The hours have been driving me,
miles upon miles have sunk the sky,
Florida now hangs from distant cypress trees.
I almost miss the exit ramp,
This kind of waking and sleeping
is controlled by a ghost in my head.
Now I am eyes on the corners
where a flickering sunset
swings between interlaced trees.
Feet juggle over a low flying road,
while tense hands wind and unwind
on a sullen wheel.
This country road I know well, but the
fading day wants to paint me out
of my own map,
the familiar takes upon it
many alien shades.
Hours are melting back
to sleep with the Manatee,
I grind through the gears
swing on a hammock of
slow and fast moments.
The driveway dives out
of a side-show hedgerow.
Car-parts rattle into silence.
Benumbed bones lag behind
as the engine ticks on in a
somnambulant daze.
House windows watch curiously
as a stranger to Ohio
enters a place it calls home.
I did not sleep that night,
the hotel room was already taking on
the chill ambience, smell, and sounds
of an intensive care unit.
Occasional distant laughter
in a corridor where people are carefree,
I pretend to laugh along
but thoughts croak and tremble.
I mean nothing to Cincinnati,
the city has no memory of me yet,
and If I die in its University Hospital
I will still be a hole within a hole
of a book never read.
During the 4 a.m. G.P.S drive
it rained a soft black rain
as headlights plowed into
the unknown.
Back in the hotel room,
I am still packing and unpacking
while somnambulant eyes
try not to see the looming Hospital entrance
emerging from a gray faced dawn.
The entrance is an electric mouth
that withers. puckers and reflates.
Beyond sliding doors, the day blanches white.
one half’s an arc the other a strobe ~ light becomes your coagulant
signals and synapses firing off sparks ~ try open eyes but you can’t
all bound together forming a dream ~ welded to the somnambulant
There are always a few
Troublesome “tickl-ings “
Daringly darting
In somnambulant slumber
Shape shifting shadows
Mocking the moonlight
Creeping through the crevasses
Of literary limitation
Weeping with the whispering words
Subtlety suppressed by silence
Like mice they meander the mind
Seeking sustenance and satiation
Borrowed brown shoes
Dancing in a dusty darkness
The arboretum is quiet today.
It is early,
yet too late
to spot a somnambulant space alien
emerging from the thorny bushes.
Do you believe?
I have seen the odd-looking sparrows,
with their razor-sharp teeth,
have fearfully
fed them the toenails of the toothless.
I have evidence,
my face can be read
like a well-used comic book,
the weirdness of reality
is writ there for all to see.
After a downpour
the small, ruined butterfly house,
drips shadows.
A darker than light creature
crouches there,
the squirrels dare not go near.
Trees here grow out of the soil
just as fast as they can.
The slugs cut through new roots,
they chew the rubbery innards,
of any overly anchored oak or elm.
Sunlight is jumping out of its nightly attire,
a superficial normality will soon return
to the slinking park.
It is time for my body to slip away,
beneath the nailed down boots
of a credible fiction.
Tomorrow, my 2-dimensional scream
will be featured on the cover of a coloring book -
it will come with edible crayons.
His wife dies.
You have seen it all before,
you can tell what will happen next.
He will recline in the home
that she has woven around him.
He will let the ivy
of their long years together
coil around his somnambulant thoughts.
The house grows imperceptivity
into a mausoleum.
Some warmth remains,
within her carpet slippers
and housecoats.
He keeps them close.
The cat will always be
the shadow of her hand.
He is a watcher,
not at the funeral or the cemetery,
but from the other side of a bed.
He arranges ornaments,
puts them back the way they were.
Takes out fading photographs
of them both on vacation,
good times, also
times when heartbreaking rocks
had to be climbed.
He places all those sepia moments
into a shoe box
she has provided,
knowing he would need it.
Fierce am I, and fearless
Challenging the shades of winter
Taunting its dreaded demise
Mocking the shadow's prognostication
Tickling the timid hearts
Of somnambulant lovers
Arising to a chilling challenge
I stand the guardian of March’s madness
Exacting a toll on all who pass
For I am February
And I hold no heart
But yours
Long nights
transcribe me into a clacking music.
Harpsichord bones and broken keys,
nailed to an out of time tune.
A somnambulant self-winding
pipe-organ, whistles
as it pushes moments around
as if time could be saved
for later use.
A mind-locked keyboard
is stuck in the middle
of a revolving thought.
I lay down in the back row
of a horn belching bedlam;
wave weary hands at the ceiling
conducting curse words
in the dark.
This is a poetry eerily populated with ghosts and mummies and zomboid creatures who go on living though dead from love.
— Patrick McGarth*
ZOMBOID CREATURES
no way out of the well…ceaseless pulley.
forlorn, deep is the grave.
for the dead, love is a bully
no one can save.
doped up, tears dry in somnambulant night.
bones rave toward the cliff.
a blind man’s bluff, i’ve lost my sight -
this zomboid stiff.
love dropped out; i’m eaten up with her scent -
bouquet of floral bath.
i pursue - a ghostlike lament,
off beaten path.
she sat upon the mound, of fresh dug soil,
wrapped up in her own grief,
a mummy terrified - a foil…
aperitif.
1/7/2023
Writing Challenge - Zip, Zig, Zag, Zing
Sponsor: Constance La France
Theme Z word: Zomboid
Used Howmanysyllables and rhymezone
*Obtained from Merriam-Webster
Glory be to the newborn December sun
how bravely it drips its frosty shine!
The backwoods bears are snoring,
bleary are the eyes of somnambulant racoons.
Right here and now, where the hedgerow
winks through its own bare-boned branches
the sun that plunged on through
the dim-eyed daybreak, all is now awake!
Sorrow climbs
its roofless tower.
Descends to be gut deep,
genitalia deep.
Now it has the weight
of rain clouds.
A smoked umber
moves through
an invisible throat.
Fine hairs
are stroked to arousal.
A somnambulant wrist
pushing a whirring hand.
Pressure rubs saturated sounds
though probing fingers.
The belly of a curving drum
thrums, moves us to a place
where nothing matters
but the next note.
hypnopompic hues
multifaceted jewels
confetti luminaries
a gift from mother?
i’m cosseted in
its incalescence
its wind chime colors
my mind’s fixed upon
rubies, sapphires, emeralds
even if i fall
into somnambulant sleep
i cannot chase dreams
chimerical blooms
cut gems of rain-and-moon-bows
that unfurl as i awake
1/17/2022
Fade city fade
the surf is in from lost town.
It rolls across the sky
it roams the streets as
a blood-splashing mist,
as a whale inside a belly
it churns the fear.
Fade city fade
the gray days are greyer,
faces crowd each window,
victims await their turn
while cinder-blocks burn.
Black is the somnambulant fright.
Fade city fade,
surrender your broken heart.
Your parks are camps in the sprawl,
the tented roam unhinged.
Glock law rules the unarmed.
You are too harmed
We care, but are not there,
and nowhere near
is there hope.
Perpetual beginnings
avoid uncertain endings.
The day ends
forgetting where it started.
One hour wipes a moving face
you had hung on the wall
thinking to mark a passing,
but there is no passing
only the begun again.
A tiny speck floating between us.
Your eyes flicker over it
tracing its erratic passage.
My features are wiped away
as your mind follows your eyes.
Only another distraction
can bring us back together
into the same space.
Abandoned footprints pressed
into the earth between night and day
Muddy shoes, empty, discarded,
their throats wide open,
mouths mutely appealing,
caught in the act
of escaping both dark and light.
Here, where elderly men sip tea with
the loud ticking of a communal clock,
unshod feet shuffle in white cotton.
Their thoughts begin and end
in the gaps between their words.
Perpetual twilight stirs the milk
in dimming eyes.
Exasperated attendants hunt
for lost shoes,
while the old men
play an invisible game of chess
with specks of awareness
caught as they are
between somnambulant journeys.
Threadbare, uninviting, almost claustrophobic,
And cold. I could not afford heat.
I put on the lights and felt an icy solitude.
No home sweet home for me.
Would I get attuned to my new apartment?
Lonely, I ate my packed tasteless food quickly,
changed into a cosy track suit, switched off the lights
and went to bed hoping for pleasant elusive dreams.
Suddenly melodic tunes infiltrated my slumber.
I wake. Upstairs someone must love old time songs.
Like a somnambulant I climb the stairs and knock.
She was like a mirage, shimmering in the haze of a desert.
Silently she beckoned me inside the warm room.
My name is Angel, she whispered. And the dance began,
Until tired, the haze of the desert enveloped me too.
Much later I woke.
I was in my bed. Was it a dream? Probably.
The landlord said the upper flat was empty still,
But to be occupied that day, Someone called Angel.
That night I did not sleep, but waited for the music to start.
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