Frequently,

you came to rest as day broke.
Frequently you failed to rest
and as day closed you awoke:

you awoke and the nightmare continued.

What devil’s tongue rests on your lips,
spits as love sends hands to shake
- in desperate exorcism -
will they wake you or will you break?

Tonight,

nothing about anything makes any sense.
Tonight you will possess
everything of the nothing
the day represents.

You’ll sleep when you know it’s alright.

Pierce your lips to induce your trance
by profane sticks of sick incense.
Rigid and intense,
permitting only the burning lance.

Two smokes,

constantly on the go.
Two subconscious smacks
could bring you back but would you know?

A little Catholic fire, in ashtray, smoulders.

Your unflowing tears make
cheeks dry and hostile.
Hope bears the burden of
the emotionally sterile.

Temporarily,

your brain gets stuck between gears.
Eternally
your prisoner brain is stuck between ears,
captive behind prison window eyes,
eyes that glaze on both sides
that can’t shut out
the evil face
that menace wears
when he stalks about
that arbitrary place.

Fervently,

you refuse solace in that place.
Furtively you steal away
but as you break they match your pace

and when you’ve run the steeplechase,
against yourself
- and your race is run and won -
life must begin.

But life was lost when you ran wild;
your mistakes borne from within.

You lost it.

A cherished trinket confirming affection.
When they find you,
how will they know your cause of affliction
without your wristband’s history of passion?

Your single-purpose hands
are otherwise effete,
tremulous and harmed,
only admit defeat.

 

*****

I think I should add a small explanation of this poem. 

It is about mental illness, or, specifically, bipolar disorder/manic depression.  It's about the intolerable agony of witnessing a loved one self-destruct.

It's not about Vampirism - that interpretation had not occurred to me at all, but I like it!  Thanks, Anthony Emmerson! 

It was painful to write, but doing so was very cathartic.  I want to leave it alone now and make no more (...significant) changes, so the older-me can read it and observe an event in my life with perhaps some objectivity.