Tag Archives: Dreams

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.

The Awakening

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The Awakening

She woke to a whiff of Darjeeling—that gentle caress to her nostrils that told her that Lorenzo had awakened early today. She could feel the press of his body on his side of the bed as he lay the tray there, ready for her when she was ready for it. He would not disrupt her, knowing all too well how she loved her Saturday mornings away from the press of the paparazzi and the demands of the fashion world.

On any other day, it wouldn’t be feasible to sleep in, but in addition to being a weekend, this was her birthday. She fell again into a sleep where there was no good reason for fantasy.  Her own life was fabulous enough to be replicated in dreams. Both children grown and off to their own fairytale lives: Francesca in Crete with her minor royalty husband, Sebastian a skillful artist flying from one country to the next to fulfill the long list of commissions that stretched out to infinity.

All-in-all, she herself had lived out all her childhood fantasies and only now had it become feasible to start to delegate tasks—grooming some of her most talented protégés to take over the designing and running of her couturier salon. Time to lie back and take it easy and let Lorenzo pamper her in all the ways he knew so well.

She stretched luxuriously, reaching her arm up to hit against the silk of her padded headboard, but strangely, hit instead against wood. Curious.  She opened her eyes. Light leaked into the room from between bent venetian blinds. Where was she? On the edge of the bed, a slightly paunchy old man with a day’s stubble on his cheeks sat studying the center foldout of a magazine he held at arm’s length. As she stirred, he looked up from it, his eyes widening in surprise. “Essie?”

She looked down at her own wrinkled hands, extending from the sleeve of a cheap pair of pajamas. She stroked her cheeks, dry and wrinkled , and wiped a small line of drool from the corner of her mouth. “Where am I?” Her voice felt as flaky and dry as her skin, her throat almost choking with the words.

“Yer here in Elm Gap,” he said, “where we’ve always been. Essie, do you remember what happened, yer slipping on the ice and falling sideways against the water tank?  Do you remember anythin’, Essie, of the twenty years since then?”

“Twenty years? I’ve been asleep for twenty years? What of Lorenzo and Francesca and Sebastian? Where are they?”

“They’re right here, Ma, waiting for you as usual,” a straw-haired woman said from the corner of the room. She, like her father, was rounded and nondescript—a thirtyish childlike frumpy creature much like the girl Essie had been. She was patting a tall pile of romance novels. “I been reading them to you for twenty years, Ma. You woke up just in time, cuz Ladonna LaRue, their author, just died and there won’t be any more.  But now you won’t be needing her life any more, because you’ve returned to your own. We always knew you’d return to us, Ma. This is your lucky day. And ours.

 

The prompt words today were skill, disrupt, whiff and feasible. Matt’s prompt was to create a simulated world.  Here are the links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/11/09/rdp-friday-skill/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/11/09/fowc-with-fandango-disrupt/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/11/09/whiff/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/11/04/daily-addictions-2018-week-44/feasible
For Daily Inkling’s Simulation Theory.

The Good Wife: Page 62, Line 6

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The Haunted Wordsmith’s prompt is to pick up the nearest book and turn to page 62, line 6 and use that line in a story.  The book I picked up was Veils, Halos and Shackles and this is the line: “. . . .each night passing through a boundary.”

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The Good Wife

Each night passing through a boundary, every morning coming home.
Pinned to the day’s agenda with no free time for her to roam
the streets of her imagination, gathering images she’d share
in all the stories she would write if she had the time and nerve to dare.
What would they think if they knew where she journeyed during dreaming time?
Would the other wives revile her or tell their husband of her crime?

The lush banks of imagination where she went barefoot and unveiled
and did the things that in the real world would cause her to be shunned or jailed
were her reward for time in harness, being that person they expected.
Veiled and cloistered and obedient. Qualities they all respected.
But in her dreams she lived the wild world—unfettered, uncensored and free.
It was the only place in her life that she labeled herself “me.”

In that world that wasn’t her world—that place where she was forced to be—
She existed as observer, watching a self she labeled “she.”
She kept her true self safely hidden. Kept her opinions to herself.
All her precious thoughts and talents neatly stacked upon the shelf
waiting for her nightly visits when she could take them down and play
until the early morning sunlight drew her, regrettably, to day.

 

https://thehauntedwordsmith.wordpress.com/2018/11/05/page-62-line-6/

 

Morning Head Shots

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Morning Head Shots

Picture a woman sleeping, words wrapped close around as sheets.
Syllables slipping to the floor, loosed from their midnight feats.
A whole new world evolving as she’s lost away in dream.
All those single actions spilling from the seam
of those reveries she’s wrapped in, meaning more than what they mean.

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Picture eyelids opening as light begins to dawn.
See the eyelids close again, her stretching and her yawn.
See the dreams she’s had all night pulled to consciousness–
all tightly wrapped, but wriggling themselves free from all the mess
of what they’ve been bound up in to become what she’ll confess.

Click

See the words all rising from the place where they’ve been sleeping.
See her brow remembering bits it struggles now at keeping.
See her form a paper sheet into a little sack
and use her pen to prod the words back into a pack,
sparring with belligerent phrases that fight back.

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See her herding each into its place with little nudges,
overlooking warring words that seek to live their grudges,
making words that don’t belong together somehow fit,
forcing the recalcitrant to want to do their bit
to turn their separate strands into a story finely knit.

Click

Now see the picture on the page where words have come to rest–
stretched out vowel to consonant, best standing next to best.
Brutal words relaxing, flaccid words now showing zest.
Brought recently into the world where they have met the test,
here they stand before you, shaken out and neatly pressed.

Click

Then see the floor around the bed–the words she’s thrown away.
The words that somehow just don’t say what she wants to convey.
See them rising in the air to hover up above.
Words of anger, sadness, envy, honor, lust and love.
They jump, they float, they kiss, they spar, they hug, they joust, they shove.

Click

Tomorrow night they’ll rain back down to form adventures new.
To form themselves into the curious plots that dream parts do.
Picture them assembling into order all their own
or forming groups informally, wherever they are blown.
Ready on the morrow to once more go where they’re sown.

Click.

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This poem seemed perfect for Matt’s prompt about the influence of remembering dreams, so here it is again.  It’s been a long time.  Admit it.  You’d forgotten it! Even I’d forgotten, at long last, this poem about the effect of remembering dreams.  Here’s the prompt URL.  Come play along!

For Daily Inklings: Influenced by Dreams

Unraveled

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“Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast.”—Wm. Shakespeare

Ravel can mean either to combine thread or to separate it (in linguistics, a word like this is called an auto-antonym). In the sense that it means to combine, unravel developed as a true antonym.—reddit.com

Unraveled

The pain of love unraveling? No one knows it better,
for she wears her heart upon her sleeve, knit into her sweater.
Each day her heart unravels and lies tangled down her arm.
They say it cannot harm her. Loosened hearts cannot do harm.
But she’s a prisoner of these tendrils of love that’s come undone—
the truth of it revealed to her each day by a new sun,
while each night in her dreams, sleep knits it up again
and the ardor of her lost love once more draws her in.
She forgets the present and relives what she once had—
what she imagines in her slumber cancelling out the bad.
This unknitting and reknitting can’t be what life is for.
She must search for her dream’s exit. She must try to find the door.
Cast her old garment on the flames. Burn up that raveled sleeve.
Real love stays firmly knitted. A true love doesn’t leave.

The prompt today is sleeve.

A Dreaming Vocabulary: NaPoWriMo, Apr 14, 2018

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A Dreaming Vocabulary

When you’re sleeping soundly in your nightie or pajammers
and you happen to be dreaming of teacups, sharks and hammers,
if the hammer pounds the teacup, spilling tea and cream
to soak the wobbly table that is also in your dream,
you might think good fortune has cruelly run out,
but that still does not explain what the shark’s about.

A dentist in a rowboat comes rowing quickly by.
He fixes that circling shark securely with his eye,
grabs him in a deadlock and pulls him o’er the side,
doses him with novocaine, then just drifts with the tide
as he extracts the teeth that he might use to chew
on anything that he encounters: fish or squid or you!

And just as he is finishing this grisly operation,
the shark begins a session of intense regurgitation.
First a full-grown seagull, then a pink silk ballet slipper
with the ballet dancer still attached, alive but not too chipper.
The shark is still recovering so toothless and so numb it
knows not that if it wants a meal, hereafter, it must gum it.

The whole group now returns to shore. The dancer dances off.
The seagull sits in shock and the shark begins to cough.
A mariachi hits the sand, complete with his guitar.
All of them a bit in shock, wondering where they are.
And to you, caught there  in dreamland, what message does this send?
Perhaps, my dear,  that everything comes out right in the end!

 

The Day 14 prompt is: Pick one (or more) of the following words, and write about what it means to dream of these things: Teacup, Hammer, Seagull, Ballet slipper, Shark, Wobbly table, Dentist, Rowboat.

Waking Up

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Yesterday, Chicken Soup for the Soul’s newest edition “Dreams and the Unexplainable“ came out. I happened to be going through my junk mail and found a notice that there was to be a podcast of selected pieces from the book today.  I tuned in and was astonished to find my story “Waking Up” was the first one that was presented.   You never know what the day is going to bring.  Here is the link:

http://chickensoup.podbean.com/e/new-favorites-when-your-life-path-is-completely-changed-by-a-dream/

Savoring Flavoring

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Remember Dagwood making those midnight trips to the fridge, piling his “Dagwood sandwich” high with most things edible that came into his vision?  Or slumber parties where you tried to do the same and everyone ended up ill, to you mother’s great chagrin?  We crave the memories almost as much as the tastes, and perhaps this is what continues to drive us out into the night from our warm beds—exploring the hidden depths of our refrigerators for something special to savor. 

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Midnight Light

I wear darkness like a second skin.
It is the cloak that hides my midnight sin
as I make my way, barefooted, through my house.
Silent, lest I wake my dogs or spouse.

This way I know most well and so I bridge
in seconds that long gap between my bed and fridge.
Pull open that snug door and hear the plop
first of the rubber gasket, then the top

of the carton that has been my goal.
Spoon out its richness without benefit of bowl.
This darkness both of me and of the night
something the fridge dispenses with its light

as tears of joy and guilt and pleasure stream
down cheeks distended with this chocolate dream.
For minutes, I stand caught up in the hold
of this trio of pleasures: chocolate, creaminess and cold.

Until some motion jolts me from their grip.
I feel its pressure at my shoulder and my hip.
My spouse rolls over, shattering my dream
of midnight tryst with frozen cream.

Its chocolate savor is one that I try to keep
as I roll over once again to seek my sleep.
Whatever course my next dream serves, I’ll try it.
For I’ve already been one long day on this diet!

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The prompt today was savor. (Yes, you have perhaps read this poem before.  I wrote it three years ago.) The photos were harvested from the Internet.

Overworked or Labor Shirked?

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Overworked or Labor Shirked?

It’s hard for me to find the middle
between hard labor and the fiddle.
Work? I either overdo it
or endeavor to eschew it.
Work all day and then all night,
being very erudite—
putting words down on the page,
imprisoned in my muse’s cage.

Perhaps I fear my distant past
when good work habits didn’t last
and days were spent in dreaming or
novels read behind closed door—
midnight radio a chance
for fantasies to spin romance.
Whole days stretched as though to catch
an errant dream of true love’s match.

I feared such days were sloth, and yet
perhaps they were just roads to get
to the place where I would tell
the stories that I knew so well
because I’d lived them first in dreams
or days just bursting at the seams
with doing nothing but living life—
its pleasures, problems, romance, strife.

First the doing at my leisure,
then the writing, and the seizure
of all the details of the past
that, once down on paper, are made to last.
Overworked or over-lived,
life first collected, then finely sieved.
Panned like gold to find the treasure—
leisure and work in even measure.

“Overworked” is the prompt word today.

Nightmare

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Nightmare

You hide yourself in shadows deep
to watch me as I fall to sleep.
Half-lidded, with your sleepy stare,
you cup my cheek and stroke my hair.
I do not know as I fall deeper
that you stalk this drifting sleeper.

Then just as I do not resist,
you give my hair a painful twist.
I try to jerk awake but fail.
I tense my muscles, fight and flail,
but I cannot escape your grasp.
I call for help, I moan and gasp.

Sir Nightmare, from where do you come
with death knoll beat on ragged drum?
I hear its pulse now through the day.
At every hour, it sounds the way
back to the horror of the night––
a pathway to that final fight

when I will mount at last that steed
that nightly stands to do its deed
to carry to oblivion
this sleeper off to meet her kin.
That father lost, those lovers three
who wait for my delivery.

Is this nightmare just a dream––
a mere digression from the stream
of conscious thought––a nightly swim
through a fantasy most grim,
or a window showing me
an inevitability?

(The photo is intended only as an illustration and has nothing to do with the person pictured!!!)

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/nightmare/