Tag Archives: Dreams

Oxycontin Dream: NaPoWriMo, Day 4

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Oxycontin Dream

“Eggplant,” he says, at two in the morning.
“What if I carved an eggplant
and made it look exactly the same inside as outside.”
“What would you carve it from?” I ask.
I already told you.  Eggplant.”

His eyes roll back, his mind still caught
in the penumbra of his inspiration.
He has been having artistic inspiration all night long.
Now that he suspects his last joint is welded,
his last stone drilled and carved and smoothed,
he is regretting not creating
that one last great piece.

For hours, his arms reach up
in perfect pantomime
joining wood to stone,
stitching paper to frames.

“See that shadow behind Lisa’s head?”  he asks me.
“Well, bring it over here and put it on top,
then take the bed rail off and add it to the bottom.”

When he sleeps, his lips move.
Words almost connected come out half-digested.
Hands reach out and clutch.
“Oh, it’s gone,” he says.  Over and over,
reaching out for each thing almost grasped.

 

 

For NaPoWriMo day four, we are to write a poem based on a dream.

Recycled Dreams

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Recycled Dreams

Nature recycles as everyone sleeps,
and those dreams that you’ve dreamed are the daydreams it reaps.
Then twice thought and forgotten, our daydreams soar free.
How many dreams may lie snarled in this  tree?
We cast them afloat but  know not how they fare
once we’ve released them out into the air.

Dreams are not limited by dreamers’ choices.
Once announced and declared in stentorian voices,
birds may collect them and shape them in nests
among fibers from sweaters and threadbare old vests
once the pride of new grandpas, they now cradle eggs,
as though new dreams are made of an old daydream’s dregs.

Prompts today are stentorian, daydream, pride, afloat and I’m also incorporating Becca Givens’ Sunday Tree prompt.

 

 

Hoarder

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Hoarder

There are moments caught between heart-beats that fall into crevasses where they nourish our dreams. Streaming rivulets that escape our conscious daylight world swell these moments until they become full-grown nightly adventures––what we have hoped blended with what else might be possible, tempered by fears and regrets. What part of us orchestrates these dreams has never been discovered––some grand arranger of self that does not allow itself to be controlled by any conscious part of us, perhaps. It is a cinema we construct for ourselves—a relief from or a censor of or a collector of those parts of ourselves we would otherwise not deal with. Those parts of ourselves we struggle to forget and throw away? There is no detritus in our lives. Some great hoarder within us reaches out a hand to capture and arrange them, then calls them dreams.

 

The dVerse Poets Pub prompt today was to write a 144-word flash fiction piece making use of the first sentence in my essay above.

Dreams

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Dreams

My dreams always end before some big climax—the revelation of what is behind the wall or who is behind the spread cape, ready to turn around and solve the mystery. Dreams are a wonderland we dive into unaware—a little surprise some part of us produces every night. A vast world composed of images real and false. Bits from our past or present scrambled up with fantastic elements perhaps remembered from our youth. Dreams where we can fly. Sinister alleys and unknown streets we wander through, at first with a false assurance that they will lead to somewhere. It is with regrets or a heartfelt “hurray!” that we awaken from these dreams—either saved  or disappointed by the awakening—our lives somehow sorted out by the weird realignment of facts and fantasy that they accomplish, like shuffled cards, rearranging our past by mixing it in with the future or with fantasy. Dreams are a surreal world we enter every night, no less real than the world we live in every day. Just different, made up of different parts of ourselves. A second chance, perhaps. Or a sorting out of problems, worries, regrets.

Prompts today are dive,  wonderland, false, hurray, vast.

Respite

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Respite

Although it is the day lit world that shouts at me, it seems
that when darkness closes, you echo in my dreams.

 

For dVerse Poets: Echo

A Little Night Music

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maeghan-smulders-pIY5yM0bmMQ-unsplashPhoto by Maeghan Smulders on Unsplash. Used with permission

A Little Night Music

It may seem eccentric to sing in your sleep,
but when I’m in slumber so sound and so deep,
sometimes my voice just wants to get out
in some type of utterance—whisper or shout.
And then if I must, would it be such a pity
to let out my voice in a full-throated ditty?
Folks walk in their sleep, so why can’t they sing?
Why would you consider it such a strange thing?
Dreams can’t be censored, directed or herded.
There are times when  a melody must be asserted.
So if you should hear my somnambulant song,
please stifle complaints and just hum along!!

Prompt words today are sleep, rare, eccentric and sing.

Midnight Swim

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Midnight Swim

I love this dark and quiet night
far from the loud and glaring light.
Solitary in the dark,
no mewling cat or warning bark.
The whole world in conspiracy
hides and holds and cushions me.
I move through water, side to side.
Through liquid currents, I freely slide.

Palms backlit by an opal moon
that’s dulled by clouds too soon, too soon.
The silence sliced by mosquito’s whine
mars a night no more divine.
Invader of my private night,
I fear its subtle stinger’s bite.
It moves in circles through the air
from shoulder to my neck and hair.

I swat at where it was until
it, alas, has had its fill.
Then it is off, leaving me
the pleasure of my company
devoid of interloper’s claim.
I wipe out memory of my name,
my age, my talents and my ills.
Suddenly, the pool fills

with the spreading whole of me
becoming part of all I see
and touch and smell and feel and dream.
I am, at last, all that I seem.
I float toward light, then climb the stairs,
free of worry and of cares.
If I can only fall to dreams
before old niggling prods and screams

invade my memory to call
me up against the judgment wall,
my whole intent will be fulfilled.
I’ll have achieved just what I willed.
Such are the charms of veiled nights
that cover over daylight’s frights
and lull us to our sleep and dreams
convincing us life’s what it seems.

Information Overload

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IMG_1309Information Overload

I garner information in the library from books.
Determine facts from faces––from grimaces and looks,
antagonistic letters and notes pinned up on fridges,
in the garden, piles of dirt and lawn pushed up in ridges.

But all the little signals the world puts out today 
are more complicated than they were in Grandma’s day.
Emails, texts and messages sent us through the air
sometimes are just more than one person’s meant to bear.

In light of all this input, I’m afraid I’m going to snap,
so I think I’ll grant me clemency and go down for a nap.
Skype, WhatsApp and Facebook can’t intrude upon my sleeping.
I’m safe away from “to do” tasks and all the world’s sad weeping.

Sleep gives retreat from telephones and all that information
that’s leading me to bouts of excessive consternation.
It’s the one place left to hide, or so, at first, it seems
until I get there and I have to put up with my dreams!

The prompt words for today are library, clemency, antagonistic, garnered and continued.

Venetian Dreams

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Venetian Dreams

The year we did the Grand Canal,
I came home feeling humble.
My own life just seemed so banal.
My dreams began to crumble.

My life was filled with piety
of very little note.
None of the notoriety
could my First Baptist quote

compared to all the beauty
I’d seen in St. Mark Square.
I felt it was my duty
to be living over there.

I needed no incitement.
My life here seemed so rote.
I needed the excitement
of traveling by boat.

Though it seemed an overindulgence,
I sought to be alone.
I needed the effulgence
of sun shining on old stone.

I could sell my small red Honda,
put my jewelry in hock.
(I had visions of a gondola
waiting at the dock.)

I imagined a “For Sale” sign
in front of my small home.
It seemed a “Get out of Jail” sign.
This housewife sought to roam.

If it sold within two fortnights
I could take off, traveling solo.
I could trade in Sunday sportnights
for a flight to Marco Polo!

I would feel I was at home again.
I’d missed the sights of Venice.
I wanted to be where I’d been,
free from all the menace

of getting three kids off to school
and ironing hubby’s shirts.
I sought to trade the Golden Rule
for romantic nights and flirts.

I’d give up school bake sales
for pannetone and gelato
eaten with Italian males.
“Me First” would be my motto.

I tried to conjure the Rialto,
but I saw the Bridge of Sighs
as my sound track’s rich contralto
assumed a different guise.

“Mommy, Mommy! was the chorus
of my shattered dream.
My stone fantasies were porous,
issuing a frantic stream

of nightmare shrieks and pleadings.
I started down the hall.
My daughter’s midnight needings
my most urgent call.

The canals were left in shambles
as verity flooded in.
So much for fantasy gambles.
My real life won again!

The prompt word today are canal, overindulgence and humble.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/15/rdp-friday-canal/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/15/your-daily-word-prompt-overindulgence-february-15-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/15/humble/

The Dogs Are Barking

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The dVerse Poets prompt requires that we write a quadrille–a poem of 44 words––making use of the word “steep.”  To do so, I rewrote an earlier poem so it became a 5 stanza poem, each stanza forming a quadrille. I wonder how many other poets share this experience as they are awakened from dreams by one means or another:

The Dogs Are Barking

They break the morning––a daily rite.
It’s just a warning. The dogs won’t bite.
Two strangers talk but pass unseen.
I doze, they walk, with a wall between.
I try to sink back into sleep,
once more to drink of waters deep,

trying to slip between the seams
of the surface of my dreams
but the dogs still bark. They leap and pace.
My dreams, not ready for this morning place,
lie dark and deep and intertwined,
wanting to creep back up my mind.

But its steep slope is much inclined
and provides small hope that I will find
once more that world well out of sight
where truth lies curled, still holding tight––
as an oyster cleaving, loath to unfurl
and reveal to light the priceless pearl

of that mind of dreams that slips the knife
beneath the rind of daily life.
Time is a brew of present, past
and future, too—all tenses cast
to bring to light those grains of sand
made pearls of wisdom by nature’s hand.

Dreams are stories we tell ourselves
and share, perhaps, on bookstore shelves.
Pinned to pages, they reach their height
and bring our sage self to the light.
But the dogs are barking. They’re hungry, cross.
When I rise feed them, the poem is lost

dVerse Poets Quadrille prompt is steep.