Tag: dreams

Grey

Lured by azure waters,
the promise of carefree days,
I cruise ocean’s waters,
dream myself exotic.

Grey clouds loom, mock
this pretence – waves swell
crash, blacken horizon –
delusion loosing ground.

What force is this,
drags me into aphotic depths,
insists I swim in darkness?

Have I not proven tenacity,
claimed a place amongst the willing?

It is not light, I seek – too sinful
for redemption – just the solace
of familiar grey….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bleeding Edges

Wrap myself in verdant dreams –
creaseless envelope of hope –
have written my deepest desire,
sealed the vessel shut…

meanwhile, reality oozes red,
like puss from open wounds,
creeps into careful corners,
bleeds through edges…

nothing neat about dreaming –
life demands, cuts, prods,
does not bargain – hope is fine
unless control is the container.

(Inspired by the prompts of Ragtag Community: verdant; Fandango: meanwhile; and Reena’s Exploration Challenge: bleeding edge.)

Image from personal collection.

Close Call

In dreamtime, he comes,
my eclectic animus –
sometimes raven,
often tree,
he seduces –
first in conversation
then in arousing flesh –

Spellbound, witless,
my edges soften, melt,
and just at the moment
of near surrender,
lucidity knocks,
yanks me from watery
depths – sets me back
on conscious soil –

Anchored anew,
I shake off the lingering
tingle, brain abuzz,
reconnect with aged
limbs, mundane ills
and skedaddle.

(Catching up with Reena’s Exploration challenge – image provided; and linking up with Manic Mondays 3 Way Challenge – anchored; and Ragtag Community’s – skedaddle; and Fandango’s – eclectic.)

Dreams Do Come True

Mermaids have the best of life,
she’d tell anyone who’d listen –
castles deep on ocean’s floor,
and watery skies that glisten

I’d give up all my earthly wealth
for a lifetime of Poseidon’s riches –
swap my legs for fins, if I could be
a royal princess among the fishes.

Once upon a moonbeam
her simple wish took hold
climbed up to the milky way
and watched the stars unfold

She wants to be immortal,
Night whispered to the Moon,
to live a fairytale existence,
without suffering or gloom.

The Great Orb nodded in consent
and turned her face upon the asker –
granted her gills, tiara and jewels,
then encapsulated her in plaster.

(Lillian is hosting at dVerse tonight and asks us to start a poem with “Once upon a…”.  I have to confess I had no luck starting that way, but I did put it in the middle.  I’m also linking up with Willow Poetry’s challenge: What Do You See?

Photo courtesy of Hélène from Willow Poetry.)

Pivotal Moment

Two babies, two cars, a mortgage, and depression I just couldn’t shake.  What was wrong with me, I wondered.  Was I missing something?  Is there more to life, I’m not seeing?  I prayed to the Heavens.

Six months, I dreamt of returning to my childhood home.  Every time, I remarked the same changes: the blue wall-to-wall carpet was replaced with red in the living and dining rooms, and geometric patterns running up the stairs; and one wall in my sister’s old bedroom was bricked.  Whereas we had a dog, the dream residents had a cat.  Always, I would exit through the back door, where I would fall and jolt awake.

One day, driving past the place, I noted an Open House sign and went in.  There was the red carpet, the designs on the stairs, and the bricked wall in my sister’s old room.
Shaken, I passed the cat in my haste to exit – out the front door.

Ask and be answered –
Source listened, and delivered –
a resounding “Yes!”

(Written for dVerse pub, hosted tonight by Merrill.  The challenge is to write a haibun on the topic of transition.  I am also linking this to my weekly challenge, where the prompt is veil.  Although I did not use the term in this piece, I felt as if a veil had been lifted.)

Sleep is For Other

I toil in the dreamtime
like a night manager
in a hotel without walls,
catering to clientele –
whose needs, so diverse,
rattle the rows of beds –

settling disputes and
encouraging discretion
and succeeding only
in waking exhausted.

I am like a keeper in
a hostile hostel –
trying to find a key
when there are no
doors to unlock.

(Inspired by sleepless nights and erratic dreaming, and submitted for Sammi Cox’s Weekend Writing Prompt – unlock.  Featured image is titled “Self-Portrait with Colours” although my son says it looks more like a LSD trip – I didn’t ask. Alternate title:  “I am Slowly Going Crazy”, lol.)

Calm Yourself, Woman

Circumstances shift –
breath the fertile air –
let dreams fly; expand

embrace change – hope,
now winged, an explorer
bursting with possibility.

I would move this old
body, relocate to new
beginnings, be reborn

but for these internal
trappings – begging for
extermination – retro

shaded memories –
long past expiration –
skewed accessibility,

stretched without purpose,
reconfiguration required –
history a real estate, I need

to unload; who will buy
a drama-laden, single
story alcoholic’s haunt?

Circumstances shift –
sniff the fertile air –
guard forbidden dreams

change, like wings, unfolds
in its own time; be patient,
possibility is taking flight.

(Poem originally appeared August of 2016)