Dream Scream is not just a poem.
It’s a series.
A descent.
A confrontation with the parts of the mind we try to outrun.
Each part of Dream Scream follows a different layer of the same experience —
The moment where thought turns into noise,
And silence becomes unbearable.
This series was never about telling a neat story.
It was about capturing what it feels like
When your own mind becomes the loudest place in the room.
There is no clear beginning or end.
That’s intentional.
Because intrusive thoughts don’t arrive politely.
They don’t follow structure.
They interrupt.
They repeat.
They stay longer than they should.
Dream Scream mirrors that.
Where It Came From
Dream Scream was written with my brother in mind.
He wasn’t broken.
Not at the start.
He was strong.
Hard-working.
Loyal.
The kind of man who loved his family properly.
He always said to me,
“If you work hard and live right, then everything will be good.”
He believed that.
He had a life he chose — and it was a good one.
Then everything changed in a moment.
One minute they were talking,
The kids were playing in the next room,
Life just… happening like normal.
The next —
His wife, the love of his life, was gone.
No warning.
No reason.
Just gone.
And when she died,
A part of him died too.
After that, he was never the same.
He started drinking.
Not casually —
But like someone trying to outrun something inside his own head.
I asked him once why he kept doing it,
Even knowing where it would lead.
He didn’t avoid the question.
He just said:
“It’s the only time my mind stops thinking…
The only time the screaming in my head stops.”
That stayed with me.
Because Dream Scream isn’t about noise you can hear.
It’s about the noise you can’t escape.
The kind that follows you
Into silence,
Into sleep,
Into yourself.
And in the poem,
You see that weight in lines like:
“a life under the paymaster’s boot…”
That pressure.
That feeling of being trapped.
Of being worn down over time.
And in another moment,
You hear the voice that calls to him:
“Give me your loss and sorrow…
You will not need it tomorrow.”
That’s what the drink did.
It offered relief.
A pause.
A quiet moment where the weight didn’t feel so heavy.
For a while, the screaming stopped.
But it wasn’t gone.
Just waiting.
This saga is not about judging that pain.
It’s about understanding it.
About what happens
When grief doesn’t soften —
It just keeps echoing.
Each part reflects a shift:
Awareness
Overwhelm
Loss of control
And the attempt to understand what is happening internally
It’s not about madness in the way people expect.
It’s about awareness without escape.
That moment where you realise:
You can hear everything
And switch off nothing.
The repetition, the tension, the unease —
It’s all deliberate.
Because this isn’t written to be comfortable.
It’s written to be recognised.
There’s a rawness in Dream Scream that I chose not to polish.
The breaks in rhythm, the abrupt stops, the way thoughts overlap —
That’s how it exists in my head.
And I kept it that way.
Because it never really stops.
Not when the room is quiet.
Not when the world moves on.
It loops.
It repeats.
It builds.
Until silence
Isn’t silence anymore —
It’s noise.
This series sits inside my wider work because it represents something real:
The internal battles that don’t leave visible marks
But shape everything.
Dream Scream is not asking to be understood perfectly.
It’s asking to be felt.
And if you’ve ever had a moment
Where your thoughts got too loud,
Too fast,
Too much—
Then you already understand it.
This is Dream Scream.
Not a performance.
Not a story.
Just the sound of a mind
That won’t stay quiet.
✍️Author’s Notes
I didn’t set out to write a series.
Dream Scream started as a single moment —
A line that wouldn’t leave me alone.
But the more I wrote,
The more I realised it wasn’t one thought.
It was layers.
Each part came at different times.
Different moods.
Different states of mind.
I didn’t force them to fit.
I let them come as they were.
Some parts are heavier.
Some are quieter.
Some feel almost distant.
That’s intentional.
Because the mind doesn’t stay in one place.
It shifts.
It spirals.
It circles back on itself.
The voice in Dream Scream isn’t always the same voice.
Sometimes it observes.
Sometimes it pulls.
Sometimes it feels like something else entirely.
That blurred line matters.
I also chose not to clean it up too much.
Some lines sit rough.
Some land abruptly.
That’s how they came out —
And that’s how they stayed.
Because not everything needs smoothing
To be understood.
Thank you for reading
🖤 Your DislexicPoet