It is often said that the dead
Are, forever, dead
And that only fools believe in ghouls.
But, having read
Of ghosts and vampires. When I retire
To my bed
I feel the dead
Draw near.
And in my troubled dreams I scream
In fear.
Yet ghosts and ghouls
Are for fools –
Or so I hear …
At times I dread
My dreaming head.
In the sunlit day
Nightmares hide away.
But, come the night
My terrors delight
In their twisted play.
All my lusts
Stay hidden by day.
But, in dreams
I play with prey.
Yet all lust
And fear of dust
Ends in dream.
When dreams turn to nightmares
On endless dark stairs
And you are alone
In your castle of bones,
And you pray
For the day
That may never come,
You are in the nightmare
Of despair,
Where there is nowhere
To run.
When they speak of light
You see only night,
But the endless black stairs
Of your nightmares
May melt away
Into the day
And the sun
May come.
I drink
My wine
And think
Of sleep paralysis.
Then, walking home alone,
I think,
On the wisdom
Of going to bed.
In nightmares
The dark
Stares
Within our heart.
And, when
Good men
Awake
They take
A look inside
Their heart.
And decide
“Is that fantasy
The whole,
Or a mere fractionality
Of me?
‘Tis fortunate none can see
Into my soul.
And the lies
Behind my eyes.
Last night I was somewhere
Called nowhere
For there
I stood
In the dark wood
Of dreams,
Wherein
Virtue and sin
Are merely seeming,
For we are dreaming.
‘Tis a fine
Line
Twixt the living and the dead.
The head,
So full of thought
Is, suddenly, nought
And many
Men
Creep
Away In sleep.
To some death is the final despair,
The never ending nightmare
For None can escape
Death’s suffocating cape.
Yet, if we know not that we are dead
Why dread
The final dreamless sleep,
The dust,
Into which we all must
One day, creep?
In the chaos
Of our dreams
We experience a loss
Of the control
That we, in waking hours maintain
And the oh so fragile pane,
Shatters, revealing our soul.
‘Tis good that none but we
Can see
How our consciousness streams,
Out of control, in dreams.
If I could paint a portrait
Of each dream and nightmare
There you would see me
Naked in love and hate
Conscience uncontrolled screams
In dreams.
In the lair
Of nightmare
The pretence of day
Is stripped away.
If you would discern
Me, then turn
And look behind
My smile to find
What lies within my heart.
But you do not possess the art
To traverse the curse of another’s dreams
Dare
I go
Bare?
No!
But on going to bed
There is in my head
The thought
That I could be caught
Out
And about
Sleepwalking.
‘Tis the nightmare stalking
My mind
That I may
One day
Find
Myself bare,
Heaven knows where!
K Morris - Poet 