Somnambulist.

[Doreen Peri]

I've been sleepwalking past
conclusions, unable to wake up
wisdom or the veracity of a pragmatic
dawn, my clothes removed like
a stripped waif and I chase myself
around adjectives which shouldn't
be written, defense mechanisms
redundant in my voice, the choice to
put thought down, my life sentence –
and for the death of me I cannot figure
out why I've tried to fit together letters
to spell out any point of it all.

I am a somnambulist.

I just took the scissors and
hacked my hair into layers because
my strands seemed to be embedded
with the dreams which would
never come out unless I cut them
off at the ends of the shaft and
now I'm frayed and eradicated,
played like the reprises of symphonies
never written, each tress landing with
the rest in the trash buried under
a bridge to the next verse.

Every time I look up, I curse
the goddamn sky for bulletholes
of light trying to seep through into
my brain and the insane part of it
is that I am undamaged by the way
Orion's belt always seems to tame me.

My left hand vibrates after I cut down
lengths of plant limbs untamed and
today I named a squirrel my pet as
he scurried up the tree afraid of me
because he had answers and I didn't
and the caterpillar's wormlike hairy spiny
larva of a beast implicated my reasoning
inch by inch trying to convince me I'd
be reborn again into a better, more fluid,
more recognized state after the winter
of my nightmare got uncovered with
snow plow reasoning because none
of this is real except for my right hand
as it shakes to play chords which don't
exist yet like I don't until the larva
becomes me again.

Death is a necessary vision just like
my father used to say before he vanished
into thin air and I dared him to believe
he wasn't going to return and he didn't.

Love like that is important.
I am a somnambulist attempting to
find meaning in the stumbling in between
dropping keys and recreating studio sequences.

Who can understand this drivel?

Those of you who sleepwalk past meaning?
Those of you who have your pen tattooed on
your inner thigh like some type of sexual revision
of yourselves; bloodbaths every 28 days? Or
those of you who have saved yourselves
for the lack of virginity with the sole purpose
of becoming once again by the ink?

Think about this for just one moment.

Then wake me up
so I can write to you about
the currency of a word.

[stilltrucking]

Who can understand?

"Can you bind the beautiful [c] Pleiades?
Can you loose the cords of Orion? "



Only us
Us the haunted
the meaningless
tumbleweeds




I can't find the words to express my pleasure in reading it
so I just ramble.

[mousey1]

Wonderful read

Enjoyed your sleepwalking ways

your delightful turn and twist of a phrase

So nice to stumble upon you here after so long a time of absence or was it abstinence.

I almost tripped over you in my somnambulant daze.

Fantastic.

Did you really cut your tresses? or was it a metaphorical act?

[Doreen Peri]

'truckin' - I donno who can understand. I don't understand a word of it. I'm sleepwalking trying to figure it out. If I stumble upon some meaning in the dark, when I wake up I'll let you know. Thank you for reading.

mousey1 - Thanks, lady! Yeah, I used it as a metaphor but it's pretty darn real. Took me a year and a half to grow my bangs down to my shoulders and last night I cut them off to the bottom of my earlobes then took the scissors and hacked layers other places. Remind me not to drink sherry and get inspired.

[stilltrucking]

your inner thigh like some type of sexual revision
of yourselves; bloodbaths every 28 days?

I may be wrong but I think this is the first poem you have posted since August of last year. That line almost put me off from replying but I liked reading it so much I said why the hell not. It don't happen every twenty eight days for me but about every thirty two years. Thinking about illuminara and her comment about "red blood on white panties." Only women bleed they say. But I have spent a long dark night of anguish praying for sleep and watching blood seep from my scrotum onto my white underwear.
Old Oedipus has nothing on me.

This post may not be creative but it is weird enough.

Henry III was right when he said Paris is worth a mass, then a poem must be worth a worth a haircut.

just an existential strip tease
maybe I will delete this
going to sleep on it
I think I may be nearing the end of these compulsive scribblings of mine. The more I write the less I like it.

[mnaz]

First rule of barber-ism: Hair is neither a reliable sign, nor metaphor of its roots.... And certainty of a 'vanishing point' for all intensifies love of one's path, and who gave it and inhabited it. Love like that is important. Or so it would seem....