Four Dream Poems

Causal Apparel

A pair of faded

green slacks with a

Dark streak down

the side of one leg,

in the pockets, pencils,

many keys, and buttons

Useful in getting things started.

 

Hospital Information

Her voice clears the curving desk

 That hides her seated figure

only her white hair shows

 “I don’t know if you knew John . . .,

But he died yesterday.”

A perky twang, she must

have been a cheerleader

in days gone by

The approaching man bent

with years replies,

“Yeh, I knew him, a good man

as far as it goes.”

The world we know keeps

 shrinking as it grows.

 

  Cadaver of Words

This poem came to me

as I dreamed in bed

I remembered the words as I woke

and said them in my head:

Bastard of an incubus

Left me to eat stone

Leaving me in mid-thrust

On this path, alone

then I rose and wrote it down

and now the poem is dead.

 

Llama the Mule Restrained and Observed

A dark tawny mule

(The children call it “llama”)

Makes a racket, stomping

around on a spotlit stage, braying.

Randomly Kicking with both hind legs.

 

Now strapped down

on a gurney, the mule quietly

pants, legs vertical, still kicking.

The children take notes

as its eyes roll back in panic.

 

One Poem about Reading a Poem

Mis-Read

(Lui et Elle  by D. H. Lawrence)

When he told me about the tortoise couple,

Reptilian and beaked,

I somehow missed the shells

And added unmentioned feathers,

picturing a great white hen

and a small rooster instead.

My stubborn mind held the

illusory layer of chickens

disguising the reptilian pair

til’ almost the end

when the shells could not be

Denied, paging back

To see where the white hen

Came striding in

“Reared on uncanny legs”

And her eye on the food,

catching his finger

in the toothless wedge

And those bright pitiless eyes

Unseeing him

In favor of bread.

But then a tortoise

Is much like a flightless

bird with wings folded

carrying a bone origami

House, folded in

Featherless patterns etched

on the painted roof.