― Marty McFly, Back to the Future
Lately, I’ve been thinking about my future past, or rather, the ideas I had for my future in my recent past. It seems apt.
Emerging from this pandemic is surreal à la Luis Buñuel teaming up with Salvador Dalí for an epic film festival. The end is not as comforting an idea as I suppose one would have assumed or fantasized about. Change begets change begets confusion and uncertainty. Ever wonder if you’re having a recurring dream or if when you dream you dream you are having recurring dreams? This might only occur on the cusp of waking. I am considering writing a collection of poems under the gravely titular absurdity of “I Might be Crazy” to stave off the not-so-subtle inclination. Over the past year I’ve managed to remember (and forget) so many more dreams than in past intervals. I’m no psychoanalyst, but there is certainly a direct correlation of real life stress to real disturbing dreams. Disturbing has its levels. Despite the leanings of my header, most of my dreams aren’t quite of the nightmarish sort. They are mostly just odd mish-mashes. A treasure hunt of packed away visions and memories set upon by a stealthy tornado. How can a tornado be stealthy you ask? EXACTLY.
Burn thy sage
Release your demons
But not to ears, eyes or familiars
For we are only dreaming.
Not lacking in meandering
As joy is one’s pillow and freshly cleaned sheets
Is oddness and uncertainty to the sand
Dusting from our eyelids
Sleeping cat shifting by your head
A night’s offbeat travels
Wandering, slipping away
So certain will this stick
But long ago we shaped our brains
With words on a page
And not in storms that pose as a night’s passage
So much for posterity in memory.
A patchwork quilt
Fused together by one’s chaos
Such are the curious pairings in the REM
Memory snippets and delusions
Past relationships
Failure and regret
Tomorrow’s stressors
Comparing tasting notes with yesteryear’s heartache
The imps are out this eve
Conjuring recipes designed to stimulate
Ingredients gathered from an arid scene
Knick knacks drooping
Rhymes without sequence
SO much water damage
A parallel universe miming a life
Seeking sense from a place without form
My wits are mangled, voiceless
A full moon requires a howl
When dreams become our burden
Our cells are murdered in their sleep.
Words on the page
Shed not the same blood
As words mumbling yet tearing apart the throat
Write your pain in eloquence
Speak not in drivel
Is there a path to reconcile
Tragic patterns given air
Erratic ideas with messy urgency
Pride and shame
Flip of a coin
All good ideas are bad ones
When delivery is a codfish
Here we are stuck
Like the fly in honey
Tied to a tree
Weighed down by an anvil
Silenced by insecurity
But there aren’t enough words to express
What only one’s livid soul can possess
Thus only here are my mere
Words on a page.