Nightman

At the dead of night, I woke

with the sense that my dreams were escaping,

all uncannily unspoken

like words at the tip of a foreign tongue...

As for language, I have none

to express quite what strangeness overwhelms me:

something's changed and something tells me

to be still in the roar of the distant stars.

The night's full of fire, ice and water;

by day I'll have clay in my hands.

The book is open at a well-thumbed mark

the odds are stacked that I'm facing.

Eyes grown accustomed to light and dark

can't catch the shadows they're chasing.

Open, my heart, to the vital spark -

a disordered rhythm is racing,

it's a dance macabre I'm tracing.

As the fire feeds the flame,

as the tongue finds expression in its flickering,

does each breath inform a name

to be dispersed just a soon as it's exhaled?

Was it to myself I came

or to some other strange and parallel existence?

Will I ever see tomorrow,

to wake and begin it again?

Open, the book at a well-read page,

hope triumphs over expectation;

open, the secrets of seer and sage

in awe-inspired anticipation...

Open, my mind in the body's cage,

unchained in consecration;

open, my eyes, to the wider stage

the firestorm of liberation -

the night in conflagration.

With a shiver down my spine

I come back to the place where I started;

the sea of consciousness has parted

but stranded is all that I feel for sure.

As nightsight declines into darkness

by day there'll be clay in my hands.

I may feel the clay in my hands.