Photograph: ©Copyright 2006 by John-Ward Leighton
DRIFTED AWAY INTO OBLIVION
The afternoon has fled
as I slept the day away
as if dead.
The time is gone
but to where I do not know.
One minute I was here
and now I'm not
I'm hours further into the cosmos
a journey I was unaware of
and none of my dreams
remembered.
I still have thoughts and language
I still have hope, joy and rage
I still have all those questions unanswered
and unseen
and the trash can of my mind hums
with all those things I might have been.
The late fall chill creeps up my legs
and stings my ears
and now time drags
and minutes fall like frustrated tears.
The sound track is the hiss of car tyres
and the screams of addicted lunatics
as if in some hell's fires.
A siren screams down the mall
taking a long time to get here
and then Doppler's away
quickly in mid wail.
The rain hammers on the skylight
like some desperate soul wanting
to be let in or get out
and the drip drip from the leak
accelerates or pauses
like teenage lusts
depending on the direction
of the cold wind's gusts.
My eyes dream of things
unseen on this screen
and my soul searches vainly
for that silent theme
as I wrestle with the
almost rhyme
and try to get my speeding brain
to stop this rush of time.
My left brain chides my lack of spell
my right brain doesn't type so well
and not having the privacy of page
I depress the repeat delete key in impatient rage.
No balled up piece of paper
for cat Pal Joey to fetch
just words stuck in my craw
like a boiling acid belch.
Full pause now as I read
what has gone before
is this enough
or is there more?
The thought and words were here
a thought, a story, perhaps a poem
but now its gone
having
drifted away into oblivion.