by Mona Yasir

Created on: January 18, 2009

Siren Song

Curtains of heaviness billow and puff

And slowly exhale again

So loud the lament of the cricket's cry

Its purring requiem keeps me awake

Caged by my ribs sits enshrouded a box

A bomb is pensively ticking within

I bury my ears and will it to stop

Held awake by its mad tick tock

Tonight are alert the vigilant few

Irrationally fraught who cannot rest

Amongst the unconscious hoard who can breathe

Deep on beds of coolest serenity

Bold breath unbidden holds back the spectre

Who sits on my shoulder from night to night

Rush now Dawn to crack my concrete cocoon

Banish me from this toxic realm of thought!

A hidden velvet vial whispers my name

I sway towards its villainous release

To make my lids shut out the conscious dark

Deathly dilemmas I purge before sleep

I glimpse then my tree house concealed by time

Draped with the hum of a fond lullaby

In the fog of enduring memory

Where drowned are the dam'ned voices of vials

Still, here I lie by hollowness consumed

Like skin abandoned by something that lived

Now come,' a sly potion sweetly beckons

And holds me in the grip of siren song

I reach! But then across the ceiling flies

A passing soul with his warning headlights

In shameful fear I cower under sheets

Curled up to hide a malady of mind

My failing must not be revealed to them

Whose blameless rooms surround me with their sleep

Tomorrow they must wake to find their fort

Unbreached and held in faith by knights of steel

For those who now should sit in that old tree

My eyes shall pay the price of wakeful death

Weary with war, I ache and stretch to find

Bright morning full and round like baking bread

When was it that I fell asleep?

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