somniat 9

I barely breathe
as I move through a cloud
of menthol-scented cigarette exhalation;
I can feel their lurking eyes
on the back of my head
scintillating probes that scan me
with such deep acuity
I can feel their edge
like a comb through my brain
each tooth snagging on forgotten tangles.

Off-key laughter pauses
when I’m halfway
between here and there;
I want to freeze and melt
all at once
but I know that if I do
they’ll catch me,
and they’ll ask me questions
for which I have no answers.

So I breath in
their used up smoke
and make my way,
one step in front of the other,
past them, all the way
to the men’s room door;
I grasp its rusted handle
and pull when I should have pushed;
my face flushes, hot,
and I hold my breath;
there’s a burgeoning laughter
but it dies before it starts;
somewhere elsewhere
there is a snap,
a subdued pop;
something, I don’t know what, has happened;
something has changed,
and it’s not me;
one by one they move off
toward this budding unfamiliarity
until one and all
they’re gone.

I ease up,
and finally exhale,
and this time –
at the door,
I push.

by matt at shadow of iris

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Obscene, a poem, follows next. Somniat begins here in the poem, underground.

Thank you for reading, smoke, a poem.

“Fled foam underneath us and ’round us, a wandering and milky smoke
As high as the saddle-girth, covering away from our glances the tide
And those that fled and that followed from the foam-pale distance broke.
The immortal desire of immortals we saw in their faces and sighed.”
– W. B. Yeats

“Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.”
– Benjamin Disraeli

waves, a poem | somniat 8

Mohawks,
spiked waves,
waterfalls of hair
bleached into the darker shades
of stormy rainbow;
eclectic clothes
out of tune with any season
or any time,
ramshackle and hodgepodge
with black folds from which emerge
lots of of metal, especially chains
and crowning it all
rough black leather
patched here and there –
the final touch,
boots that chink and jostle
and spikes that threaten:
their flesh is all ghostly white,
pale zombies
with lurid painted eyes
that animate at stale jokes
and flat punch lines;
they laugh
and look over at me.

Compunction, degradation, mortification
or maybe it’s just collective guilt
from some ancient and lost source;
I don’t know,
but either way
I’ve got to go
for nature calls
and she won’t be resisted;
this means,
I need to go by them.

by matt at shadow of iris

---

Smoke, a poem, follows next. Somniat begins here in the poem, underground.

Thank you for reading, waves, a poem.

“Through the white ridges of the chafed sea.
The waves arose. Higher and higher still
Their fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest’s scourge
Like serpents struggling in a vulture’s grasp.
Calm and rejoicing in the fearful war
Of wave ruining on wave, and blast on blast …” — Percy Bysshe Shelly

“I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.”
- John Ashbery

somniat 7

Between here and there
there is exactly
one
infinity.

Off from the central food court
where the theater above exits
there is a spacious and long alcove,
a wide area of dust and disrepair
where piles of ceiling,
that leave gaping holes above,
still lay fresh as the day they fell
and long nailed up plywood prevents entry
into plush, though decayed, double doors
that once lead to a diminutive casino
where the faux rich used to wrestle
with erotically shaped one armed bandits.

With the exception of the restrooms
the entire area has been cordoned off
with caution tape that’s been torn more than once
and now just lays there, on the ground,
pitying itself.

The area is a favorite of the new crowd,
hooligans, delinquents,
the maladjusted and the malcontent;
they have begun to move in
and are gradually edging out the students
who still bravely man the central area
of these forgotten subterranean urban hollows;
these new youth, who travel only in groups,
are best left alone
for exactly how far they’ll go
and what exactly they’ll do
has not yet been tested.

So most the students
leave the rest rooms alone,
but with my new found freedom
and with excruciating need
this is where I wander to
when waiting
is no longer an option.

by matt at shadow of iris

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Waves, a poem, follows next. Somniat begins here in the poem, underground.

Thank you for reading, hollow, a poem.

“Young mountaineer! Descend where alleys bend
Into the sparry hollows of the world!”
- From the poem, Endymion, by John Keats

“We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men”
- From the poem, The Hollow Men, by T.S. Elliot