Posts Tagged ‘Dream’

Her Own Time

Posted: January 11, 2002 in Poetry
Tags: , , , ,

Sleep is coming in her own time.
Soon, but not right now.
I hear her footsteps in the courtyard
And smell her in the still air.

Sometimes my words fail me;
I can’t think, and my poetry sucks.
But keep trying, trying, trying
From my blanket-swaddled lair.

Preceded by gifts of yawns
Tearing up my eyes,
Filling them with dust and starlight
Beckoning to dreamlit vistas.

Fighting the unseen entity
Trying to tell myself that I don’t want to
Mind slagging into smooth film
And willpower saturates to crystals.

This is Not an Option

Posted: June 5, 1995 in Poetry
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Go now and learn;
The process never ends.
Go now and teach;
This is not an option.
You are the realization
Of the hopes and dreams of your parents
As they were theirs.
This is the way it has always been;
This is the way it shall be again.
To the children you will be perfect,
And you shall fall from grace.
You will be crucified for believing in yourself.
You will be denounced for telling the truth.
You will be taken to the temple
And tempted, seduced, and pressured.
Let your minds be your own,
Let your hearts be winged;
Lead your lives,
Don’t let your lives be led.

Perhaps my only true loves
Are those that are inanimate,
Or are animated soley by my
Magical imagination.
They love me like a god –
I give them life, they give me
Love without strings attached.
They could attach their strings
If they ate from that forbidden fruit
That Adam and Eve partook of.
But that is the difference
Between mankind and animals,
Plants, minerals, Elves, Dwarves, and Faeries.
We know we do wrong – we still do it.
Some barrier was broken and we keep on breaking,
We made god to subtly blame for our position.
(We call him Satan)
We told him to forgive us because
It wasn’t in our own power
To forgive ourselves for evolving.
We are now the chosen species of the planet
And, collectively, we all want to go home.
So these inanimate things I animate,
Infusing them with imagination and belief.
I can believe in them because it was I
Who made them real in the first place.
God didn’t make me; I made him
Just like I make a dream a reality,
A story my existence, and item alive
And bounding to and fro with innocent excitement.

Sailing to Byzantium

Posted: December 19, 1994 in Poetry
Tags: , ,

I perch upon a basalt wall,
12 feet high; it surrounds the port
Separating the rough-hewn blocks
Of the well-travelled docks
From the slopes of the mountains lost
To the predations of much-prized rationality.
Many a sailor I watch disembark
From cutter or barge or sailing-ship;
They wind their way from wharf to within
The city whose walls I’ve scaled.
Young and old who, unfamiliar
With the burnished minarets and golden spires,
Wander lost amidst the buccaneers
Who have been here many a dream-time,
Stride winking to their carts and kingdoms.

I’ve hated myself for so long
for other people
other opinions, other lives:
here goes my hair —
look in the mirror,
watch your steely blue eyes wink:
lighthouses to steer ships by.
Bring them home.
Home is the sailor,
home from the sea,
and the hunter,
home from the hill.
home to your heart.
Quit renting the space from yourself:
laugh and languish
with the rest of the apes called human beings.
Life is a dualism;
you are understanding
dum-dum balancing act of whatever.
Equilibrium is so nice.
So is the shift of the teeter-totter but
gain control,
remain under control;
O Captain, my Captain,
you are not yet cold and dead.
Breathe in and out,
live until the end.
It comes not from your hand;
it is not believed in your heart:
the sides of life and death
are one shot kamikaze missions:
one, then the other.
Enlighten the lighthouse.
Strengthen the beams of your winks.
Find meaning in living
to bank hard against the 100% house of death.
The Love comes:
a white ship,
a black frigate,
the swarthy faces of dream-lands sailors
set foot on the dry land
of your once-fertile imagination,
bearing gifts of gems and spices,
flowers silks and brocaded tapestries
unique to your mind and your magic —
so you trade them to the rest of the world.
These gifts are your giftedness;
these waves are your talents,
and when your life is lost,
you will trade no more in this heady marketplace.
Learn to be a good merchant of your wares,
a good businessperson,
a good man;
everyone barters and sings praise and stabs.
Be better: be the best
that your will and imagination can conceive,
then focus your lighthouse lantern
to illuminate,
to enlighten,
and to greater things to believe in.

For Galstephus the Mage

Posted: November 6, 1993 in Poetry
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

You dream like a king
on a throne;
you are not like the serfs
and servants of this existence.
This world doesn’t want kings and heroes;
rather, normalcy is enshrined
and page homage to with certificates of merit.
You are a nobleman
and your heritage is not acknowledged –
there is no room for the likes of you
among the jaded and the complacent;
these powers wear blinders purposefully
to destroy the talents
that could change their status quo,
that could threaten their idols of stability.
These same closed eyes cannot envision
the wondrous sights you see;
they cannot hear what runs through your mind,
the musical scales of rivers and windstorms;
they cannot feel anything anymore,
walled into courtyards, shut out from the street,
unmoving –
they cannot even dream on their thrones
where you, my lord,
belong.

I went to find my childhood
buried in the morass of my memory;
discarded in a moment of adolescence
trying to be an adult
before I knew what that was about.

So me and a shovel and a dream
go wading through the cattails and the frogs,
looking under lilypads and scouring the undersides of logs;
hopes waxing and waning with the flux of a dark moon
laying with my arms behind my head
in a dark room.

There was a little gold-gilded crown
once made of paper. . .
I thought I had drowned my youth
in a premature effort to be a man,
coated with cars, money, girls, sex, and truth,
white picket fences and two and one half kids,
a loving wife and instant happiness.

Ah, but so many can’t and so many others won’t
dig up the countryside grave of their little one,
content to weep and dream with a withered imagination,
or they chase ghosts of happiness in platinum nightdresses
taped to the part of the elephant they can still feel.

why can’t I
just be another guy?
but I’m a person
with a snake-sharp tongue
and I’m a ripped flannel…
I shoot my mouth like a shotgun.
riddles and rhyming and rhythm,
not taken seriously enough to stay honest
just another number in the GTE phone list.
I lie and I lie and I lie
to convince you all
that the poet is just another human being;
that I am just another guy.

I thresh through these lines
like a dog wrapped in seaweed,
thrown with stones in the ocean:
I can’t breathe –
there’s all the smoke from the fires I’m lightning,
I’m telling the sheriff that I’m struck by lightning.
when does it all stop echoing ‘round in circles?
I think it’s just another dream.
I’m on a porch with a candle and a carpet;
there’s crickets all around
and I feel wonderful without the world dragging me down.
look, I see you don’t understand with a frown.

I can’t even repeat what I’ve said.
I can’t think of a poem I’ve written,
then read,
and thought that this is it, this is perfect!
I’ve even given up trying to rework it.
I don’t want to write for a living anymore
I feel like the homework that’s always lost to the dog
and I don’t remember whatever
I expected from myself anymore.
these fireworks of joy that I wished to paint the skies with
are nothing more than explosions
of white-winged moths from a log
that I’ve kicked walking alone in the woods.

Constipation

Posted: August 29, 1993 in Poetry
Tags: , ,

a cat calls beneath my window
and my stomach hurts
from constipated poetry;
I’m turning into mush
from trying to lift these
literary weights and be like them,
dreaming of storefront windows
and cardboard displays…

Gut Feeling

Posted: July 13, 1993 in Poetry
Tags: , , , , , ,

Sometimes I can’t write poetry;
I know this so I don’t try.
so I’ll listen to you stomp around
and play your Steely Dan CD.
I’ll lay on my back, look at the ceiling,
and smoke my cigarette.

Then I’ll dream my best poems
and never write them down,
just wander through them
like a forest of different overstuffed chairs,
like a choir of angel’s hymns.

falling asleep with you mad at me
is something I’m getting used to.
I hear your stomach muttering in your sleep
and I’ll know you’re still wondering
how much I love you.

lighting another cigarette end to end,
I let you know I’m not asleep
if you’re listening.
that is if you’re listening,
behind your stuffed animals,
under the comforter.

No Trees

Posted: June 25, 1993 in Poetry
Tags: , , , , , ,

he started to dream less
of landscapes
and found himself
a city that was tall
and bleak with
ordered rows of houses
and buildings to support
the orangish skies
of perpetual twilight,
one with distant violence
that would echo through
the straight streets,
cries of hope being lost
in a concrete strangulation.

For Jamie

Posted: May 16, 1993 in Poetry
Tags: , , , ,

I still dream of the way
your long brown hair
fell over my face
in the wind in the park
as we played with the camera
and rolled on the grass
down the hills by the Mission
in a blanket of stars.

Chess

Posted: March 8, 1993 in Poetry
Tags: , , , , , , ,

when the night has come and I
have shuttered my open windows,
it is then that I turn away from other things
to my room of books and hanging plants
hiding in the warmth of my possessions;
a dried flower to remind me of you,
a red blanket that I was born into,
a zillion and one things to do –

the air gets thick in here…
fuzzy little octopi squirm through the air
but they’ve always been there.
I’ll let you in on one condition
and that is that I won’t lie to you;
fibbing tastes bad, like a bottle of glue
and they’re stickier, too –
but you come in of your own volition.

how can I entertain you?

alone, I lay out in the middle of the floor
on my magic Arabian carpet,
and I dream and I’ll do that for you
if you come in and listen.

Interview With an Angel

Posted: February 22, 1993 in Poetry
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

no wings, no halo,
no beatific expression
of heavenly rapture.

on interviewing an Angel,
he scratched his head
and was most like any other man.

I’m five foot eleven,
one hundred and forty pounds
(give or take five for the season)
no, there’s no particular reason
I should be renowned
as an Angel from heaven.
by the way, I’m a Libra.

I just do the best that I can.
that is angelic.
I love and hate and fear,
I learn and hurt and feel.
but to the best of my ability,
with the tools God has given me;
other than that I’m just a man
struggling with the rest of my kin
to keep faith with the Angel within
and to dream.

Untitled Poem #147

Posted: February 11, 1993 in Poetry
Tags: , , , , ,

I can only know
that time will tell me when
I can be in love again –
meanwhile, what do I do?

love has struck me down
and lifts me higher and higher
each day is consumed in fire
but I’m not quite sure for who.

I am a poet – I dream
and emotions may come easily
but this flood is confusing me;
I’m not sure what is right.

this horrible uncertainty
an important indecision
melting myself with derision
but not shedding any light.

Untitled Poem #145

Posted: January 26, 1993 in Poetry
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

you left me with a scarf
which smelled like your summer rain;
you had worn it in your hair
and I had closed my eyes.

I touched it to my face
and imagined how your breath
would come so close to me
and how I’d hear your heart beating.

you left your scarf behind
a treasure for me to discover
and hold up to the sky
and wear like a queen’s favor.

the scarf is by my bedside
where I can faintly smell your scent.
I will go to sleep tonight
clutching this in my hand.

you, angel, have left your mark
to remind me of my dreams
and how you came to me
as the smell of earth and wind.

Another Poem that is Untitled

Posted: January 24, 1993 in Poetry
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

I know that something’s changed,
my bear’s stomach smells like you again
but I’ll yell to myself.

you come walking through my daydreams
as if you were some travelling Indian
who I must chase off my land.

my hair’s getting long and in my face;
both yours and mine, they’re red and brown
like all of this waterstained earth I see.

over this I fly, sortof falling from the sky
all around you, a shattered pane of glass
melting to dew on the tips of the new grass.

I go with no control like a paper in the winds,
scudding, a cloud, a castle;
help me find my center in all the blue.

Inkslinger

Posted: January 20, 1993 in Poetry
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

my ink gleams wetly
before it dries;
my love burns fiercely
before it dies
or so it seems,
disappears to surface in flying dreams.
love long corridors of paisley flowers
love perfect fires and books for hours
space and time,
meter and rhyme,
still my ink flows on and across
a purple crayon for my thoughts
to bring them to life, to tally my fright,
they hold me and make me, blindfolded, a Knight.

Untitled Poem #142

Posted: January 3, 1993 in Poetry
Tags: , , ,

A shower, then sleep
enables a creep to feel clean
and to dream, napping soundly
through the rest of the night.

The Maker of Myths

Posted: November 26, 1992 in Poetry
Tags: , , , ,

“Had he no staff? Then with a dream-thread he held
the illusion. Breathing, he held it; the void, the illusion,
and felt for its earth. There was nothing to feel:
‘I shall gather the void’. He felt, but there was nothing.”
-Uitoto Indian Myth from The Red Swan

He had questions, and thoughts
About feeling nothing but the void,
Wishing for earth to stand on;
Dreaming of thread to hold the illusions
Of nothing, of the void.

Weave the earth from dream-thread
And the illusion of the void.
Where there was nothing,
There is now earth.
Gather the void into itself,
Into the crook of your arm,
Into the fold of your dress,
Also made of dream-thread.
All of you, made of earth.

“Now in the underworld, thinking and thinking,
the maker of myths permitted this story to come into being.”

A Dream of a Ship

Posted: November 9, 1992 in Poetry
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I sag into my bonds,
bound to this wooden chair
with water from my eyes
six inches deep on the floor.
I feel all alone on a ship
gently rocking, back and forth,
water rolling, sighing
from bulkhead to bulkhead.
my head is down
and my hair is in my face but
if I was to look up,
my pupils would birth stars;
they would burn their way to the sky.
my hands are tied with
my own intestines, wetly coiled;
every movement
wrenches my stomach
in dizzy circles, hollow
like an airplane ride.
the chair holds me up,
gives me something to be tied to,
roots me to the deck; an anchor.
my mind hurts from
holding these stars,
squeezing my eyes shut and bearing
the sting of gas
leaking through my eyelids.
sails snap in my ears;
I grow a mast for a spine,
grasping handfuls of air
through canvas fingers.
I grow old and feel my hull
rotting as it surges
through these black waters.
I grow very tired from dreaming
of the sound of surf
on rocks, a shore.
tired from creating all this magic
for no one to see.
below, I flash open my eyes
and stand forth from the chair,
wet bracelets hanging
from my pale chafed wrists,
and I climb slowly to the salt air
of the deck of my ship.
I balance on the railings,
ignoring the spray of rain and sea,
and the call of oblivion
in the depths of the ocean,
my mother. finding strength
after strength after strength and
whittling them into kindling,
like so much driftwood.
teetering on the edge of falling
from the railing into myself
forever, I like being here:
I am myself — I have nothing but me
and my starry eyes and
my wonderful rotting ship,
intestines around my hands
and an emptiness in my stomach.
there are no more tears to cry
in the hold of the ship
for the toys I have lost
when I was younger,
refusing to grow up,
to grow old.
nothing can destroy
my beliefs; without them,
I go. I would let all the stars
that I have created
stream to the skies,
shrieking for me,
for what will become of me,
a bag of bones, a sack of skin.
I remember my stars;
they will remember me,
whispering my name
through the nighttime.

Dream Girl

Posted: July 20, 1992 in Poetry
Tags: , , , , ,

I SAW YOU [believe]
run pitter-patter run
hide away, waterfall or
column of flame;
run along dream girl.
I caught you this time
(in the echo of your flowered footprints)

I will sing you a song softly
of a little girl I remember dreaming,
who would wink into the faces of
the flowers to see them smile,
perfume tickling her nose all the while
as she would wander secret places.
this little girl I did love
as I seemed to quietly spy
from the trees into which I’d climbed
as a boy, eyes opened wide.
dreaming her leaving colored footprints
skipping in the parted grass,
laughing like the flight of a butterfly.
and I’ve been dreaming ever since that time,
drugged with memories more precious
and sparkling than her diamond tears
of happiness when she chanced to find
the too-shy boy in the tree tops.

Untitled Poem #-18

Posted: March 27, 1992 in Poetry
Tags: , ,

I have been marked
as a Dreamer of Dreams
by the slow writhe
of the One on my skin,
by the keen pipe,
the language of the whisper.
I have been marked,
or so it seems.

Untitled poem #-11

Posted: December 26, 1991 in Poetry
Tags: , , , , ,

tonight
as a dream
of ocean,
there is seaweed,
a corsage
on my wrist,
sand in my nails;
my window was open
to the stars,
mirrors to
mad poetry.