The Old and the New

 Poetry 13

Give me silent sleep over dumb dreams of anxiety and worry

Everyday things where everyone is mad at me

Unnerving in its accuracy, the dreamscape uncanny

Hyper-unreality out of the pages of the book in my brain

Starchy, crisp, flimsy, torn

Ragged edges, underlined passages

Smudged and worn

Bent and dented

Knicked and scratched

Missing jackets revealing broken spines

Read my mind from back to front

under halogen lights and moonlit nights

Stories to bore you half to death

and some to make you pull the covers tight

The worst times in my life go forgotten by everyone but me

Etched and scarred and burned and charred

Branded into memory, a brand upon the mind

To revisit in the dark where regret and pain

mark the spots where it all began

But I've learned to restart the spark on a whim

I paid the price within

and came out on the other side resolved to win

What is dead can never die

but rise harder and stronger

Unbowed, unbent, unbroken

A token of my own journey, my path is my own

Every crumbling brick, every overturned stone

Weeds growing between it all and I feel it all under my feet

I know there are greener pastures, my best days are ahead of me

The future is in me, I'll manifest it on screen

Vision sutured into destiny, the word is to be