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

SAILOR

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads














Chasing tail lights
your dream in the rear-view mirror
still disbelieving she isn't real
when you know you were there
the same as you are here

low buildings ramble
under the scimitar moon
as you murmur
sail on sailor

recalling how you used to feel so awkward
inside your own skin
until the revelation
that you were the observer
and the observed

and you try to hold onto that now
as you navigate the desperate grey streets
wading into a maze of strange gazes
knowing they don't have a clue
like when you
pored over some verse from a poet
you knew little about
other than you'd both been married
to the same woman
trying to gain some inkling
as to what the attraction might have been

laughter spills from open doorways
where music numbs
a thousand coexisting ills
 just as alone in a crowd
as you've ever been

reflecting on this life
a fairy dust landscape
of mirage and illusion
you feel so invisible
you could lean against a wall
and disappear
like a moon getting sucked
into a black hole
never again
having to face the sun

AFTER FALTER, BEFORE CORRECTION

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

Holidays are the enemy--they mark the passing of the years. 
This time you've defied the bastards
by sleeping straight through midnight on New Years Eve.

The runaway train of time keeps gaining speed--
summer...fall...winter...spring
summer fall winter spring
summerfallwinterspring
seasons never pausing
only waving like excited tourists passing through.

Most of the time, sleep comes grudgingly.
You lie in bed and think about old lovers,
inspecting the shards of shattered dreams.
One in particular keeps coming back.
A dusky young girl who said: I don't want to sleep with you
because I'm afraid I will fall in love with you. 
Ever the reassuring one, you replied: No you won't.

After falter, before correction
is the moment of truth
when a man must admit
that he's turned his life to shit
before setting about the business
of rising from the mire.

While driving to work you pass a service station
where a man in camouflage fatigues
wields the gas pump nozzle
as if it were a weapon.
Or a phallus. 
The car in front of you sports a bumper sticker
that says: Never deprive someone of hope--
it may be the only thing they have left.

After falter...before correction. 
The man who seeks to make connection
discovers that the days of infinite possibility are gone--
but only because a world turned deaf and blind has deemed it so.
The ego, in its fatal attraction to the body, must always lose. 
. 
The poet with too much time to think
teeters on the brink
of disaster.

Sleep comes reluctantly,
but sometimes,
in that kaleidoscopic moment between
consciousness and dream
an apparition in white appears. 
A lovely vision
in her gossamer gown
through which the mounds 
of her breasts are clearly visible.

She reveals  herself as Aphrodite, no less
(who sometimes intervenes on behalf of mere mortals)
and her first appearance ends abruptly
when you find yourself oafishly
reaching for those twin globes.
(Not the first woman you've known
to retreat under like circumstances.)

But she returns the following eve
and on your best behavior
you listen intently to all she has to say--
resolving to pass it along
to anyone who will listen.

She says that every day is a clean slate,
waiting for the touch of the master.
And if you've ever doubted that
you create the world
lie in any meadow and check out the sky.
The elephant in the clouds does not exist without you.

Let your mind become the wind
and it will carry you as far as you want to go. 
And if you don't look at everyone you meet and see yourself,
then you've got a cheapass mirror
you bought at Woolworth's on the day
they turned the freedom riders away,

Laugh like a madman.
You are, you know.

Ask forgiveness like someone who has hurt
everyone he ever loved.
You are, you know.

Fight like that hero
who will stand for what's right.
You are, you know.

Dance the dance of a lover
who is drunk with dreams.
You are, you know. 

Pray that you may have one more day
and possess the clarity of mind to use it well.

Understand that living doesn't happen to you
but that you ARE the living.

Trust in the innate goodness of the universe
for if life is indeed a joke
then we will all share it someday
just as we are doing it now
with our poker faces--
too practiced in the art to let on.

The flame of youthful desire burns undiminished,
even as the seasons grow cold.

The child never dies...
he lives inside the heart of the 90 year-old
just as surely as darkness affirms the sunrise.

As certain as winter implies spring. 

REAL

With Real Toads--d'Verse Poets Pub

What is a memory? 
And what is a dream?
And is one more real
than the other?

The memory
you say
because it once existed.
But I say the dream--
because it still
holds the promise
of fruition.

With Real Toads--d'Verse Poets Pub

rotting fruits and vegetables

atop the compost heap--

breeze wafting my way

spring rain

tires splashing--

you dripping by

sexy dream

suddenly interrupted...

cat's paws

AZTEC DREAM

One Shot Wednesday

In an Aztec dream

we rode on a jungle wave,

did a double whammy

on a conga drum,

boomeranged to the boogie beat

of a hot marimba band

on a one night stand--

me and you

in the skunk funk

and the swamp goo.

In an Aztec dream

we climbed the Pyramid of the Moon,

you in your white negligee,

me with just a baseball cap

and my dangling

p

a

r

t

i

c

i

p

l

e

Ever the martyr,

you were offering yourself

to save the world

from massive drought

with that familiar pout.

In an Aztec dream

the wind was quiet

as the moon...

blue shadows fell

across your smile

as we ascended to the top

where the high priest waited--

his black eyes intent

upon some distant massacre.

(He was a postal worker

who only moonlighted as a high priest,

making his own supreme sacrifice

by working on Columbus day.)

In an Aztec dream

he took one look at you and said:

Sorry...we're only sacrificing VIRGINS today!

You caught me sniggering,

then slugged me in the gut,

and stormed down

those ancient steps

in that way

that you always do.