Sibilant Dreams

I dream in sibilant tones,

The rush of Merlin's waterfall and

The dissonance between your yesterday,

The hollow spine of my empty tomorrow.

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You slipped into the crevices of my blank dreams

Like the fog rolling down the mountainside,

Softly without a trace of malice

And hungry for something I could not taste.

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Is it any mystery that you slunk away so quietly?

You were consumable.

Satiating to a starving stomach

Subsisting on pity sex and tangerines.

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It was a pity.

To see you shrivelled at my feet come morning.

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Did I dream of the clouds puffing from your lips?

Did I fabricate the pretty way

You played with my shadows?

A spring nightmare to compliment

My winter purgatory.

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You are passing through.

Corporeal in my memory but dust in my hands.

You've gone.

This was neither a mountain to conquer nor a depth to explore.

Simply, a prairie that bloomed months ago now gone beige.

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There was beauty here,

Gathered in the coiled prairie grasses touched by winter

And the fresh ozone gathering near the winter-wilted petals.

But you never saw it.

Never bridged the gap between yesterday's sunset and the bleak sun

Rising jaundiced on the horizon of war.

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You dissolved into chunks of ash

And floated away on the stale breeze of night.

The rubble and clumps of pulled-out hair

Remain where your feet once called home.

But this place was never more than a station,

A transient place where spirits dump their loads and leave.

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But it is mine.

My home to a long, spiralling eternity of grey clouds

And water dripping from leaks I cannot find.

This dust and debris wrapping its thin fingers around this city

Is all mine.

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The hiss of truth rolls through my ashen field.

I can taste the slip of the words on my tongue

As I hear you slide out the door of my dreams

Into a tomorrow my tongue cannot taste.

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Sorrow sleeps in the soft sounds

Of waves rolling through the tall grasses

And cowlicks of the land

While I take my seat and drift off to wherever my mind goes

When the visitors have left.

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And the hiss rolls through the dark spaces in my mind

Where moonlight cannot gather,

Rocking my tangled thoughts to sleep.

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Silver Serpent Books

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