Poems That Kept Me Up At Night – Nicholas Yandell

1.

Fear is space.

Space is fear,
Compartmentalized,
Closed spaced,
Concealed.

Common spaces,
In a cold place,
Where the rest of the world traipses.

Enclosed in warmth and vitality,
A lonely,
Quarantined,
Crevice,
Where whispered echoes,
Reinforce,
Every vile confession.

Force your way through,
The hanging splinters of imagery,
And fractals of light,
Twisting words,
With salty drips of condensation, 
And the sweet sickness in the air,
Alerting the nerves,
To the coming collisions,
Of steel jaws,
Inside your throat,
Ready to digest every scream.

The shadows 
To be known,
Shown a state of acknowledgement.

Recognition,
As a part of you,
One that spins on the axis of emotion,
To inevitably slow down,
Straighten out,
And continue on the road to the present.

2.

Find the creature.

If I could feed it a fish,
Or a bowl of milk,
Offering all I have…

But it sputters and shakes its head.

Only when I face it,
Give it a slow blink of acknowledgement,
Can I slowly bring it the light.

Go to the door,
Carry the gleam of exposure,
Long past where the sun has reach.

Find the flexing chamber,
Through dark and winding passages,
Twitches and ticks,
And a deep hollow growl.

Below the surface,
There’s no differentiation,
Between the blur of consciousness,
And night terrors.

A creature,
Torn,
From a childlike imagination.

3.

Droning low,
Like a jammed organ pedal,
Adjusted to,
Forgotten,
Only revealed,
Through shots of manufactured silence.

The muffled hum, 
Of an idling engine,
Deserted,
Running minimally,
Sustaining.

Breathe,
An accustomed blend of air,
That chokes the self of memory.

Take hold of a lung,
With a thumb and forefinger,
Squeeze it to the tempo,
The thump, thump, thump,
Of a heartbeat,
Uncannily askew.

Quietly,
Unnervingly…

Dissonance,
In the acoustics,
Of this hall of suppression

Leave a Reply