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Song for the Somnambulist

I
A claret sky hangs up above, overhead,
Blushing at the coming storm's warm warning.
The heavily tempered clouds lightly tread
From the twilit night-spread to the morning.
I am restless, watching atmospheres pass—
An orbiting layer of glassy space,
An open window made of ozone gas
That closes by the wind's quickening pace.
Like a shadow, it adumbrates the stars—
The thick, transmogrifying veil looming.
The coruscating orbs cover and are
Lost in the condensing fog's consuming.
In my sheets, I try to sleep so soundly
In an abyss, absorbed so profoundly.

II
I amble through the murky surroundings
Like a drunken, strafing fighter—
Disabled by my own confounding,
Gassed out like a broken lighter.
My collarbone and jaw lay slack,
Cracking against the cool breeze
That controls the unconscious sway of my movements.
I wander forward only to fall back
From the tangling tease
Of my utter astonishment.

In a winding labyrinth under my cranial hood,
The forested pathways of my thoughts wander.
In cyclical, circular landscapes I stood:
Trapped in past ideas, vanished in ponder.
A coagulation of vaulting occasions
Snapped against my senses
As a rubber band would on a plastic bow.
Helpless I was in the oneiric invasion
As my psychosomatic defenses
Melted like microwaved snow.

I followed through the tension
And tension followed through my fingertips.
When the ground dissolved, I found suspension,
Evading the pull of gravity's grip.
I felt feverish gliding
Upwards to find the stellar traces of heat
That only heaven could contain.
Spaghettified, my body dividing,
I was split in the search lifting my feet—
A part of me left in the aching refrain.

Then, just as it had gone,
My palette was replenished.
My cells restrung in fiber-optic exon,
Polished in a purified finish.
On the other side of time,
I found the missing seconds
And allotted them to that which had disappeared.
I aparate to the sublime
And I'm disemboweled and reckoned
Once the sheet of night has cleared.

III
My loose limbs are reanimated.
My sleeping corpse becomes an undying stranger
In the amnesiac world
Familiar to me,
But so foreign to another.
I slipped through the hallways
Trying to find
Something—
Of what I'm not sure.
There has to be something
Somewhere,
But where?
My eyes are open,
But dull and glazed,
Coated with the pearly enamel
Of vagrant expression.
Saliva drips from my lips;
I'm lobotomized, stalking
The missing foot prints of my steps,
The vanished indent of reticent yearning.
In a hypnotic frenzy,
I scale the walls,
Climbing to an alien plane—
Away—
Away from the estrangement of hallucinations.
A storm rages outside
And I'm unfastened
From the knotting braid
That should bind the detached pieces of myself
Together.
I'm not entirely there.
I'm not entirely cognizant
Of where I am,
Of where I roam
Aimlessly and claustrophobically
Captured inside
The hollow shell
I call myself.
I want to find something else,
Something good,
Something that will rattle my consciousness
As I, like a submarine, dive deep, sinking
Into the fantasy that resides
Within my realms of reality.

And, after all, I'm only sleeping.

poem by Tim Stensloff
Added by Poetry Lover
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