Awake
To a dream
That walks like me
Holds my reflection
But speaks unsteadily
Hollowed
By open air
Through windowless holes
Of ghost town shacks
A phantom
Abandoned
Still drifting
And mapping
Invisible pinpoints
To steady ticks
Of some other clock
Under the glare
Of some other sun
Striving
In vain
Grafting creatures underfoot
Rejected
Like a failed organ transplant
Banished
From its warm blood sanctuary
Surfacing
To sputter
The wilderness
Of wandering
The floating highways
Sinking trails
And vanishing tracks
Carrying
No option but retreat
Through dark curtains of follicles
And wire meshes of veins
The backbreaking calluses
Painfully
Gradually
Flaking away
To specks of a scar
Concealed
From waking eyes
Existing
Persisting
As a dormant key
In the stirs of sleep
Of a restless faraway being.
Nicholas Yandell is a composer, who sometimes creates with words instead of sound. In those cases, he usually ends up with fiction and occasionally poetry. He also paints and draws, and often all these activities become combined, because they’re really not all that different from each other, and it’s all just art right?
When not working on creative projects, Nick works as a bookseller at Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon, where he enjoys being surrounded by a wealth of knowledge, as well as working and interacting with creatively stimulating people. He has a website where he displays his creations; it’s nicholasyandell.com. Check it out!