Survivor

Words hang from rafters in cobwebs of silence The candle flickers on a window sill in pain Locks with no keys stare into closed chapters The poet’s unhinged mind holds its threshold Floor boards creak without pace like a ghost Out of step a lonely sandal slips into motion As slumber refuses to claim yesterday’s dreams The clean sheet of insomnia stares into nothing Reaps restlessness where slumber should reign A script of smudged ink and unfinished business Dances under the weight of dried tarnished ink He counts sheep into flocks of thunderous clouds All of them black howling at a camouflaged wolf A bloody pelt seems hung and quartered at night Scraps of thoughts tease the bleary eyed writer His resolve is crushed under cover in discomfort The crumpled feather pillow protests the squeeze Merely suspends for a moment tar oozing out Onto a slope passed so often it cannot keep track Of meaningless journeys for no particular purpose Direction leads straight to the pointless lack of return Wide awake and yet tired he removes the blindfold Unplugs his ears and touches the relentless void And yet he hears only a crescendo of white noise Has visions of tombstones veiled in ivy and scorn Presses the surface of an underworld of confusion Tears skin and recollects scars and wounded remains I am no one but who I am and have failed to become At last the inkster finds relief in an illusion of sleep Engages in nightmares and apocalyptic resurrection Grasps a few hallucinations and deluded images that Give him some resemblance of control over chaos Becomes his own metaphor and pictures escape Hopes that the one way street is not a dead end Loses himself for better or worse and begins to write ...