Tag Archives: poem about a nightmare

Shards..For Sunday Whirl Wordle 641, Feb 11, 2024

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Shards

Untethered shards of nightmares burst out of dark to day
to scar reality with what we hoped we’d put away.
Words of fear and loathing—guilts once left in the past
rise out of dreams to plague us. Lost shadows once more cast
against the broken light of mornings, onslaughts we must fight
to claim the new day’s pleasures that are within our right
to enjoy without being afraid of chaos in our pasts,
for after all, the future is all that really lasts.

For Sunday Whirl Wordle 641 the prompt words are: untethered shards nightmare burst scar words rights light broken afraid lost rise  Image from Unsplash.

Little Nightmares: For The Sunday Whirl 579

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Little Nightmares

Dreams spin and whirl and crack and spark,
little fireworks in the dark
that bring to light flashes that last,
glimpses of a far-off past
that grip our memory, strain its seams,
to creep back in and stain our dreams.
They loom above us every night,
waiting for the end of light.

Lords of dark, nightmares of wonder,
wait their turn to clutch and plunder.
Minds gone slack in slumber’s whirl,
they enter in to clutch and curl,
smothering pleasant thoughts of day,
inviting past regrets to play
through our minds, to live anew
little foibles seen in review.

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 579 prompt words today are: spin, creep, loom, whirl, crack, light, grip, stain, curl, glimpse, slack, lord, wonder

Night Terror

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Night Terror

The circuits were all overcharged the night that one livewire
crossed another, triggering an electrical fire.
It was approximately midnight when I brutally awoke,
avulsed from bed and blanket by the acrid plumes of smoke.
Reeling from my dreamworld, plunged into reality,
Suffering from vertigo, I attempted to flee.
Gathered in my father’s arms, comforted by his grasping,
I was rushed into the cool night air, coughing, choking, gasping.
Our neighbors gathered all around to comfort and to gape—
 to give thanks with our family for our safe escape.
Fire whistles shrilling their approaching welcome scream,
I was jerked awake once more from that childhood dream.
And even though I knew those terrors were all in my head,
I padded down the hallway into my parents’ bed. 

 

Prompts today are livewire, approximately, brutal, avulse, overcharge and vertigo.

Worst Nightmare

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Worst Nightmare

I stood without a podium,
alone there in the odeum.
The lantern light was odious,
the theater commodious.
My stomach tied up in a knot,
I realized that I had not
even seen a single script
and therefore I was ill-equipped
no matter how hard I was driven,
to say the words that I’d been given.

And furthermore, how crass and rude
that I was standing in the nude,
center stage, in full display,
without a clue of what to say,
before an audience, all staring
at the body I was baring!
And here I brought the curtain down
and awoke to find a dressing gown
draped around me in a heap,
relieved to find I’d been asleep!!!

 

For those of you who will ask, this is not fiction. This is a dream I’ve dreamed a number of times during my life.  Prompt words for today are lantern, knot, Odeum and without. Image by Velizar-Ivanov on Unsplash.

Denouement

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Denouement

Flight and fear and chaos may make our dreams too gory,
but things may turn out better by the ending of the story.
I revel in surprises at the edges of my dreams—
as though their happy endings are captured at the seams.
So though we may be terrorized by dreaming’s dips and bendings,
prior to awakening, thank God for happy endings.

 

Prompt words today were surprise, edge, dream and revel.

Some Nights

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Some Nights

When waking hours grow too late,
ideas begin to percolate.
Chords we’ve found euphonious
may somehow seem erroneous
when we hear their altered streams
filtered through erratic dreams.

Life is made of dreams, we’re told,
but when the dark turns drear and cold,
however oft we’re told we’re chosen,
our potential may be frozen—
all our day-lit grand achievements
turned by night into bereavements.

We lie abandoned in our beds
with nightmares caught within our heads.
What a relief is dawning day
that relieves our need to pay
those ransoms that some dreams demand—
cast not in concrete but in sand.

https://fivedotoh.com/2019/03/06/fowc-with-fandango-percolate/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/03/06/your-daily-word-prompt-achievement-march-6-2019/
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/03/06/rdp-wednesday-euphonious/

Nightmare

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Nightmare

You hide yourself in shadows deep
to watch me as I fall to sleep.
Half-lidded, with your sleepy stare,
you cup my cheek and stroke my hair.
I do not know as I fall deeper
that you stalk this drifting sleeper.

Then just as I do not resist,
you give my hair a painful twist.
I try to jerk awake but fail.
I tense my muscles, fight and flail,
but I cannot escape your grasp.
I call for help, I moan and gasp.

Sir Nightmare, from where do you come
with death knoll beat on ragged drum?
I hear its pulse now through the day.
At every hour, it sounds the way
back to the horror of the night––
a pathway to that final fight

when I will mount at last that steed
that nightly stands to do its deed
to carry to oblivion
this sleeper off to meet her kin.
That father lost, those lovers three
who wait for my delivery.

Is this nightmare just a dream––
a mere digression from the stream
of conscious thought––a nightly swim
through a fantasy most grim,
or a window showing me
an inevitability?

This is a repeat of a poem I wrote two years ago. It is just too perfect for the prompt not to use it. hope it warranted rereading. The Ragtag word of the day is nightmare.

Special Delivery

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Special Delivery

You hide yourself in shadows deep
to watch me as I fall to sleep.
Half-lidded, with your sleepy stare,
you cup my cheek and stroke my hair.
I do not know as I fall deeper
that you stalk this drifting sleeper.

Once I have no power to resist,
you give my hair a painful twist.
I try to jerk awake but fail.
I tense my muscles, fight and flail,
but I cannot escape your grasp.
I call for help. I moan and gasp.

Sir Nightmare, from where do you come
with death knoll beat on ragged drum?
I hear its pulse now through the day.
At every hour, it sounds the way
back to the horror of the night––
a pathway to that final fight

when I will mount at last that steed
that nightly stands to do its deed
to carry to oblivion
this sleeper off to meet her kin—
that father lost, those lovers three
who wait for my delivery.

Is this nightmare just a dream—
a mere digression from the stream
of conscious thought—a nightly swim
through a fantasy most grim,
or a window showing me
an inevitability?

The prompt word today was delivery.