POEM / DREAM

The Ape on my Back

Night Terror

TOPENG MONYET BOGOR2.jpg, courtesy of Wikimedia

The tape replaying in my head

squeaks

in the dusk of my sleep

hangs insistently

like the gate you closed on its straining hinges

shrills in my ears, sacred ground of memory, haunts,

circling like hungry scavengers — they rise before my eyes

A vision of the sigh in the air; Primal in its scream

Still

While honeysuckles in the air,

swollen and heavy

with sickening sweetness,

of a Late morning, it was

The dried-out weeds

stiff with golden puke,

that wanted to spill out of my body, it was

the candy clutched in my hand

that roiled in my throat, the words came out broken like shards of glass;

Laying there on my belly,

I Knew the torrid nearness of breath mixed with sand —

But he gave me candy

this fake man, it was

then I discovered how to stare unflinchingly