NIGHTMARE

nightmare

rats crawled underneath my eyes last night

I held my breath and listened to their rapid little rodent

feet scurrying around inside my head

they whispered

but I could not tell what it was they said to one another.

a song began to play on a scratched up old record

somewhere in my ear, not the right, just the left

and it played until I loathed the song and screamed

for the non existent deejay to turn it off but he would not

then the strangest thing: I saw the Night.

it became an entity to me, not a dark passage of time

and moon but a being, tall and opaque and endless

I asked it what it wanted and it just observed me quietly

it's ancient eyes, not shining, not glowing, not alive

but staring, cold, in it's horrible fearsome form

and feeling me with snake like fingers and hungry hands.

I tried to run but I couldn't move. I lay there like the residents

of graveyards, molding in perpetual decay and dying ever

deeper, yet so aware. yet so aware of human feet walking

over them, rushing to their picnics and Sunday School lessons

and circuses.

in desperation, I brought my hand up to my mouth and touched

my face to see if I was there but it went right through me

and disappeared into a maze of beasts and chains and undead things

taunting me like evil school children on a playground down in Hell

I could not get out or away. I could only watch as they shredded

me to ribbons and ate my soul with ghoulish lust and joy.

I died and died a thousand times. I fell to ashes and rose up like

the Phoenix flying over bombed out landscapes and burning cities

full of screams and unheard cries and motherless babies everywhere

the desolation was complete and unimaginable but real, so real

the realest thing I'd ever seen and ever felt and ever, ever, never

wanted to see.

I found a haven on a corner and crawled

beneath a crumbled shanty's remnants, huddling in the mud and

growing darkness, clutching my ragged clothes to me with

broken hands and despair laying on my heart like bricks of

cathedrals blown to bits and mingled with the wings of saints.

and there I lay and there I stayed without light. without hope

without friend in God or man or beast or thing. friendless

and just when I thought I could endure 

and find peace there in the silence

the rats came back and crawled underneath my eyes.

©by Voo

July 29, 2005

midnight