I started hearing noises, sounds

and voices

in the darkness as I stole

the opportunity to sleep a while.

I would jolt awake, full upright

and that in itself would cause pain

down my spine, the creature of nightmares

inside my body

being summoned with mysterious

incantation by a voice that wasn’t there

and wasn’t my own.

 

The sounds I hear are overwhelming,

beautiful and damned, half of the battle

in which I face every day, I just seize

the moment every time to deny

anything beautiful

the opportunity to nestle in my cold dead

and dusty, maggot eating, torn flesh heart.

The occasional voice, the auditory hallucination

perhaps an over dependence

on the pain killers I dissolve

in orange squash, and wish

that could still be forty

year old scotch dying to be drunk…

 

I hear that voice as I lay down to sleep;

it urges me to fight every day,

blame it if you must

if just desired that

I would go away.

 

Ian D. Hall 2016