At the gate of sleep but I’m too tired to open the door, knocking in silence in search of rest and dreams.

I take a bite out of the moon in a darkened room. I'd bet I’d still see light, oh only if I were right.

In my youth, when I was ripened with fresh-squeezed possibility, and lucid tales that only played out in my head while I played outside.

Under the trees, like a hiding seed under ash, imaginary friends I‘d swear were real. We played and cried when then my friends would fake a fall.

It's now getting late and I’m wishing you’d had picked up my drink on that night ‘cause your breath, so hot would melt the ice, then I’d swim in your sighs.

Cautionary slippery stares sent from ghosts of an audience tell me I should have written thighs in place of sighs, but I still would rather have drowned smiling in your mind.

What is beauty if not a mangled feeling forced to look like a face and stripped of its tongue as it swallows its tales.

Stitches still raw tie a finger to my lips. My hands are pointing outwards, hands upon hands grow smaller, or was it further away, no pointing fingers, just hands alone.

Please don't just see stars while covering up constellations, grander and bigger you picture a portrait that you can’t see, a dusty cave painting scrawled upon the face of the author.

My hands continue to grow hands upon fingers reaching outward towards you. I hope we get closer but as bloodstained wishes fall like the petals of weeds just longing to be a flower.

Your hand turns away as it ducks into your pocket. It tells tales to me of who you are. I get a sense of so much more.

Sun set, sun rise, turns on and runs on, if my eyes could lie, I could see stories in the door. Cracks a joke, a bum with an empty cup shakes silently for change.

I saw a puddle with a face I didn't recognize, so I’d stopped and introduced myself. Still I’m the gate of sleep but too tired to open the door.

Laying there under concrete which lies under stars. Floating up there where I want to be, with as much life left as a decaying body, well guess it depends but the spirit isn't there.

When I will have taken my last train ride out past the “good night”, and the wrinkles on my face tell my life story when my mind has far forgotten.

Will some line up, cry or tell a sweet lie stuffed in hearts or holes hoping for a chance to shine in the casket line. How to share, when muffed by the casket, all the lore about how we orbited each other but never collided. Some will stick a sticky frown upon my years, but I’ve never minded. I've always liked to bask in the shade cast from behind the pages of a world that never got its chance to be real.

If my stories live on, will you still mourn me, then forget to mourn me, then forget to mourn me then forget me?

If sadness gets a chance to live because I’m gone or a bit grief is born because you'll miss me. Or perhaps you cry because you’ll one day go too or does my passing give you hope of an eternal tomorrow forever in the hatchery.

When I’m withered and can’t remember my name or who in the rolodex I have left to blame, I’ll take that hovering question mark and make it into an ellipse and ride off the page.

And though all the tomorrows could hold stories of their own,for tonight, I’m at the gate of dreams but I’m too tired to open the door.