visitors

his face is an alloy
he keeps his dreams
buried under the
enamel coat he wears
for unconscious
visitors

tonight is different
he writhes in the
stagnant sheets
with a hollow head
thoughts bounce
inside and echoes cascade
into archetypes holding
his stare and turning
the prayer shaped
hands into fists

only strangers can tame
a swollen psyche
it feels like a bruise
but heals under
a canter of laughter

hours will
tell you its time
to rest and let
the kernels of misery
climb out your spiderlike
hair

follow the purr
of the shadows where
the thrum of journal music
collects folds chuckles
whirls twitters and pours
into the pliant chamber
in his skull
tremors and calm
daggers evanesce
much like the tea
that wakes him

the soft milk
glides over
the soldier spoon
chemicals coalesce
his eyes newspaper
the events

the headlines rinse his thoughts
and stay as a reminder like
that gypsy laundry laughing
in the backyard

winter succubus. | WritersCafe.org

she ekes at my psyche 

trailing icy fingerprints

through the hallways of my heart,

while whispering the truths that hurt -

the ones i know better

than to acknowledge…

she knows the chinks in my armour,

after all, she cut them all out

in the first place

in winter months

her thoughts hold sway

and i recede

lost

quiet

huddled within the safety

of my trusty bolthole

she prowls the perimeter

keeping watch

and while her insidious murmurs

can slide through the floorboards

or between the planks i nailed

over the only way in

(or out)

she herself is unable

to ghost her icicle touch

along my pale flesh

now if i can only hold out til spring…

© 2010 jenniewren (J.W. Bouwman)

plodding

he told the boy that
there is a ghost
inside him

it’s not a movienhanced
entity that stalks the
broad bed covers but rather
a mist of the mind

you see when a boy sails
the severe starboard side
of family calamity you leave
the gentle fragments of insight
very little to go on

that ghost wears a robe
it catches the rising
light
it flickers for a second
then he sings the old rhyme
frankly the only one
this shaken psyche knows

the father told the boy
there is a ghost inside
that fertile laugh

but ghosts are only
the bones we choose
to play with at night

the boys ghost developed
gradually over the pebbles
of playgroundimples
and the screaming
puppets
parents
paint
and tell
you to believe the Book
without doubt

you have to talk it down
the father said
he gets a gravetching
in those tender eyes
solid as stones

the boy hopes to gather
some heavy fragments
tomorrow and place it
into the abundant sun
where
he’ll make a mirror

small enough to carry
big enough to watch
foreign eyes smile
through saffron tears

and maybe learn
to shave the grazes
off the ghost down
to the bones that
figments are built on

the nighttime singer

one pill
nothing.
except for the ether
fragrance rising and falling
between the pages of absence
caught in the blankets.
his head lies, his eyes
continue to swim in
the gyre of midnight.

two pills
flicker.
the curves of the ‘s’
fall off his tongue and
leave a spiral on the ceramic.
the morning will slobber
its honeyed tongue, and the
toast will jump
up and panic.

three pills
somber.
those voices sucked up their
cold hands. the shadows
buried the cuffs. because
the evening wears clothes,
clocks tick time, and tender
ghosts morph into my bones

tonight.
i hear the soft sounds of the
Nighttime Singer unfurling
the notes of slow chamber music
deep into my veins. my glued-focus
watches the slow dance of velvet
darkness hold me. She unties my
consciousness – still hanging on
with a white hand – and tells me
to rest, and let the liquid night
wash me and slowly evanesce.

PhilosopherPoet

P.S. – This poem originally appeared on this site:
http://www.writerscafe.org/writing/PhilosopherPoet/556247/

Between the leaves

For Melissa

If I were a gardener, then I tend my roses. They look after me each morning. I come down from my house to be in their company. I sit on my stoel there, a brown broken soul, and smell the earth. There’s no reluctance to do anything, nor obligation goading me in me greenhouse. I sit by the flowers and watch them. I lift a handful of earth, and smell the intricacies. I listen to the beetles, and the burble of the birds. It is five o’clock in the morning, and I sit in the half-light. The dusty power of a birth comes dripping around me like a doppelganger.

I am alive. I’m by my flowers, watching them grow. Sure the roses have their thorns, and my vegetables grow under the ground, and sunflowers turn their backs on me. It doesn’t bother me; even the grass I grow doesn’t feel green. They say that good work takes tending.

Thank you for your company. When I see you, my bones uncurl their coil. My foibles spill out of my mouth and awkward gestures. I’m thankful for the earthy company, and unsung songs that lay in the traces our voices. Your smile means that the moments are mellow, and that I speak to a person. It’s not a flower that grows in my greenhouse or a vegetable asleep in its bed.

Its person who comes up behind me, tickles my ear with a whisper, and slips a smooth arm around me.

PhilosopherPoet