In the Dark, Dreaming (Inspired, in part, by John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Book 5: 108-113) Tonight I am not in my right mind. It was the same last night And the night before. When at night the conscious mind Retires to its Monastic cell, and my senses are Asleep, the dreaming mind yokes together Heterogeneous shapes that Derive from the remembrance of Things seen in daytime. And not only that. It dredges up past deeds, produces Strange ideas that Run together in the Form of a

My Name Is Lubbert Das I There is (if you care to know), a flower of folly growing On my brain, on the surface of the matter’s deep. Fit for the Fire, its fate is allotted. To be plucked - no - uprooted, And then chucked on the heap. But won’t it hurt? Well, yes, it will, but (And since you must inquire), there is more than one kind of pain. So with steady hand, and clutching his trephine, the doctor will Incise, excise, cut, and splice, and rid me of this fleur du mal. And i

Irrational Numbers In my mind a series of irrational numbers, of non-repeatable fractions without end. Something doesn’t add up. I am divided, incommensurable. I count on my intellect to calculate a solution but thoughts multiply endlessly and without purpose - an innumerable and undetermined infinity indifferent to sense. All this thinking-without-limits is a problem I cannot get my head around.

It Is so Sad / the Way Things End It is so sad the way things end like a when a plant dies and dies in a black corner and you’re done for. It is over like the end of summer. The green has dried up and the stalks refuse to dream. This is the death of light, I said, as if quotes were facts or neat sums on a blackboard. The world snaps shut, silence seeps in, lighter than air, colourless and tasteless like carbon monoxide. In here nothing moves except the shadows on the curt

One of my earliest pieces, "First Sentence," was written when I was eighteen, in the long shadow of the abuse I endured at the hands of a controlling narcissist. It has passed through many iterations over the years—including one version published in Best of the Manchester Poets, a rendition I would now gladly disown. The version that follows is, I think, the truest and most fully realised form of the poem, and I now regard it as the definitive text. First Sentence I cannot