To Dream Grey

Took a second look at this poem, at all my poems. I think it's fair to say I've come a long way. The need to be better has become a necessity. I am greedy. This dissatisfaction forced me to grow.

 

To dream

 

How many little pinpricks of light does it take to cut through the darkness?

 

For it to bleed its opposite?

 

For it to collapse in on itself

 

A tree trunk old

 

Tasting the dirt it fed upon

 

Opening up its pores

 

Its many leaves,

 

Withering

 

Skin in patches, wallpaper, peeling

 

Eventually, the bugs find their way into the higher reaches of the tree

 

And the reaching branches lose their strength

 

Wrinkled like the bodies of older men

 

Pitifully empty of vigour

 

The insides, warm, worn-in, tender

 

For the worms to dig through

 

For the soil to grow

 

For the death to live, thrive

 

I see many of them as I hike in their open graves

 

As I balance on their brother’s bodies

 

Cold

 

Dead

 

Beautiful

 

Pretending they can hear me

 

Breathe

 

Eventually, each one following each other

 

 Drop like hatchets

 

The flies that buzz around their feet

 

Under their toenails

 

The little insects crawling out of their wet throats

 

Their empty mouths

 

How many pinpricks of black does it take

 

For the sun not to rise tomorrow?

 

For it to fall on its steady climb

 

Sliding down the side of a mountain

 

For it to roll off the tongues of men

 

Into the sewer grates

 

For the black chess pieces to devour the white

 

So I can see

 

What blind men dream of

 

To hear the sounds of form and shape flake off my fingertips

 

For the world to fall into a deep sleep

 

And dream of black

 

In this sea of white light

 

The city shimmering on a vinyl horizon

 

Capsizing itself in the deepest of crevices

 

The cracks on the face of the earth

 

The smile lines

 

A graveyard of life

 

Dying out like a candlewick

 

Moths are not attracted to flame

 

It is the darkness that surrounds them

 

That brings butterflies like me

 

Closer to death

 

I watch the moths, sheep

 

Gather around it, circling like goldfish

 

Chasing it, catching colour

 

Looking, searching with their dumb stage lit eyes

 

Pulling myself out of a black hole

 

Sinking into the night

 

Calling myself brighter than them

 

And the chess pieces wander a board of checkered squares

 

And the hands intend to tangle themselves in a river of fingers

 

And the heart flutters and picks at its ruffled feathers in the ribcage

 

And God watches as the devils of treble clefs

 

Dance on sheet music

 

And my fingers fill the holes of my clarinet

 

Playing in the darkroom

 

With the lights off

 

To dream

 

And eventually

 

I suppose I will be so rusty that I won’t make but a sound

 

But the black wood of the clarinet

 

Made from the torso of trees

 

Tell that

 

Many pinpricks like me

 

Have stabbed out the eyes of bodies of light

 

You cannot fault me

 

Stars line the arch of my back

 

You can connect each dot through the stray fingers that have touched them

 

Through the good and evil that light and dark could never hope to be

 

The hands of the clock

 

Bent over backwards into overtures of saxophones brass

 

The concrete caverns that held together the orchestra of one fist

 

The stretch of space like a cats cradle in the sable eyed night

 

The worms slither through the dirt

 

And I cannot help but wonder

 

To dream

 

To be black and white

 

In a grey, grey, world

 

The pencil lead I have smeared against my writing hand

 

 The branches my fingers tangle with

 

The buildings that line the streets where rain shatters into memorial

 

Where God shatters into memorial

 

Where dream becomes memorial

 

And prayer becomes silence

 

And silence becomes hate

 

And hate becomes God

 

Where God has become so ample

 

The brightest red apple

 

The nail of the cross

 

I once devoured bibles

 

As if the blood of Christ could wet my parched throat

 

Praying with my gravelly voice

 

Until my buried speech would find its way out of the ground

 

From between my crooked teeth

 

And shape, and sound, and light cascade

 

As the pavement trails on like sentences over the dirt

 

Another hidden passage in the word of God

 

Slithering snakes like the laces of shoes under the foot of man

 

And hate flows through the veins of my mortal enemies

 

Cold and white

 

And the darkness strays from it

 

And I hide in the forest

 

And they find me, still

 

To dream together with

 

God bruises his knees begging for forgiveness

 

And I still

 

Am just another shade of grey

 

One day in the cemetery

 

The dirt and grit will come up to reach me

 

To line my skin and skin my lines like a poem

 

And my roots will coil around ringed fingers of the tallest trees

 

And be but a pinprick

 

In the gravel of an uprooted sky

 

Collapsing inwards

 

Tasting what fed upon me

 

Psychedelic elegies bellowing under umbrella of melodies

 

Swallowing my words whole

 

And leaving behind my unnecessary, emotional, dreams

 

Buried along with me

 

With the tree trunks, like pinpricked patchwork

 

In the dirt

 

Grey

 

Neither here nor there

 

Neither left nor right

 

Neither black nor white

 

Where the cloud ballets into a marooned sun

 

Where the hairs on my head iridescently pestilential beckon on requiem

 

Until the skin folds in on itself an old book

 

Until the body sags like loose garments in the breeze

 

And I wear my own corpse, stiff, tight

 

Over the bones

 

Until my baroque bouquet of oceans grey

 

Parade in cadence séance of samsara volume’s polymerization

 

Swallowing me whole and spitting out

 

The next flower

 

So full of colour

 

So bright, a neon sign from God

 

Asking for death’s hand

 

Timelessness along with that which doesn’t know time yet, young

 

For the first of many

 

Or my one final dance

 

In this onyx monochrome stygian, porcelain, dream

 

A rabid dog

 

I slay those make me the harmony

 

To someone else’s melody

 

My hands carved ivory obsidian of papercuts and bandages

 

Stringing together weather-beaten sentences stitched into the skin

 

Perhaps

 

I was born to balance on the tipping point

 

The slope of the mountain

 

The tip of the needle

 

The edge of the knife

 

Straddling the fine line of a verse

 

Crossing the frayed border of a page

 

The pinpricks of ink

 

Raining pavements of blue on me

 

Licking flecks of stars from the mop of my face

 

Author's Note

I feel like my poems in the last few weeks weren't well done honestly. My last good poem was probably Metronome, but I haven't been able to write something like it. I took my frustrations out on this.

Took a second look at this poem, at all my poems. I think it's fair to say I've come a long way. The need to be better has become a necessity. I am greedy. This dissatisfaction forced me to grow.

Being so necessary, it is both a curse and a blessing. I have improved. But I will never be happy with what I have. Perfectionism is impossible. And yet I still write. Maybe this feeling is what made me the poet I am. And maybe, it took away what happiness may come with improving.

I am finally happy with this one poem. Like I have been happy with others. When you write so much that isn't perfect, these few poems I hesitate to dislike, are paramount. They are what keep me writing, improving, and are my light, and create my darkness. Maybe that's why my work is often so sad, so bitter.

I'm addicted to the rush, and the pain of failure pushes me higher.

I promise I read every single review, and I generally will reply to them. I look forward to my next review, because it helps me learn. Even if it's just one word, I promise, I will be happy to hear anything you feel needs sharing. Whenever you write on my shortcomings or breakthroughs, or the themes of my poems, or share ideas and friendly criticism, it decides my next poem to an extent. I will listen, learn and be thankful. And 99% of the time, you'll get a reply unless you're trolling me.