
while I draw out long lines
the nocturnal pace
themselves
into the unforgivable light.


Artwork by Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916), 'Figure reading at a table at night', medium-chalk, c. 1891 in Public Domain.

Wolf dreams

The  blood flows as current
through and around the brain
spilling into empty as I lay
down to sleep.

We say-Wheels Spin-
is this where we begin and end
that recapped thought, witticism, and dig
deeper as I have a conversation
with self, explaining
why Ezra Pound is not
considered
an American Hero-
although I fancy the lad,
I now understand and so
much evil clumps in corners
the sealed eyes squeeze and fold in
the car repair for son, the phone for daughter
colleges, dinners, stories and towels-
so many towels-folded, washed,
thrown down, tossed, appropriated in the rain,
picked up-creamer but forgot the bunnies
and the pain better not grow or settle down-
the ER is not OK today, I am OK, I say,
I am, I am, I am, I am, I am, I am
hear-not here,
my body belies deep breathing
and I still think
I sleep
too much.



Painting by Albert Joseph Moore (1875) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Turning over

At 2:24 dark, the mockingbird, and moon

Conspired to wake me,

I rise, finally, compulsive-

By three thirty both have fallen back down

It is only me awake

Again

In this nook, near a shelf in the world.

The cats all sleep deeply at this hour,

The only ripple above is me.

Already, I have sought in the low light

And scoured the flat surfaces for the source

Of the voice-

As though if I knew this

I could sleep through the music

Conducting words my way

Some sink in

Such as

-Begin and Again-

i-am-hear.


Painting by Oscar Florianus Bluemner, 'Moon-Night-Mood' (1929) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Two gather a world

They were sloppy and all over the place

But you said they were neat and saw where they were going

Instead of seeing white as work to do,

You saw the space as everything

in a corner of infinite potential

You saw the all books pile up you cared not to read,

you knew there were poems being written you wouldn’t like,

but listened to all the summaries intently

as though these beamings held up the roof.

Needing you to say, I like this view, you did.

And on the Future we stood atop,

not under, Trust

and knew it to be seaworthy,

come a flood,

having sailed and proven so

in worse storms than before.

This is why they call ships She

sails catching wind, why the butterfly

has nothing better to do but change into more,

We can pitch caution

And roll on, we were on track ,

you said this time

let us be wreckless and lucky

like you little lady. 

Painting by Arnold Böcklin, Villa by the Sea (c. 1871-1874) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Counting Sleeps: A Bah-lid

Don't I dream anymore?
How to say,
I mean the real you

pixel on a big picture,
just too much macro-clysm
to mouth out, I conceive.

Mostly,
breathing through it, as I
must.

Wanting not of mine,
not that I would
disagree in contentment.

And all of those steps made today,
left right traces
blown away...

Somewhere may we-
someplace, let us-want to
make some thing interesting
since I cannot sleep
under such a new moon.

For now,
I would join you since you too
are going my way...


Painting by Władysław Ślewiński (1896) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Some Irk & Blaspheme

That is it, 

what really bothers me is those,

those people with those thoughts 

that are so sheltered, she steamed at me.

Yes, that is what I said, 

the soul is located in the brain, pointing to his head, 

this older man said.

Why must you always go so deep, rhetorically, another time she fumed.

Free! Relatively...another he replied to me on a different day.

How obnoxious! 

My son observed an erratic driver cutting everyone off, he was late that day anyway. 

Dad got a raise. He splurged on a bunch of stuff and bought a brand new bed, 

my son said recently.

It won’t help him sleep at night, 

cash cannot secure him peace, I did not say. 

Absurd. 

All           Of           It.

Blasphemy.

Words have holes 

to sift and sieve fluffing up

some irk. 

“Blasphemy is an intelligence-based skill gem that when linked to curses, turns them into auras with 35% mana reservation.”- http://poehub.info/blasphemy/


Painting by Gustave Courbet, (1843-44) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Sleepy head, dream your own dream

Something said Sleep, and she did.
Someone said she should Wake-Up, she did not hear.
Some people thought she should give up, quit it-she didn't...
Somebody believed her dream, somebody didn't believe in her, she didn't know whom to believe.
Some thought she could choose, some thought Bad Choices, she dared to try, to lose-she must.
So few knew-
she woke up.


Painting by Johannes Vermeer, A Woman asleep at table (1657) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Half-wit Habitat

They came to me too,
just like you, the birds and the water,
serenity instead of sheep.

Yet the insistent migration,
predictably precisely on
Time,
became
beyond mesmerising.

Understanding holding your breath,
sonar is like sleep talk, let me translate,
Chosen few.

Including the enduring frigate flyer
over vast continents of saltwater-
suspended
with nary a place to land and nest.

A rare sight does not make it fantasy,
pteridactyls still soar
for weeks and weakly
catch flying fish in the skyway,
Survivor skills.

Flocks and pods abound,
we in the middle-straddled here
gasping for air, too bloated to fly
and in one eye,
masterminds
one half at a time.
Meanwhile, we Sleep
grazing.




Painting by François Boucher, Arion on the dolphin, (1748) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Salty seeds

Across the street tall sunflowers loiter casually
erect against the discontent grey sky
dropping back to night.

These evening hours offer no glow
save the ineffective citrus streetlamps,
whereby all black birds along the wires
wring out some final notes, an outline.

It's safe to suppose
the sun wont come out from its heavy covers
tomorrow.
It is June already.
There are no high noons
or bright summer blues.

The cat peering outside
the window with me
just opened the door and left me
for more real things
than light projected
imagery.

And as the grey becomes plum
I lay and delay entering the fold
for fear
of waking in tears
again, chest heaving and caving in
to-night.

When the sunflowers slept
standing up to thick dew
I wept
with my salty lips persed
quivering and inept.

My substance too,
tiny inside.

The promiscuous sunflowers
stand their opposing ground
as phosphorescent agents
of small seeds at eye level.

Despite this disposition,
knowing blended night-
it is tempting to drop everything.

Their swollen faces
turn away from me too
in defiance of summer sun
and still bloom in full gloom.


Painting by Claude Monet [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Vestigial Flexing

With these tiny words
trickling over my skin,
these pithy lines I draw and scratch,
in my head from tucked deep in bed,
in broad strokes that spasm and spark-
streaking in wisps that leave light trails,
I am comforted and swaddled
by my brittle skin that knows these
are the strands that connect my spirit
to its terminal boundaries.
This is how I speak to me.
I say to hear, I think to find
the same self, tucked in amid
its ways of saying untranslatable
and delectable daunting poetry.

The heavy blanket protects me from
exposure- you cannot see more
than the shape of naked, the outline
is enough for some, sameness...
There is That, This is I, There, There.
I've found just
in another beating heart
that echoes
Thou art That-
Art Thou That?

I wonder, I think
it is warm around you too...
I must be closer to your world in words
or I am sleeping tight inside definitions
sweet dreams, where these words want me
passionately and privately
for their own subversive desires...
I listen intensely and densely rapt-
catching any waves of sound
that may keep me afloat, on the
shiny surface of sonorous daylight
hours, too conscious to care
any more to day.




Image of painting by Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov, Sleeping Girl, 1840 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.