dreams

#18 THE MOON (4 PHASES)

WAXING

I’ve seen men walk across your face
Stabbing you with red-white-blue
Waving on a pointed pole
I’ve seen you cloud-white in a daylit blue sky
I’ve seen you fat and thin
I’ve seen your sallow skin
No matter how dark the nights
You’ve wrenched blood from my body
Sanity from my sometimes struggling mind
Caressed the beach with your tides
And been my poetic muse while I cried
You are so familiar, iconic
But you always retain the magic of your name
My Moon

FULL

Red starry show
Orion struggling in a sea of blood?
No! Just the red glow of
Hind’s Crimson Star
Alpha Leporis
Fourteen times the mass of sun
Drawing all eyes to
Constellation Lepus
Rabbit
Hare
Easy to see
The mythology
Of Orion’s dogs
Canis Major and Minor
Pursuing this incandescent body
But thanks to Ostara
Goddess of Spring
She is granted swiftness
And once a year
Will appear
On the Moon
After traveling 1300 light years
Syncretizing Eastern myths
With Western ones
Bringing eggs to the
Moon Rabbit who is
Fiercely pounding
A lunar mortar by pestle
Grinding out the Elixir of Life
An Asian Philosopher’s Stone for
Immortality
Mystically produced
By the mating of the
Hare and Rabbit
For is not reproduction
A form of immortality?

WANING

Fragment of a dream
Me in helmet-less
Astronaut’s suit
Disembodied voice:
“We no longer have the
Resources to get you off
The Moon…”

NEW

Rolling through my mind
Catchy-tune theme song
From some 1960s bad TV
Expect to see
Go-Go booters
Dancing the Monkey
On colorful boxes
Piled on the stage
All that energy
Brought by the once-again new
Moon…

(combined 2 moon poems and added two observations)

REPERCUSSIONS (Cezanne, Gauguin, Monet, and Van Gogh)

Mont Sainte-Victoire breakfast

Strangely snow blinded

Yet able to welcome

Swift arrows of sun

Bowing to the dawn

Espresso early song

Sharpening the appetite

World ceiling almost-bright

Tahitian naps under

Sun-sheltered trees

Salt-soddened

Hair and skin

From wild tides

Somnolent sighs

Tasting coconut milk

On sleeping lips

Tokyo teas

Jasmine tips the tongue

Cherry Blossom petals

Beneath sandaled feet

Delicate treats

Wooden shelter

By a bridge to nowhere

Into a dreamland of peace

Camargue nights

Savoring incarnadine wine

Big Dipper

Capturing hearts

Over a starry Rhone

Following us

As we float home

To rewind the day…

FLAWLESS

Not until orchestral tones blend into the clouds

Not until every voice carries across the star-spangled sky

Not until the vivid spectrum of colors bleeds into the horizon

Will I be satisfied that life has reached perfection…

IMAGE: horizon wallpaper

WAKING-UP DREAM

Holding the Book of Illusion

Tied with nine knots

Containing the secrets

Of the Conqueror Worm

Welcoming me

Shades of Poe!

Human mortality

Inevitability of death

Is this a message?

Acculturation of dragons

The blood in my body:

German slave owners

Planting their seed

As the Gypsies stripped grapes

From the vines for wine

Further cross-cultural symbols

Existing for Romani, too

Maternal Kalderash word: Azdaja

Paternal Sinti word: Draxo

Oh, Poe!

Why do you bedevil me

In my sleep

With dragons, serpents, worms?

Once again I study the knots

What thoughts

Emotions

Incantations

Are woven throughout?

Binding the dance

Between life and death

But there is no depth

To the dream

After all, it doesn’t have to be a

Warning

Merely a reminder

Immortality spawned from

Fiction, rhyme

Live the best you can

Within finite time

A never-long-enough

Lifespan…

IMAGE: book & knot (cs)

PARACOSM

Days of blues

Choosing to float

Through the land of fantasy

Fortunately

Necessaries in life

Make me aware

That I must take care

Of the visible part of

Existence

But soon

Even before the moon rises

Breathless and smiling

I rejoin you in the invisible clouds

Away from crowds

Where we drift through

An enclave of dreams

Together…

WHY CAN’T I DREAM?

Troubled by dreams that never appear

Over the decades can count on ten fingers

Plus a toe or two

The amount I remember

Why do I sleep delta

Instead of theta

Must turn to music

For answers

But confusing because

Lyrics don’t always differentiate

Between dreams awake

Or dreams asleep

Everly Brothers sing

Whenever I want you

All I have to do

Is dream….dream, dream, dream

Tom Petty is running down a dream

(great riff, great song)

The Monkees ask what can it mean

To a daydream believer and a homecoming queen

Even Billy Ocean sings

Get outta my dreams

Get into my car

(The backseat—honestly unromantic!)

But not many sing about a dream

About being actually asleep

About living a life of puzzle

With strangers who seem real

With cliffs shaking us off so we fall

With monsters chasing us through dark halls

With lovers whose names we call

With familiar family, friends, dogs and cats

Talking birds and stampeding cattle

Are remembered dreams too personal

A taboo translation into lyrics

Or is that the font of great art

What’s with dreams…

IMAGE: Dreams (Pinterest, no attribution)

KORAKO (CROW) 2

Korako, crow, oh no

Waking to you

Feathers in free-flight

Circling, then

Landing by my feet

Last time you were here

My cardinals disappeared

Lucidly rising from the pillow

I say, please, be an omen

For a good day

Really need one

You look at me with

All-knowing eyes

As I stare back at you

Trying to be strong but kind

I ask you to move along

Spare me live-at-five

Real-time demonstrations

Of the food chain at work

Thought I was awake

But you answered me

In perfect American English

“Good for you, bad for me

I do it only when hungry”

Do it down the street, then

Cardinals are nesting there too

Korako gives me a sad look

“Your cardinals are more important

Than those of neighbors?”

Chastened, eyes closed

I try to go deeper into sleep

Want to forget the dream

Almost waking time

Subconsciously hear my dogs

Scratching, moving around the bed

Korako fading into that other world

And I, tribal sociopath, am left

Self-reflecting on selfishness

Taught to me by korako…

IMAGE: How To Draw A Tribal Crow by Dragoart.com

This is a brain on jalapeno

Wow! What was in that Veggiburger from the snack bar on the train ? It was a jalapeno delight reminiscent of Homer Simpson’s night in the desert , the episode where he makes his chili and hallucinates .

It led to the ocean

An old dirt path

Geographically impossible

The Atlantic Ocean could not exist in that place

But no mistaking it

Even in that space

Gray, cold with an undertow

Salty waves

Sand sucked right under the toes

And sand crabs

Tiny toe nippers scurrying around

Excavating the ground

So I sat and sniffed

The pungent saline scent

Willing my left brain to explain, using logic

Then realized the only explanation

From that hemisphere

Would be psychotic break

No thanks

I’ll try next-door

Right brain will know

And it creatively tossed out

Multiple reasons for an ocean in the city:

“Stumbling through to a parallel universe”

” Dreaming a lucid scenario”

On and on the reasons formed

Until I begged the mind to cease

Because who really knew?

Why not just enjoy the vision

And see where it led

And yes, I now know …

UKULELE DREAM SONG (in haiku)

(Here is a haiku stack I wrote in April. I’ve recently attempted to turn it into a song so added chords and it actually seems to work! Well, that’s a subjective opinion but…)

Am/ Let me close my eyes

C/ And lightly float into the

G/ Enigma of dreams

Em/ Magic cauldron scents

Am/ Spicing the cooling breezes

E/ Of feverish nights

Am/ Share your soul with me

C/ Whisper secret desires

G/ Glide through stormy skies

Em/ Let me close my eyes

Am/ Wisps of past memories gone

E/ New links forged for us

Am/ Just let me lie back

C/ And lightly float into the

G/ Mystery of love

Em/ To recall again

Am/Trembling urgency in the

E7/Enigma of Am/ dreams

IMAGE: My concert ukulele and copy of the song

“THINK, WAIT, FAST”

Repost: Wrote this last August, longing for winter. Now it is not even Summer Solstice and I’m wishing to leap ahead in time. Says a lot about my ability to WAIT…

Where is the sea?

Familiar salt smell

An invisible pull

Of negative ions

Grains of sand

Tumbling in the wind

Arranging lines of code

On a sun-screened body

Salty water invading platinum hair

Curls being tossed everywhere

Temporarily blinding

Hiding the sea from

Searching, gritty eyes

Where is the sea?

***

I come to the pocket-sized beach

In winter only

No longer liking to be close to strangers

Alone, where I can dream

Green Key Park on the Gulf opens at dawn

Sip coffee bought from the Burger King drive-through

Not as good as mine

But convenient, tolerable

Birds, palms, sunrise on the Gulf

I pretend it is the sea

Here, it is warm like a bathtub

Some tidal action

A bit of wave hiking up to the shoreline

Sand and negative ions

Water and fiery sun

Elemental balance

I go inward more and more each year

Feel like Hesse’s Siddhartha on the river

He, like me, can think, can wait, can fast

Well, fasting, ok, not quite there yet

But able to do the rest

Because the inner life is best…

***

IMAGE: Robert K. Rees Memorial Park

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