There is an upside to having suffered with nightmares

all my life, the terror that has had me screaming out

at four in the morning as the feeling of cramp

sets in and the heart jolts me awake in some antique form

of Hypnic Jerk and the pain is compounded

by the

sweat of salted tears that kiss my lips and

run down past my nose,

gliding as if on a mountain range,

a single skier running over every pore but

with no tricks up its sleeve.

 

The upside is my expectations of life have always been low,

I have lived each day as if it was my very last

and on many occasions I have come close to

understanding that sense of completion and half celebrated feat

but something always pulled me back, something

I couldn’t comprehend, as if I knew

that life in all its absurdity wasn’t quite done with me yet,

it still needed the target, that I had to realise

fully that some days you have to suffer the social embarrassment

of allowing

the Chihuahua to hump your ankle to get the Rottweiler off your balls.

 

I miss the past as if it was some golden age of exploration,

no rudder or misguided and incorrectly set

compass pointing the way, just minute

to minute choice of where to go and what to do

only placed into the bigger picture

of where to be in one year’s time,

the problem with the grander scale picture,

it doesn’t allow for the compass pointing west

when east was always the way you should have gone

and a walked out of party saw the slow decline

of fortune and the bullet preferable to the noose.

 

Nightmares, at least they show I’m still breathing,

and I would rather suffer them forever

if it meant that your dream came true,

yet I win in a way for my nightmares constantly change,

evolve and progress, not stunted by completion;

once your dream comes true, your childhood fantasy,

poured over in great detail, all the colours painted

into the scenic background and realised,

just how do you get that Rottweiler off your balls

when the Chihuahua finds another

ankle to hump.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015.