Black and Blue Hours

In the emptiness of this space

rusting memories stick

like the thickest tar

to the insides of my eyelids

when I try to sleep each night.

My insides decorated

with the scars of the past,

which sits reincarnated

within the freedom behind bars,

widened veins, tired guts,

lost, and left bleeding,

an abandoned body;

my mind in its next life

body buried in its past.

To think, I thought

that it all would last.

The moon eclipses hope,

if I can make it to dawn

if I can make it to dawn

if I can only

make it to dawn

once more…

maybe the future

can seem less black,

doubts ransacked

instead

of multiplicative.

Lactic acid builds

in legs which run like machinery,

the floor hungry, moving

as fast as I can but

still too slow to escape,

stuck

in this dream,

in this nightmare

with feet of heavy clay.

The night stretches out,

the past and future in the room

bursting out of my burning head

the projections painful,

trying not to look,

slowly,

the blood leaving, tinting the

shade of the distant moon.

Grown weary by sunrise,

this beaten body collapses

and the memories are vacuumed

back inside, so briefly,

a sweet, momentary respite,

before the brutality of the past returns,

slobbering, ravenous.

Tonight, survived,

more time liquified into the past

if only just, the threat

increasing, thoughts

unapproachable, an

ugly, tangled ball

of mistakes,

exacerbated by

those black and blue hours

which grow outwards

and devour any still-kicking warmth.