Bob’s Journey…

VI. COPING IN DARKNESS

Unhappiness caused sleeplessness which made me too tired to feel or enjoy anything during the day. No sleep medicine was available. I felt dead inside. I would have preferred to have never been created than to have to experience such emptiness day after day for so many years.. This went on for about ten or twelve years. They were the dark years of my life (of my mind). The good thing was that my wife stayed with me, and I had a family to be a part of and I had a job that I liked.. The support of having this structure was essential.

In the first poem below Amy love@ refers to my first wife sleeping beside me. The poems, Nightfear@ and ACome Death,@ do not refer to suicidal thoughts. I did not think destroying the body would be of any benefit but I had lost the ability to go to sleep naturally. Therefore, trying to get some sleep each night was an issue.

LEST MY LOVE AWAKE

Agony, agony, overflowing it comes,
  my mouth an open wound,
  through which I scream,
  into the night,
  but silently.
Lest my love awake,
  her arm about my neck,
  my sweet one.
She does not understand.

I raise my hand
  to catch the tears,
  noiselessly sliding down my cheek.
Lest they fall upon her arm,
  my sweet one.
She would not understand.

I slowly move her hand aside
  getting quietly out of bed.
Lest she be disturbed,
  my sweet one.
She will never understand.

I write down these words
  while she sleeps
  and then return to bed.
She never knows I left the bed,
  my sweet one.
But too much she understands.

ALIEN SHADOWS

Creep the shadows
  at slow pace
Through your eyes
  across your face.

Follows the darkness
  at full tide
Into your soul
  trapped inside.
 

NIGHTFEAR

I hold on tight,
  to the thin, thin threads of life.
I fear the coming
  of the dread gray wolves of night.
 

COME DEATH

Now my strength runs low.
What’s to answer death’s sweet call?
This I do not know.
Into its gaping mouth I fall,

But not to stay,
Somehow I blow it away.
And it is gone,
at least for today.

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.