What Dreams

What dreams have made me weak?

As tender darkness sweeps,

And the Sandman floats

In velvet cloak,

To snatch the day so sweet.

What night-time terrors roll,

As dreamscapes take their toll,

On tired eyes with engulfing sighs,

consuming bodies whole.

Do your nightmares overspill,

To your morning window sill,

When the sun's full blaze

Can scorch your gaze,

And taint the light that fills.

For there are monsters under your bed,

On your skin and in your head,

They crawl through epithelial cells

And coat your heart like lead.

Oh these dreams have made me weak,

They have tenderised my meat,

From break of day

To nightly fray,

They have made my visions bleak.

But there is hope here in this room,

In my quiet nightly gloom,

For even under deepest snow,

The lonely snow drop blooms.

Still I Rise

Still I Rise

Back Straight

Shoulders Back

Eyes front and centre

Body pushing forward through the bleakest of winters

Still i rise

Silence in retrograde

Loudness through forcibly closed mouths

Teeth clenched against the chatter of deafening doubt

Still i rise

Reinvention

Cut throat

Low cost

New shape, new sound, new skills

Picked from the bleached white bones of a past

So full of predictable whims

Still i rise

In progress

In search

Open handed i approach 

The single shaft of truth that will focus my attention

Turn my scattered reveries into tunnel vision

Still i rise 

I cant decline 

Can't stop the evolution 

Of the permanent impermanence of a tumultuous mind

Still i rise

Wings spread 

Head tilted

Sight shifted toward some distant greying cloud

A foggy silver lining, never daring to look down

Still i rise

Tongue tied and glistening

Wings clipped and faltering

Battle lines drawn against a world 

Always ten steps behind me

Never losing sight of the sky spread out in front of me

Trying to hold on tight but my grip is always …

… Loosening

Still i rise