Deliverance

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!




I lurk in the water with the faceless man well acquainted with my hands. He tells me secrets, and lies, and all the things that make me. When the rest of you sleep, we're alive in the dark places, the strange places, the places where no one ventures and no one would want to. Days pass by, and still the evenings belong to us, not me.

A friendly face and a kind word help me while the Sun still shines, but when the darkness falls over me like a blanket covers a child afraid of the monsters beneath his bed, we still speak. Once, twice, or a hundred times, we have the same fears, and the same well placed barbs, deceptions, and traps for myself in my own company. Tell me why no one writes! Tell me how I can be so strong during the day, and so weak in the nocturne hours.

My best quality is genuine honesty. It's usually a virtue, but it always seems to leave me alone. I can populate the late hours with hundreds of thoughts, characters, stories and poems, but I stay trapped in a hazy solitude some would call profound. I call it water. Down here, what some call breathing, I call verse: poems and water make drowning. Drowning makes for a good witness, and a compelling trip into the depths of my lair. As I drown, I struggle. As I struggle, I watch your faces through the first few feet of water. You seem interested, and for a while, you'll help me. Then you see my long legs, ghostly eyes, ghoulish fingernails and hear the drums of my heart in the night. You let go, and look away as I sink.

Pray for a separate deliverance. I am already lost.