Adrift

 

Rudderless in a sea of broken dreams,
My declining state of mind entwines
with a tentacled sargasso that pulls
Me downward, downward into black, cold,
Unrelinquishing water.

 

I love the land and all her beauties but
Do fear the sea and have never gladly nor
Willingly ventured upon a bark in search
Of adventure high or low that would risk
My terra-bound life by the perils oft
Regaled by les ultimes survivants.

 

Adrift in my thoughts, I roam the scary
Shores of what this craven man fears the
Most, the uncharted waters of the soul and
Spirit that Will surely swallow down whole
This flailing, gasping wretch until every
Sign of life, hope and vitality is
Extinguished in Death's throes victorious.

House of Pain

Tonight's sunset is as spectacular as any I had ever viewed from the kitchen window in my former, beloved home-sweet-home.

A tiny abode it was compared to my current habitation. No longer within a mere four wooden walls of plain aspect and diminutive scale, I now am lost in a seeming infinite architectural spread that reaches toward earth's four points, an edifice of four expansive levels that demand I walk, climb, explore every one of thousands of hidden nooks and crannies. I am compelled to do this but find no joy in discovery. I want to go back, go back to the simplicity of my earlier life. I cannot.

It is becoming dark out of doors, a furtive, watery sun having limped its pathetic course through the closing chapter of a gloomy and damp spring day. Its brief, craven appearance has created more shadow than illumination, and this has tended toward my unease, prompting me to turn on each light of every room on all floors. I am alone - sometimes it is all right to be alone - but not at this time. This dwelling space of loss and loneliness holds me captive and I want only to walk out the door and go home. I can never go back.

I have been locked up within. No one hears my cries for help. They are swallowed down whole by the grinning and cruel emptiness of an outwardly beautiful home that has no soul so has stolen mine.

No one hears my cries for help. They are growing fainter.

I am silent as I watch the sun sink deeper and deeper into an eternal night. It is beautiful.

It is beautiful....


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Moving

I spent my entire childhood climbing up mountainsides, and, when not up to that daunting challenge [for whatever reason], I would settle for climbing a tree. What little boy doesn't love to climb? To see what lies beyond his tiny province? Perhaps a tall ship's sails looming on the distant horizon promise escape to that faraway land where Peter and Wendy and Jonathan and Michael now live. A kid's got to have adventure in his heart, if not in his own neighborhood, otherwise he'll shrivel up and blow away.

Well, my dad was a salesman and it seemed everyone in his district already had a Fuller brush of some sort as well as a stock of J.R. Watkins Natural Vegetable Oil Soap. His regular customers liked him for his friendly and honest manner and bought freely from his traveling store. The time came, however, to pull up stakes. Since my parents never had the capital to buy a home of their own, it was no big deal vacating a rental and locating a new one. Of course, the little apartment or house we bid adieu was left sparkling, all spic-and-span. That was Mom's and Dad's way. It spoke well, too, of the products my dad hawked.

When I said no big deal leaving behind a dwelling, I was not talking about the pain of being uprooted from the neighborhood and its beloved denizens, whether two-footed or four-footed. It seemed that just when I had made my nest in the crook of a favorite tree or discovered a poison-oak-infested mountain trail leading to hidden treasure twenty paces to the north of hangman's tree, I was admonished by my firm but not totally unsympathetic father that there were new hills and dales and seas to discover ... in a new town.

I didn't realize at the time of my agonized, perpetually uprooted youth that Dad had ever been a kid. How could I? He was an adult the entire time I knew him. Now that I think back on it, when he was out watering our sparse patch of green at my most-favorite-ever cottage, he always had this huge ear-to-ear grin on his face when I hooted and hollered and scrambled up the old Maple in our front yard.

Dad never told me so, but I have a sneaking suspicion that when he was a kid he loved to climb trees and mountains too.

I Awoke With a Start ...

 

I awoke with a start and sat bolt upright in bed.
 
I was dreaming ... perhaps I still am. There is no doubt about the house, however. That house. At this present moment are set before me the orderliness and tidiness of Mr. Clean and Jeeves themselves. I am home. My own home. Yet the smell and disarray of a dwelling long neglected persists in my nostrils and before my disbelieving eyes. Those who held title to this sinister house could not have known they would never be welcomed here. Not truly. I have no idea why I said that; perhaps it's just a feeling. Why I should think it, much less say it ... As I said before, I could still be dreaming. Scenes from my dreamscapes make sense like visions of Alice in her little world of wonder make sense.
 
Whatever this all purports to mean, I am certain of what I heard, what I saw. Something at the top of the stairway was moving. I was finished, at least for the moment, with taking inventory of the large container addressed to my mother. Time to investigate. I'm past fear. Well, we'll see.
 
Grabbing the banister - not unduly concerned about its filthy state - I pulled myself upward, slowly, as though my legs alone could not adequately perform the climb. However dark the upper landing might be, there was a sensation of movement that my gut picked up on, let alone my eyes straining to discern what should have been even the most obvious indicators of a presence. Atop the landing - at long last, it seemed - I clearly saw what had been moving, though I heard nothing but a muffled sort of cry. A door was swinging open, swinging partially shut, ever so slowly, gently, back and forth, from what could only have been, to my way of thinking, some draft. Perhaps an open window in the room behind the door. I hesitated momentarily, not initially from fear, but because that muffled cry broke sharply into a cutting sob. I felt myself blanch. A tingle shuddered noisily up the spine.
 
The door, of its own accord - so it would seem - opened fully before me. I looked cautiously into the spacious room, a bedroom ...