sufficiencies

Posted on by

dream_sun_s

At night when everything was hissing,
pressurized and leaking air,
colors came around, reefs of golden green,
and in the distance,
pages tore like thunder.

A rider on an insipid horse galloped
by my bedroom,
and my dream woke up
while I still slept.

In the kitchen, it made itself a coffee
and smoked a cigarette,
while I still slept.

While I slept, it remembered
all the dead,
loving friends I’d known
before their passing.

I tossed and turned
—a nightmare—my efficient life,
obligations met and not to be,
with strangers’ dreams around me
that once I thought were mine.

Blood red trains on pulsing rails,
hollow flightless verses crawling
that once I thought were mine.

While in the street, my derelict dream,
it danced and laughed
with Venusians and vagrants.

There are those who have everything
and nothing.
I never dreamt a future,
and while I slept with empty horses riding,
I knew that I was one.

Yet just before the alarm clock played
its sorry tune,
my errant dream returned.
It woke me
with a touch
and served me eggs
on toast.

about
Sometimes I think full stops are specks of dust on my computer screen, and vice versa. I either try to clean them off or use the backspace key. Occasionally they have tiny wings and they fly away.

artwork
dream sun (part above)

40 thoughts on “sufficiencies”

    • Thanks Frank. Tell me about it. When I complain, it’s all “I’m just a poor little dream” and so on, but they can’t just go and do whatever comes into their heads. 😂

    • Steve, you need to dream some discipline. Hard line barriers that they can’t just whiffle across at the touch of every next thought. It’s all gotten out of hand with contemporary dreams. Bring back the good old dreams …

  2. Lovely unsettling imagery throughout – the insipid horse, the pages torn like thunder – the verses on red rails – the shifting perspectives (who’s dream is this anyway?) and the movement – night into morning, dreams, nightmares, jangled pictures resolving finally into comforting eggs on toast. Bravo.

    Reply

    • Thank you Peter. Once the dream woke up I knew logic and rationality were in trouble, I had to count on the morning to bring the world back, as it so often does. 😃

  4. Oh my 🙂 From the beautiful work of art to stepping down every line. You really did manage to create a double exposure in poetry wow bravo. Your method is so descriptive that I could see it play before my eyes. It does, however, leave me wanting for more. Beautiful

    Reply

    • Thank you Tamaya. 💙 Yes, a double exposure, that sounds right. When I wrote it, it was kind of inevitable, a piece where I had very little choice, except for the breakfast possibly. 😃

    • It’s wonderful when that happens :). Like, taking on a roll of a medium in a seance eheh
      I also found it comfortable to read and follow, leaving my mind free to enjoy.
      The past years I have drifted from reading books to reading more poems. A book of poetry would suit the modern commuter to a T. You can read one poem between stops. I don’t know why they don’t promote poetry in this way. We might even get more readership. I am rambling 🙂

    • Maybe it comes from the cosmos, 🔮 or more likely with me it’s the wood ducks. 🦆

      I think you’re right about poetry being convenient to read. That’s part of the reason I read it, and these days everything has to come in bite-size pieces. It is a small audience for poetry (right now anyway 😃 ). Mostly in public transport I see earbuds (byte-size music) and occasionally a bit of tv or whatever on tiny screens. 😃

    • Yeah, life is sufficient isn’t it? Thanks BG. 💙 We must examine our lives, according to Socrates, and I can understand that, but he didn’t mention the side-effects of rubbing salt into every cut, and we all have cuts. That’s where breakfast helps. 🍳

    • Yeah, the sufficiencies ties in with the first line. Brilliant! Salt is supposed to heal wounds but it’d be nice if it didn’t have to hurt so damn much! I’ve been pretty salty this past month but the wound is healing. Think I’ll have blueberry pancakes for breakfast. 🙂 See what you started?

    • There you go then, good to hear. The Brazilian expression is to “poke your fingers in the wound,” pretty sure that doesn’t heal it.

      As you know, the Buddhists tell us to take responsibility for our own blueberry pancake consumption (which unfortunately I don’t have any of, I’m thinking toast with quince paste and fetta). As payback, I blame Buddhism for everything. Namaste. 🙏

    • Muchas gracias, Sascha. I agree, I occasionally have a night that seems to packed with vivid dreams; they leave a mark, and I wrote most of this piece after one of those nights. The art is something a bit new mathematically that I’m trying, see where it goes…

    • It makes perfect sense, through the ages the Arts and the Sciences have been connected in so many ways. One of my regrets is that I never studied anything in Arts. Anyway I just give the math to Florence in the hope that she’ll come up with something new. 🤖

  11. An incredible piece, Steve. Now, if I had a dream that decided to be a gadabout at my expense, I would need a mimosa to compliment my eggs on toast. 😉

    Reply

    • Thanks Eugenia. 😃 That’s what happens with dreams: you care for them, nurture them, and they wind up staying out all night, never ring, never call. Mind you if I asked my dream for mimosa here in Sydney I’d probably get a sprig of wattle. 🌿

    • Thank you, Jan O. 😃 It’s pretty much whatever comes into my head at the time. 🐒 Sometimes the wood ducks help a bit by quacking loudly. They tell me they do it to help anyway.

    • Thanks for the feedback, good to know. It’s not usually done with poetry (as far as I know), and it’s expected that you know your Greek classics. 😃 When I started a year and half ago, I just mixed a bit of poetry in with some thoughts on dreams, and as I continued with mostly poetry, I retained some commentary.

Leave a Reply to boomergirl47Cancel reply