FRESH NIGHTMARES

FRESH NIGHTMARES

Sailing down my private Styx,
Searching for a brand new fix.
The coiled serpent around the neck
No longer does the gruesome trick.
No longer in his vaunted mesh
My weary thoughts enslaves and snares.
I'm looking for some nightmares fresh
Brand new scandalous scares.

Nighttime is my fright time,
How like the lion it once roared.
My dreaming and my inner life,
Were the only ways my spirit soared.
Armies encamped on the field,
Mine vanquished by a slash of sword,
Felled by gargantuan guillotines,
The horror leaves me cold and bored.
I hope I've not become blasé,
I hope I'm not desensitized,
I think that I just need to find,
Some brand new theater of the mind.

Fresh nightmares to pluck at the eyeballs,
That leave me intoxicated with the rush of a highball.
Some new drama, perhaps an alien in the force field.
Some super hero enemy, thrusting out his shield,
Leaving me to sally forth and parry,
The weight of disease on my back I carry,
Into the confounded conflagration,
Like some ancient knight of yore,
A nighttime private exhortation,
Full of guts, chock full of gore.
My private horror movie screening,
Replete with blood and my own screaming,
Designed to waken my sleeping will,
My emptiness of days to fill,
Fodder for a novel perhaps,
Devilish accompaniment to naps.
Some twisted weird reminder that I am still here,
Vibrant and ready to conquer the fear.

I'm ready for the heady rush, all I need's a little push.
Ready for the night of the living dead,
The monsters in waiting beneath my bed.
Just give me a nightlight and a flask,
Then bring on the ghouls in their gruesome masks.

When all the muscles freeze and stiffen,
When all I have's imagination,
I toss my hat into the ring and join the celebration.
My dream life a perilous plunge deep into the restless sleep.
Of a tainted twisted fairy tale, where the handsome princes weep.
Trapped in some familiar once upon a time,
Where life was one of normalcy and endings so sublime.

Sailing down the river Styx,
Hopes and fears into the mix.
The same old tripe to the surface bubbles,
Mind-numbing as all my toils and troubles.
The frightful it can be delightful, as long as you stay fast asleep,
Fresh nightmares, new night scares, they crawl and they creep.
Meaning no harm, they disturb and alarm.
Leaving me shaking and stifling my screams,
Falling headfirst on the sword of my dreams.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2013
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

STREETS WHERE I DREAM

STREETS WHERE I DREAM

Haunted it seems are the streets where I dream,
The tunnels and the labyrinths through which I scheme,
The dusty, dim lit thoroughfares I walk a wounded misfit,
Not knowing where life ends or where my death begins,
Not knowing, alas, if I care a whit.

Care a whit for the sound of my tires swirling in the muck,
The ground up debris of what used to be me,
Before I gave up on my living and luck.
Cursed they be, the streets where I dream,
Or the streets where I hide in my nightmare.
Where I wake from my dreaming drenched and screaming,
And find alas there is nobody there.
Except the eyes of my lover fair who sees me through it all.
He cannot pacify me, I must go alone,
Tumbling like some reckless stone,
Down the mighty rabbit hole that I nightly fall.

Hushed and hidden away are my deepest fears,
The snake that coils around the neck,
The doctors commenting on the health of my heart,
They listen but can’t find a beat,
At the finish line before I start,
I taste the bitter and long for the remembered sweet.

Cracked and crumbling are the streets where I dream,
A bitter end where REM is laced with fear and danger.
Where at every turn, there’s a hell that burns
And an unforgiving stranger.

The streets where I slave and misbehave,
Destroying all vestige of hope and sleep,
A strange medieval museum slave,
I wake in a web where the mesh is deep.
Tangled like a vampire’s prey, I lie here and I waste away,
A man once so imposing and now so small and slight,
So willing to throw down the rubber gloves,
Surrendering without a fight.

The streets where I dream are grim and paved with hot coals,
The coals of recrimination, the coals of fear and blame,
The streets where I dream are a color scheme
Of viscous dark crimson where my spirit lies slain.
Where the lost coins are tossed in a messy blur,
Into the holy trinity of all that they once were.

Haunted it seems are the streets where I dream,
The dusty dim lit thoroughfares I walk a wounded misfit.
Not knowing where life ends or where my death begins,
Not knowing, alas, if I care a whit.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2012
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED