The Devouring Void - Hypnagogic Hallucinations (2021)

[stage 1 NREM; anthypnic apparitions]

The weight of sleep
pervades her waning senses;
ghost-like shadows seep through the fog
of her perception

[stage 2 NREM; yet hardly part of either]

a part of two worlds
yet hardly part of either
gently veiled
by somnolescence;
sleep draws her deeper
as the voices dim

[stage 3 NREM; slow-waves and sleep-spindles]

And without a whisper;
she’s drawn beyond the veil
passing through the gates of praedomitium
received by slumber’s arms.

***
[REM; Zhuangzi’s butterfly]

A false awakening
Am I asleep and dreaming?
The room contorting before me
pre-lucid and fleeting, I glance at familiar scenes

Unfamiliarly with great trepidation and fear
Trying to make sense of this solipsistic nightmare.

***
[the in-between]

and through the uneven passage of time
a quietude once again seeps through her mind.

***
[REM; the falling dream]

Stands at the precipice;
our scene-change precipitous
One fatal misstep carelessly

Much like cursed Icarus
wind whipping merciless
left to the whim of gravity

at terminal velocity

until the point of impact

***
[awoken; Zhuangzi’s retort]

abruptly woken
coalescing lucidity

breathless but emboldened
palpitations begin to cease

it was all just a dream -
- all just a dream. Открыть страницу с текстом

Oneirogogic horror
Overwhelms quiescent senses
Creeping dread

Still-dreaming eyes open
Shallow breaths, paralytic languor
Fearing death

Parasympathetic nervous breakdown
Perception of malevolent demoniac presence
Intent: to kill

Flitting round periphery of vision
Ephemeral tormentor besets the un-sleeper
Reality convulses
Convulses

Phantasmagorical oppressor
Performs psychogenic horrors
Upon paralytic dreamer; still hallucinating

Suffocating

Dreamer struggling for the next breath
Hateful apparition sits upon his chest
Dead-weight asphyxiation, breathless
Awaiting hypnagogic death

Chilling hands pinning every limb
Unnaturally contorting seemingly at whim
Hollow eyes, serrated grin
Feel the thrill of anxiety setting in

Dreamer awakens in a cold sweat
Still palpitating heart beats upon his chest
Darkness fills the room with synaesthesic deafness
Catches breath

Awaiting hypnagogic death Открыть страницу с текстом

Through dilapidated corridors
of a mind untidy with neglect
and deprivation;
come to stand upon the banks of the Rubicon -
suicide.

Trapped within
circadian blur;
dysregulation of the somnic phase.
Perception in the absence of the tangible:
hallucinations

A slow erosion
through stress or desuetude.
Life in slow motion
Unfettered by corporeal obligations.

My world gets smaller
The walls draw closer
My world gets smaller
The walls draw closer

Taciturn, saturnine. Oppressive is the weight of emptiness.
Trompe l'oeil - to fool the eye. Distortion in the process of cognitions
Lucidity; to crystallise. A new resolve emerges; single purpose
To seek an exit here, when life expires. Our heavens empty, and the world gets smaller. Открыть страницу с текстом

Frayed ends
burn.
Raw hands pulling madly at the seams.
Unrelentingly.

Through endless toil,
hands will crack and callus,
spirit starts to fracture.

Through endless toil,
threadbare nerves exposed
to frostbitten air.

Paracusia;
extrasensory portents from the dead.
Ahrimanic fever dream.

Frayed ends
burnt.
Tether separated from the weave.
Unequivocally.

The moil of labour ceased in slumber
Slumber broken lays asunder
Anxiety now encumbers
Enshrined in darkness; taunting umbra

Oppressor
Daemon

Recursive cycle
Moil ad nauseam for sustenance
Recursive cycle
roiling tides erode resilience

Paracusia;
extrasensory portents from the dead.
Ahrimanic fever dream.

The moil of labour ceased in slumber
Slumber broken lays asunder
Anxiety now encumbers
Enshrined in darkness; taunting umbra

Recursive cycle
Moil ad nauseam for sustenance
Recursive cycle
roiling tides erode resilience Открыть страницу с текстом

Noctambulant.
Slow-wave spectre; of form bereft
diffuses through perceptual set.
A suffocating shrine to cataleptic dread.

Somnambulant.
Empathic terror from the fathomless.
Quiescence acquiesces;
a leaden weight upon the chest.

Falls out of slumber in distress
from anthypnic precipice.

Clarity returns to him,
crystallising from within.
Passing through praedormitum
in disquietude
and trepidation
until morning’s light spills in
and diurnal toil begins.

Somnolescence
Moil ad nauseam for sustenance
recursion til the final breath
A lachrymating shrine to blood and sweat.

Enfeeblement.
Circadian haze encompasses.
Moiling torpor sapping strength.
wearing down the warp and weft

Overstressed.
Anxious, sleepless and depressed.
Overworking self to death
Should just stop to rest. Открыть страницу с текстом

Chlorhexidine scent
solvent; stripped clean
sterile and raw

From a hospital bed
subarachnoid bleed
neurological trauma

Draws closer the sheets,
shadows draw near
Lhermitte’s delusions
at night-time appear

Substantial - but lucid
vivid; bizarre
childlike wonder
at lights in the dark

Familiar faces; people I’ve loved
visions from our past lives, through darkness returned
in anachronistic semblance

blooming forth; the haemorrhage
cause sympathetic surge
loss of pupil reflex
Kernig’s sign affirmed
Progressive loss of function,
of memories and fears
decreasing state of conscious
falling toward dreamless coma

Unresponsive and not breathing. Открыть страницу с текстом

Desolation.

Nascent madness blooms
in lucid death throes;
sanity’s prescient funeral shroud.

The nights grow longer now.
Reality is atrophied.
The wolves’ hour drawing ever closer;
weary eyes can never know sleep.

Prionic origin.
Inexorable progression.

He offers few words
upon his languid breath.
The light behind his eyes
All but extinguished.

Hypnagogic movements
as if caught between
preternatural dreamscape
ataxic and weak

Prionic origin.
Inexorable progression.
Efflorescent death spell
Suffuses within.
Evoking coruscating madness
and death therein.

Thus passing in the blink of an eye
The end of worldly glory
into desolation
Memento mori Открыть страницу с текстом