Violet Mistress of Night

A poem about the nights you’re kept awake by the haunting voices in your head.

Violet mistress of night, you whip healing bruises

The silence you lash me with, numbs and confuses

Entranced by your hem of black peony bloom

A salt lake of hurt, lit by stumbling moon

Lost libraries of logic fog over, then flame

Ghost ancestors loom, invested in name

Contracting, expanding, cold bodies of water

I fall under the vortex of could, should and ought to

Hope is swallowed as kittens in rippling hoops

The crippling moments lucidity dupes

Dark dew of bud hour rinsed by tormented cry

I exit pain’s flower, wring my wondering dry

The devils stitch reasons from fleece of excuses

Angels reel for conscience - they know what the truth is

Saline queens sing to skin a most stinging lament

Of hours wasted on thought, as my dreams came and went