What child is this
who dreams in worlds
beyond our touch?
Dimly,
we call it fantasy,
while something
beautiful within
softly brushes
something timeless.
- R.M.
At the night prayer, when the sun declines to sinking, this way
of the senses is closed and the way to the Universe is opened.
The angel of sleep then drives forward the spirits, even as the
shepherd who watches over his flock.
To the placeless, towards the spiritual meadows, what cities
and what gardens he there displays to them!
The spirit beholds a thousand marvellous forms and shapes,
when sleep excises from it the image of the world.
You might say that the spirit was always a dweller there, it
remembers not this world, and its weariness does not increase.
Its heart so escapes from the load and burden for which it
trembled here, that no care for it gnaws at it any more.- Jalal al-Din Rumi
He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
W.B. Yeats
ONCE A LADY TOLD ME
like my mother and her grandmother before
i paddle around the house
in soft-soled shoes
chasing ghosts from corners
with incense
they are such a disturbance my ghosts
they break my bric-a-brac and make
me forget to turn my heating stove
the children say you must come to live
with us all my life i told them i've lived
with you now i shall live with myself
the grandchildren say it's disgraceful
you in this dark house with the curtains
pulled snuff dripping from your chin
would they be happier if i smoked cigarettes
i was very exquisite one very small and well courted
some would say a beauty when my hair was plaited
and i was bustled up
my children wanted my life
and now they want my death
but i shall pad around my house
in my purple soft-soled shoes
it's not so very neat, you know, but it's my
life
- Nikki Giovanni
Lorna
A voice,
shuddering,
wavering in air
so thin, it rejects sound.
It softens, a whispered lullaby,
diminishing into nothing.
A hidden memory,
lulled off to sleep,
demurely beautiful.
Her life.
--Rachel Jolly
My wagon
screams to be ridden in,
not used as a grocery cart.
Great concepts linger in the bottom
where I usually sit;
unfinished ideas
jiggling, shattering
on the long ride
to the store
that recycles cans.
-- Erik Unterschuetz
32ND Chorus
Beautiful girls
Just primp
But beautiful boys
Do suffer.
White wash rain stain
Gravel roof glass black
Red wood blue neon
Green elevators
Birds that change color
And white ants
Climbing to your knee
Earnest for deliverance.
Jack KEROUAC
from San Francisco Blues
A Clear Midnight
This is thy hour O Soul,thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing,
pondering the themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.
Walt Whitman
THE POET'S OBLIGATION
To whoever is not listening to the sea
this Friday morning, to whoever is cooped up
in house or office, factory or woman
or street or mine or dry prison cell,
to him I come, and without speaking or looking
I arrive and open the door of his prison,
and a vibration starts up, vague and insistent,
a long rumble of thunder adds itself
to the weight of the planet and the foam
the groaning rivers of the ocean rise,
the star vibrates quickly in its corona
and the sea beats, dies, and goes on beating.
So, drawn on by my destiny,
I ceaselessly must listen to and keep
the sea's lamenting in my consciousness,
I must feel the crash of the hard water
and gather it up in a perpetual cup
so that, wherever those in prison may be,
wherever they suffer the sentence of the autumn,
I may be present with an errant wave,
I may move in and out of windows,
and hearing me, eyes may lift themselves,
asking "How can I reach the sea?"
And I will pass to them, saying nothing,
the starry echoes of the wave,
a breaking up of foam and quicksand,
a rustling of salt withdrawing itself,
the gray cry of sea birds on the coast.
So, through me, freedom and the sea
will call in answer to the shrouded heart.
--Pablo Neruda
from Fully Empowered
Druid's dream
*******
*I see you
happily ensconsced,
up a tree
O Cheshire Cat smile...
I can absorb your light,
delight of the hearts
It's that smile,
that sets me free.
I climb the tree,-
Melt into the limbs,
- Smile back at you
& cry the tears of
a wood Nymph,
missing her Cedar of Lebanon.
The tears wash the sawdust
out of my spirit
_and meld me,
back with you....
LYNNE SALTER,97
as the night comes
apon our sickned lives
so smoothly
she lay back with
an ache in her
gut
that can not yet be
distinguished
but her soul is dying
her eyes closing
and she smokes her ever
shortening cigarette--
of life
"to the bitter end!" she cries
but she is planning on
leaving before then
and her eyes close all the way
and she turns her head in
disgust
of herself
all realization has now
come into play
--carissa
The River
chilled the bones in my feet
until they ached so much
I shook them high
above the surface
until I could feel the rocks
pinning my feet
or the current swirling and sucking
at my body-pulling me
pulling
until I dipped my nose
into the rushing surface.
Now, sitting on a rock in the enduring sunlight,
oblivious
to the exhilaratingly frigid water
until the sun
has turned my summer reading
into a white hot glare,
I must dip my feet in the river
just long enough for the
shock
of
cold.
-- Anne Stone
SLEEPTALK
Our dreams rise above our heads
& embrace
They ride together
in ghostly trains of light
which streak across the ceiling
We sleep in their wake
A thin river of slime
joins our snail-mouths
Our eyelids twitch
the Morse codes
of our dreams
Our fingers clutch & unclutch
at the darkness
Palm upwards to the stars
mouth shaping zeros
to the silence
Your penis rising
to conduct
your dreams
My moving tongue
still singing to itself
-- Erica Jong
Two boys in moonlight
Dave's tingling
red cheeks
glow, body
full of bounce
fabric softener
smell, drifting
in October wind,
like red felt
leaves, that curve
in night
air, and remind me
of my cold nose,
and my hot
heart blood.
-- Erik Unterschuetz