Poem By: Billy Alsbrooks
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I’m not here anymore
My hands are no longer mine
The spirit does the writing
Does the speaking
Does the walking
My feet hike a stranger’s path
I know I live
Live in some realm
Somewhere I exist
Exist in the fog
But I’m not here, definitely not here
Not anymore
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I wake up in places
In spaces and poetic phrases
Scribbling prophetically
Constructing sentences that have seen the face of God
Unaware of how I even got there
Unaware of where the words even came from
My signature sits at the bottom
But the paper doesn’t know me
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I’m a prisoner
Prisoner of the creative forces
Just a slave
Slave to their burning voices
Their thoughts
The thoughts behind the thoughts
They think through me
Speak through me
Live through me
I do what they tell me to do
‘Cause I’m not here
Not anymore
It’s as though I don’t exist
As if my lungs forgot to breathe
But I’m not here, definitely not here
Not anymore
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How did I get here?
My hands never touched the wheel
Yet I woke up
Woke up in my car on the other side of town
Trapped in the haze
A mental daze that overcomes me
Numbs me to that fact that I’m a hostage
Hostage to the illucid visions I keep having
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I’m not asleep
But the dreams seem to dream themselves
They Imagine for me
They long to be born through me
So anxious
Anxious to come into the world of chaos
My notebooks filled with their ramblings
My word photos capturing their shadows
I can’t stop them
I can’t resist them
I can’t even see them
Yet they stand where I used to stand
They convey in a language
A language that I never spoke
They use me to do their bidding
To do their living
And I let them
Cause I’m not here
I’m definitely not here
Not anymore
The Inner Symphony of Fire…