Sleeping With the Enemy

Sleeping With the Enemy

There's a canary on the sill.
A coal-miner's yellow warning light
sings mournfully its own murder, so
my fingers clench and
for a moment I look for bodies around me.

Arms broken, necks broken,
hearts...

A moment of splintered identity, then
I blink and am back to myself.

I see only pots on the stove.
I lay a hand on the burner -
cool to the touch.

But the truth is that
death follows yellow songs.
It rallies in the harsh, bright exuberance
of poisons and flares,
burns and bombs and the
dark corners of doomed
eyes

and here I've forgotten again
the torpid influence of reality.
I've mistaken myself for another,
the latter for the former,
gauged my mind, for a moment,
as whole.

I forgot that while I'm dead
tired from another restless night
in a madman's bed,

I'm frozen in
a suburb of Chicago,
conquered by nightmares
and choking with guilt for
a bird on my window.

I face down the truth. In the dark of every night I'm
sleeping with the enemy -
keeping another silent wake with the quiet
murderer in my own heart.

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This was for a contest a ways back that I think I dropped out of, and forgot to post. The prompt was to use that title, the experience of a veteran returning from war, and a list of words.