melissaahowells


 Poet's Home Page  Poetry Search    518422 Poems Read
 Other Poets  PoetryPoem  Sign Up!  Login

  Search The Web
   

Read Poetry
o The Petty Player Who Rarely Sleeps

o I'd Like A Taste (The Wolf Said)

o The Crow Is A Black Bird

o When I Start to Bloom

o I'd Like To Be Your Shirt (when you wake up in the morning)



o All Beings Considered

o Words Between Edward And Jane

o Nothing's Sadder Than A Rose

o The Great Tsunami Of Our Growing Grief written 3/2.2021--retitled 3/14/2021

o After Wide Sargasso Sea ( For Those of You Readers Who Have Empathy For the First Mrs. Rochester.)

o WAITING ON THE WORLD (March/February 2021 poetry)

o Wild and Unraveling

o What Must Be

o These Hands Exist July 4 2023 rei-edited 7/12/2023

o I Am The Color Of Black

o The Tide of Your Lies (2019-2023)

o How I Wanted Your Pearls 6/24/2023 WRITTEN DIRECTLY TO THE PAGE

o Love Wants What Love Wants re-edited 5/31/023

o Winter's Been Too Long.... 4/18/2023 (LONGING)

o The Dreaming Life ( A Series Of Dream Vignettes)

o Like A Small Street Dog Lured In By The Promise Of Meat

o This Is What Mermaids Dream Of

o At Night, As I Dream of Vampires Who Have No Bad Intentions

o And You Will Be Called Ashes As You Leave ( from a dream)

o Certainly No Bread 3/16/2022

o Someone Send Out A Search Party

o THE FAN , AT NIGHT, GIVES GOOD ADVICE completely re-edited, an entirely different poem

o What Is The Price For Your Touch? re-editied 5/31/2023

o Where Is My Bed With The Pleasing Tree -Lined View(NOW REEDITED)

o Oh What Fine Physics (Before Me ,Lies) re-edtited @4/17/2023

o If Prejudice Were Dumb And Could Not Speak

o THE COMPANY THAT WE KEEP WITH THE ONE WITHIN



[More Poetry] >>



  Sign Guestbook
  Read Guestbook
 
The Silences

I've been changed.
You've changed me.


Midnight silences.
I cannot abide.
I must cover them. In the white noise hide...with
One fan at each end of my room.


I cannot listen to the glaring quiet.
It only serves to disquiet
my mind.
Gets things to tinkering.
Too often I  shift into high gear,  
and get to thinking on the tread mill.
All my thoughts swoop in for the kill
with razor-like focus.
When will "badness" begin?
Or is this elemental hocus-pocus?

(How will I know that time
       can only tell...)


Silence reminds me of waiting times before.
When I held on, even malingered,
and listened for the creak of the door.
And held my breath even tighter again,
inner strings pulled by nervous fingers.


Sometimes I wanted to be extinguished into
thin air. Have my blanket suddenly flatten out.
Poof...to be gone before any angry shouts...


I'd invent fireworks, imagine distracting flares.
Anything to vanish from his glare.
And rake the air like a broom
from the debris of fear.
(Any mechanism to get him gone and out
of here.)

Perhaps, I'd be
hied off somewhere by an invisible force
to safety or something like it.
Maybe
aliens or fairies could whisk me out.
Or a horse with wings.


It'd have been better than to see
the light spread itself and made a crooked shadow cross
my floor. The man attached breathed alcohol.
Me breathing shallow under blankets.
Still as death but not wishing for it.


Today, alone in bed, without the noise of fans,
I might suddenly awake, and quake, once more, again.
With old imagined monsters hulking in my head.
Silence too often fills me with a sour dread.


The fear mechanism having worn me down
so it doesn't work as it should.


I'm learning to be friends with fear.
Even be thankful for it being near.
I've examined its contents and found the messages
and the clues where I could. Perhaps I'm finally
awake.


But the fans are a habit I'm
not likely yet to break.


They keep me safe from silences.
Fill up my mind with the pretended roar of an ocean
whose voice can soothe me to sleep.
For now, they are a crutch I intend to keep.
God help me if the grid ever goes down.




Copyright September 3, 2012 All rights reserved by Author
Melissa A Howells Meloo from her Tilt-a-World





Vote for this poem





 
 Privacy       Terms  © 2000-2022 ++++ Individual Authors of the Poetry. All rights reserved by authors