Dead Yet Dreaming

Dead Yet Dreaming.

I lie and I wait and I want to awake

From this premature death here in my mummified state.

I’m embalmed in lead from my toes to my head,

I’m a middle aged man with a dread before bed.

*

Content in my dreams until my brain switches on,

I expect to awake but there’s something quite wrong.

My limbs fail to move and my eyes remain closed,

My senses are dead along with my right to choose

To awake from my coma, this paralysing cloak,

My fear, my peril - am I having a stroke?

*

My throat contracts violently as it wretches to scream,

But my wayward mind continues to dream.

There’s a weight on my chest, a dark angel glares down

From his perch on my breast with his sinister frown.

Helpless and terrified, consumed with mortal fear,

Will somebody wake me and wrench me from here.

*

My alarm clock ticks onward and I’m acutely aware

Of the sounds of the night and the cruel way they’re shared

With my dormant body and my electrified mind,

That lies like a magnet with wires that wind

Around my breathing corpse, I’m a pick-up of doom,

I’m a passenger in time to the events in this room.

*

I focus my mind and I try to relax

But this scared little boy still feels bitterly trapped.

I sense a way out - there she lies next to me,

She knows not of my torment and continues to sleep.

*

Mute, dead, immobile, impotent, benign,

Is this what it’s like to do nothing but lie

In a hospital bed where I’m courting the dead?

Nurseless and helpless and caged in my head

Where I inwardly scream and yet fail to revive

My static carcass - I’ve been buried alive.

*

My mind’s eye and heart forces life to my arms,

But I’m betrayed by paranoia that laughs as it warns

The malevolent parasite that lurks on my chest,

Who senses a twitch and callously restricts

The colossal attempts to restore my feeling,

The cold-hearted bastard leaves me dead yet dreaming.

*****