On dawn’s dreary rise,

Do the dreams find an end.

Lost amid the warring wrack, dreams disguise.

You exchange one trouble for another, and they portend:

If they are windows into incongruent realities,

Then elsewhere, I live a dreadful existence.

 And if they are mirages of the twisted mind, I am the master of abnormalities.

And if they are things to come, there lacks the comfortable distance,

To stave off death, dismay, and disaster from their wanton perch:

A blizzard with the hale and a ship broken by ice,

Funerals and life thereafter, by a lonely church,

And creatures lurking in the haunted shadows from my demented device,

Held hostage by a puppet obsessed with emotion,

A listless head stationed in the dark,

A stalker by the door amidst the house’s commotion,

And echoing songs throughout the intangible park.

It is a choice between the strangeness of sleep or none at all.

Wary, who am I?

They persist disillusioned, where confusion can call,

And where meaning is like a blind eye.

Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash