THIS DREAM

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads--d'Verse Poets Pub

Here's an encore presentation from a few years back. Many of you haven't seen it,or if you have, you don't remember. Isn't memory loss a wonderful thing?

In the morning
I awaken once again
into this dream

In the blueness
of the day
the arrogance
of ordered existence
becomes clear

As the day darkens
I come to terms with
the illusion of meaning

I've taken to staying up 
while others sleep
spinning and turning in time

That blow to the head
could have felled a rhino
but all I did was stagger
about a bit
in that lovely planetarium
behind my eyes

Now
in my world of ambiguity
the universe precedes the big bang
the lesson begins the teacher
and life plays out 
from finish to start

In a parallel universe
I am perpendicular 

And like the world
it all makes perfect sense
if you don't think about it

ANTI-SOCIAL MEDIA

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

I got myself a tribe
their wordless tongues
don't have to wangle
only nimble fingers
flying over a keyboard

My foolscap is a monitor
for monitoring fools
determined to give the Big Lie
just one more try
as tribal warfare
spills across the screen

A manhole cover 
on my head 
to brace
for the incoming
a hail of toads
wet-stained and sweating rain
as life is cheap as dirt
in cyber land
but the truth
now that'll cost ya

NO FORGETTING

Down at the bus station
drunks and drifters 
prepare to sail away 
to somewhere
anywhere 
away from here
as if you could 
somehow get away 
from you

You're not of that ilk
but with a little letting go
you could be

The woman 
in the adjacent seat
is talking to someone
that isn't you 
and you surmise
it must be God

Out your window
snowflakes plummet
onto an empty plain
and there is your God

Darkness descends
with only the open road 
and the cold stars
beaming out yesterday

This is where you belong
and there is no forgetting

RED WATER, BRONZE WORDS

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

The road is just more geology
we kick up pale dust that hangs
peels back to the left
northbound lane
a hawk circles low

America 
I sometimes wish
you would remember me
under the glitter
on frozen moss and snow
the wet seasons
red water
bronze words
new shoots of spring wheat

I have enough despair for two people

A voice calls me to the river

When you see my reflection
in the dewdrops 
on the heather
you'll know that I have returned

ALL THE BOOGEYMEN AND THE GODDESSES ARE GONE

dVerse Poets Pub--Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

I initially engage a book of poetry
somewhere in the middle, 
looking to avoid   
beginnings and endings
as one always leads to the other
and if we'd just meet each other
halfway the cycle might be broken.

I  don't need new and improved
like the dubious claims in that
laundry detergent commercial.
Am quietly content with 
a 1997 issue of Ploughshares 
that I picked up at the used book sale.
Those poems have been neglected
for some time (I can identify) 
so I pay them a visit to find
lo and behold that neither they
nor their creators have aged...
only me...old and unimproved.

And then the next ad pops up 
and it's  the real people-- not actors--
with their testimonials, don't you know.
And as for those backhandedly maligned
thespians, I wonder if at the end of the day
 do they turn back into real people again 
when they go home to their families
or maybe just a room with one dim  
bulb hanging down from 
the ceiling and a cat.

And now back to our story.
But maybe I'll just switch it off 
before the foregone conclusion.
Have done it before.
You just walk out the door.
(Avoiding the saddest part of the drama.)
Used to think maybe I would
miss something that way. 
But now can see that 
all I missed was the ending.