Sleepwalkers

In a grey haze I find myself
crawling upwards on cold rock shelves.
Knees scratched and bleeding,
my mind a blur.
On a path,
but I don't know to where.
On my way I pass many folks
heading up, down, some as inert bulks,
some come shambling in jerky streams
like sleepwalkers
in a jittery dream.

As I reach further up the winding stairs,
I sense gradual shifts in the air.
It gets more cumbersome to breathe and climb
and the fog thickens
over a shrouded mind.
The passing shapes now
seem to notice me more
as something alien, something deplored.
As something dangerous, their faces tell,
I'm a vile creature, an image of hell.
Countless shapes lift my body from the floor,
drags me off in wonder
as to what I have in store,
will I soon be squandered?
Like a match burnt out,
like a twisted nail.
Like bad cloth torn asunder,
yanked away with force
as thread was wrong.
I was expelled from the dream;
ushered down into oblivion.
Cast into the bowels of the great beyond,
into the unseen,
slowly devoured by the void,
that dreadful endless sea.