Refugee

Nights imprisoned in barbed imaginings,
horizons held in the realm of dreams,
searing fear and pounding hearts with
every knock, or unknown echo, hollow

in the long, breathless darkness, where
possibility weeps in crippled corners,
and nightmares huddle on edges of
mind, whispering in brittle, razor-edged

tones of what might come to pass; running
relentless images through endless reels
of thought, turning, over and over again
in tangled moments and maybes, lives

lived once, or not yet known, woven tight
in scramblings of horror; plaited into
greasy place, against pale, bloodless
cheeks, where warm tears course down,

beyond the place of hope and reason,
into pools of deep helplessness, where,
past, present and future become as one,
and that which had been left behind, was

now, a newly dressed reality, in a land
far beyond home, where bleaker truths,
stood waiting on bleached beaches, and
boats lay broken in useless torment.