It would almost be spooky if it wasn't so real.

I am haunted by the sordid scenes,
Faded and yet not gone.
I am trapped here by a thudding heart.
As terror strikes too close to home!

There is no way to steer around it,
No marked roads to guide my flight.
I am destined to meet this unholy beast
Night after night after night.

I may shy from the passage of day light,
Shun friends and family;
Those who point to life’s glad trappings,
And suggest there’s something there for me.

It’s not at all that the sun bedevils,
Though it bears its share of grief and pain,
It is merely the hood drawn down
To mask the trembling,
As twilight arrives, as the night takes aim.

And though I try my best to explain
This fear, it seems, can only be mine,
A terminal tumor that grows within,
An evil blight cursing a lifetime.

And I have shared my grief with E. A. Poe.
Tears mixed with ink in languishing poems.
I have said my fill of “never mores,”
Shunning sleep for the kiss of the sweet Lenore,
One last kiss from the sweet Lenore

I have wept my long and sad farewells,
I am left to stumbling in the dark.
I have begged release from this house of woe,
This chill that fills my frozen heart.

I whisper, “won’t you set me free?!”
I whisper, “Please be gone!”
I beg the shadows of my room
To never cross my path again.

But there is no one here to hear,
There is no one to respond.
No one here to heed the words,
My plea for peace,
The gentile wake of dawn…

Yes, sleep she is the fickle fiend.
She waits at end of day,
Holds the key to happiness,
Ever tempting with her pleasantries.

And in her cool deception,
She comes so very late,
When the world has long been listless,
Lids shutting down with a labored weight.

That is when she’ll softly whisper,
Promise demons to restrain.
I pray for peace in the darkest hours,
She curtsies low
Then,
In candle’s glow,
She takes me to her breast again.

Yes, she knows when I’m too weary,
To resist the sultry charms of sleep.
And reluctantly, I give in,
Obliging sweet necessity.

I let her take me by the hand
To a gloomy land by a far-away sea.
And there, beneath the silken sheets,
Once again,
She scares the shit out of me!


Michael S. True
6-26-13 last edit 8-28-14