Some friends should leave
This companion sticks
Even in sleep D
Turns director of dreams
Flings you across collapsing hallways
Slams your hands into bedrails that
Transform to knives
Just as you wake up
They call D an animal
Melancholy’s black dog
Shoo it away and it stays
Kick it, fur turns stone
Offer D a treat
D feeds on you
Afternoon and evening
Identical every moment
There’s games, TV, walls
Each sends the same message:
The situation is so serious
It can’t be serious
These days I talk a lot to D
Never get a reply
Not even the familiar fulminations:
You might have been
A force, a somebody
When you need sleep
D refuses
Once you doze D steals closer
Straps into your brain
Confides to your soul:
Nothing there at all
If life’s an illusion
I need a new writer
Not pills or doctors
A real playwright
She’ll spin a new story
My existence, elsewhere
I used to worry about
Pensions, nursing homes
Not since the future went away
My new responsibility –
Having none
Why do I find this ceiling so fascinating?
When my eyes open
I can’t stop looking