Tumble Down the Highway

Sleepless at morn, shadows under eyes,

stumbling from the foot of the bed to the pantry pill box.

Hazy with thoughts gnawing like gnats

orbiting about, catching momentum from incessant worries.

Drunk now from the sense of dullness

reaching from the blank page and injecting its will.

---

And the happy faces around will always speak the same repeated lines:

“The peak is in the background.

The golden days are graying out.”

And they’re always around the cul-de-sac of ethereal realms,

waiting to play as if the hours were rendered motionless.

I could be out in that memory’s sun and bask in the fading light.

The cracks of winter would be shed in the decaying glow.

---

Instead I sit up, a pitch-black sky,

monitoring the minutes passing by as rest evades grasp.

Hazy with thoughts gnawing like gnats

that gang about the ugly sphere of unyielding insecurity.

Curled up now, back arching down,

scrambling for a crevice to bury into and feel a permanence of warmth.

---

The visions bleed into ash if I’m careless and blink too fast.

Mist clouds the irises.

The ink washes off the script.

Phrases gush over the edge of the table and outline a pit in the floorboards.

I could sink into it and find the nothingness of a plotless conclusion.

But there’s a wave in the distance from a passing crowd,

laughing and calling from a rusted street sign.

---

Holding out a hope now on a chopped tree limb; no one is looking back.

Holding out a far hope to snag another’s hand; the chill of seasons rejects.

I know a name or two but I fear I’m losing it in the mist.

I want to keep one or two of you but I can’t see through the mist.

---

Sleepless again, shadows grow long,

tracing an empty frame since abandoned by its host soul.

Hazy with thoughts gnawing like gnats,

and with quiet resignation I let them crawl into my mouth.

( ❤ Mitch)