Tag Archives: other selves

Convocation


Convocation

I’m hiding in my broken self, couched down deep inside,
in concord with those secret parts I find it best to hide.
The most appealing sides of me are ones I choose to show
while the shattered rest of me finds somewhere else to go.

We often come together. We conspire in my dreams
when who I really am comes out to join with whom she seems.
It’s a convocation of past selves and of present—
all my selves from bratty kid to other selves more pleasant.

That part that takes the smallest piece of cake comes face-to-face
with parts that want the biggest piece and put her in her place.
Those selves that were once bullied confront their sense of loss,
face up to the bully and for once end up the boss.

Broken hearts are mended and pride put in its place.
In dreams I deal with all my faults that I’m meant to face.
It’s there I meet with former selves that weep or laugh or rage,
and then when I awaken, I put them on the page.

Prompt words for the day are appealing, broken, hiding and concord.

Night Journeys

Night Journeys

All night long I follow scripts written by some hand
perhaps belonging to a self that consciousness has banned.

Fresh from dreams, I feel released from tasks committed to,
and then remember other jobs that I’m obliged to do.

Who knows if dreams are showing us those things we could have done—
those things we have forgotten with the dawning of the sun.

If only I remembered that world that fades away,
perhaps I’d face a very different sort of day.

Instead, I slip into the role my life has led me to,
like forcing naked feet into a more confining shoe.

And I wonder if the dreams I dream in dreams might reveal more
of potential lives where I live closer to my core.

Perhaps these stories I concoct, labeling them as lore,
are simply other lives I live on this lower floor

I descend to in my dreams, where I go to ponder
all those other me’s whose gifts I might have chosen to squander.

Could it be in death that I am freed to find a goal
in the bargain basement of the building of my soul—

to find another path where I may once more start a quest
towards a self just one step closer to my very best?

 

This is a rewrite of a poem written 3.5 years ago. The prompt today is wonder.