A Ship in the Night

What of a dream, 
Surreptitiously dreamt,

Bent on confusion,

On passion that’s spent?

What of a dream 

Whispered faintly in ear

Dropped wistfully, woefully 

Worshipfully near?

Echoes of longing 

Ring dreadfully down

Reverberate shadows

Melancholic, profound.

Where did you come from?

Where have you been?

Hidden 6 foot under—

Denial within.

Too deeply entrenched

Too wistfully warped

Too terribly close

And too fearfully sharp.

This shadow of souls

The mystery of me

A puzzle I’ve puzzled 

Since my ABC’s. 

Enthralled with enigma

Imagination confounds

Both the head and the heart;

Discovery rebounds.

The passion decides

What the mind will recall

Yet teases comprehension

Sans wherewithal.

I gather the flowers

Yet they wilt in my hands

Mere corpses of memories

Grasping wisps of sand.

To fall or to falter

After shapes in the night:

Seems ghoulish, redundant

Paranoic delight.

And yet they evade me

But beckon me close

The wrongful whispers 

Of long-lost hopes. 

And so I choose slumber,

Sleep quiets the fears,

Of wishing and wonder

Numbing memories too clear.

And yet through the quiet

Anesthesia of soul

Sometimes in the night,

My dreams make me whole.

And I wake and I swallow,

Try hard to choke down,

The merciless passions

My psyche has found.

Why do I long 

For what logic has left?

Abandoned by reason— 

There’s a reason we’ve cleft.

It seems I love memories

More than what’s real,

Living halfway between

What I think and I feel.

How do I find 

The shore where they meet?

Where sand holds me up

Yet the waves kiss my feet?

I’m shipwrecked, adrift

In flotsam of mind,

Jettisoned jetsam,

Desultory, resigned.

In dreams love is fluid

It holds you afloat;

Paradoxically elusive 

Cupped out of the boat.

It holds you hostage, 

But you cannot hold it.

A moronic contradiction.

In french, love is shit.

Please pass the map,

I’ll paddle my way home

If only I knew 

From where I’d come.

Or where I was going

Or where I’d like to be

Or even what I need

To be set free. 

Dreams are a puzzle,

My mind, a maze,

Emotions, mere sirens

Reflections through the haze.

Depression’s a storm:

I’m sure it will pass, 

But I’m still a castaway

Without a compass.