SLEEP STAGES

Stage 1

In the beginning came the darting glances and the idle talk.

Alert and sprightly,

keen to know each other quickly

through the nonsensical gibberish

Arising from their sea salted breaths.

His mind rises away in search of new planes,

afraid the moment would not last.

Thoughts raced, captured, clung on desperately, something planned

To fall back on

Just so the future will not befall with a deafening silence.

Stage 2

Then progressions were made, slurred inaudible syllables became

absent as he needed no preparation for a public address.

Feeling at ease, the look and gazes held familiarity.

Everything flowed.

Easy pace, Easy smile,

natural gait replaces an affront.

Everything complex became comfortably simple.

Stage 3

Eventually words were not needed.

It spoke through her shaking

fingers when she lifted the weighted words on paper,

where second guessing was all that was needed.

Spoken in telepathy, the motion went through like monotonous robots,

knowing what the answer belies and hides.

Stage 4.

He reached a drunken stupor unable to flee.

A paralysis of the will, a stupefaction of sanity.

The voodoo has been cast,

Dead walking carcass, unable to wake from the most violent shudders.

The glass shatters and the screams rose

amidst the up-turned furniture.

To him, it was an orchestra,

Immortalized.

Untitled

It was noon when the picture was taken, I cannot

place it exactly,

but the picture must have existed. Me, and you, the

central encasement of the horizon, the background a

faded bluish blur,

which you handed the film over the counter, feverishly

demanding the man behind to blow it A4 and crumble

them cleanly into

jagged jigsaw pieces. You put the mangled heap into

a hard cardboard box and handed them to me, saying that

we will piece

them whole when we had nothing left in the burning summer.

___

Afraid of heights as you were, we ran up towards

the mountain in

the pouring rain, steam gushing from our little gaps and soles

like a freight train to Neverland. I teased and taunted at

your trepidations.

“Hurry up! Little Mouse! Stop clinging on the rails,

Small One!” You needed My hand as you reached and

grappled, to guide a way

across the suspended bridge, while a hundred feet below, the

unforgiving rapids rushed by. I would tell you, how we fitted

our feelings in the words

we knew, and I would tell you, what they meant when the

mandrakes keeled. You would stare perplexed in narcoleptic

yonder, exclaimed that I

thought too much, and laughed my thoughts away.

Time flew,

the nameless dressed in peacocks told that he would walk the gulfs

and move mountains

in your Name, just to have a flitting dabble with you. I took a

stroll across the street corner, the carousal spins joyful

children amidst the

protests occurring side by side. Pictures are taken, where

dreams are not yet shattered. Mindless white noise arises,

where the mock

police surrounds the area in case something messy offers itself.

It is the unbearably slow changes from movement

to non-movement

which all of us fail to perceive. And it happened that

slowly, only a time apart could we see the changes occuring.

Sister, do you still

remember the time when you’ve told me of your dream,

that we were the only ones wading deep beneath the ocean

floor, fishes drawn in

pastel rainbows and wondrous hues, While we trudged along,

with none, but us two? The past haunts like the time of tides. Now,

the scattered jigsaw slides

in my Pandora like ebbing waves carrying sand into dusk.

The colour from the pieces has already faded, or was it always in

black and white? The companion

in my mortality is the wisp of smoke curling into thin air.

This I saw in the movies

My tumoured soul
skirted up the mole-hill
when everyone was asleep.

With a knife,
I carved and stabbed,
Peeled and forced a hole into the back of a
tree.
I levered the steely blade to and fro,
frantically, uncontrollably, while
it cackled at
me.

And I whispered my secrets into
the little fist,
burying chunks of earth quickly
into it.

The Fortune-Teller

The fortune-teller predicts:
you will turn out fine, live life, fly high.
You claim her edifice,
and smiled smug above her sighs.

She hummed deep vibrations,
only your worm did sense.
And that night, you dreamt of
a sadness none understands.

The Infatuated

Her scarlet lips, cloyingly sweet.
Putty white skin, soft and plush.
You worship her lips, her eyes, her cotton hair.
You kneel before her gazelles, her hills, her glistening dew.

She smites you dry,
At times so hard
You struggled to even breathe.
Its her way of letting you in.

You pray and She listens.
She digs them out
and plants them in the open
Its her way of exorcising your demons.

And her smile washes away the sins,
The bastard liquid she offers him life.
Drink my mead, she says, and so he did.

He sacrificed more than his eye,
To learn to love to cry.

A Walk Underground

I drifted through
a wall of sound,
Each ebb paving
a new nirvana.

The first window was lounge,
Another was low and loud.
Each dull thud raising
different notes.

I skipped a beat on one,
and rode on another.
Before I could whistle,
I had already misplaced
the former.

I walked out
of my abode,
Pass a bleached branch,
Mound of molten dust.

Eventually,
we shall turn into the may-flys
when the sun sets to-night.

Poet's Dream

He wants you long sighted,
To pull the words close,
To see only dreams;

Or the Magi,
captivating you in his moment,
proud of his mystery.

He is the other face on a trick coin.
Only thing you did not know.
So he plays his cards,
Pining for a bucket of fame.

Is it heads?
Is it then tails?
The only truth is:
Both are lies.

No sooner do you fathom,
He reinvents reality,
And denies his former creed.

He is the floater in your cornea,
the Mirage,
Effectively agreeing to be
a poultice to your scars.

The Dying

He lights up his Luckies
after lunch,
waves his plastic, in an
affected swagger.

To kill time,
he watches the bug bite into his spot of soup.
He smirks, sensing its pompous joy.
It feeds, pulls back in pride,
and dives into its find.

He smirks one last time,
Finishes his cancer stick,
(lung-cloggers he fondly calls them)
and begins his day;
A self-made man.

The Worm

It never quite dies..
Writhes when slit, yet,
for all that drama, it lives.

When I went into the water,
You knew I was gone for good.
So it is true, rebirth is sure.

You desperately clung on,
and imprinted yourself on my newborn.
The worm crawls its way into my new pliable ears,
swollen lips, protruding black eyes.

A Rebirth, but with
A Ressurrection,
because your selfish nature was never quite willing.

And so becomes that thing,
which fights the memories alone.

An Ode To We

You ran across the Earth,
Unknowingly,
Coming back to where you’ve
Started.

Was it worth the lot?
“Yes,” you say.
Even if it wasn’t,
I can only guess as much.

My turn.

Everybody’s running.
I thought you wouldn’t.
But you did. Who am I to kid?
And I joined in just the same.

Now.
We came to where we’ve started.
None the wiser,
All the older.

Yet the demons,
We picked them up along the way.
They've decided not to leave.
Never will.

So we continue to run..
Just the same.