Dreams

Night and Day Dreams

Night and Day Dreams

Someone stole the nose from a sacred statue.
He placed it on his face and I watch it
as it crosses the central square.

A moving shadow: zopilote flies high above.
I talked to him once on a midnight bus.
He begged me to fold his wings
and let him sleep forever.

The balloon lady sells tins of watery soap.
Children, newly released from school,
fill my days with enchantments.
They blow soap bubbles, tiny globes,
circular rainbows, born from a magic ring.

The voices in my head slip slowly into silence.
Some nights I think they have no need of me,
these dreams that arrive in the early hours
and knock at my window.

When morning comes, I watch them fade
and then I know they cannot live without me.
When I am gone, they will go too.

Click on this link for the original poem.

https://wordpress.com/post/rogermoorepoet.com/23643

Click on this link for Roger’s reading.
Night and Day Dreams

Dreams

Dreams

I once stole the nose from a sacred statue.
Today I watch it cross the square attached to a face.
Eight Deer walks past with a fanfare of conches:
you can tell him by his donut with its little tail.

A shadow moves as zopilote wings his way across the square.
I spoke with him once on a midnight bus.
He begged me to fold his wings and let him sleep forever.

A gringa called Nuttall sells tins of watery soap.
Her children fill my days with enchantment
as they blow bright bubbles through a magic ring.

Eight Deer, eight years old, sets out on his conquests.
Nine Wind births nine of his people from flakes of flint,
or was it from the magic tree in Apoala?

The voices in my head slip slowly into silence.
Sometimes I think they have no need of me,
these dreams that come at midnight,
and knock at my window.
Other times I know they cannot live without me.

Daydreams

*Duermeivela*: that time when the waker dreams he is waking, yet is still asleep. His mind wanders through a labyrinth of old memories, streets and squares, myths and legends. It is a mythical time of great creativity. To wake up from it is to be filled with *hiraeth*: a longing for all that is lost and can never be recaptured.

Daydreams

The alarm clock shuffles
its pack of sleeping hours:
a clicking of claws,
needles knitting outwards
towards dawn’s guillotine.

A knife edge
this keening wind
sharpening my bones
tingling fingers and toes.

Ageing eyes refurbished
in the morning’s sky fire.
Ravishing rainbows
dazzling the eyelash of day.

Old myths grow legs.
They wander away
to gather in quiet corners,
where the wind weaves
dry leaves into endless
figures of eight.

An old man now,
I dream of white rabbits,
running down tunnels,
escaping the hunter’s hands.

When my dreams break up,
they back into a cul-de-sac:
a wilderness of harsh black scars.

Scalpels, my finger nails, carving
red slashes on white-washed walls,
trenchant shadows, twisted dancers,
old warrior kings
bent into pipe wire shapes.

Memories

Memories

I did the memory test today. It’s hard to believe
that tomorrow I may not know where I am
nor what is the day. Others have passed this way,
none to my knowledge in my family. Sorrow gnaws
the red bone of my heart. The lady at the doctor’s
counter says she is seventy. Her bed-ridden mother,
for whom she seeks medicinal solace is ninety-eight.
Her mind, she says, is as sharp as a needle or a knife,
or a blade of grass. What dreams, I wonder, flit
through her head at night? Does she recall her child
hood with its pigtails, the first young man she kissed,
church on Sundays, the genders carefully segregated,
driving there in the family horse and cart? Thunder rolls
and shakes my world’s foundations; a storm watch,
followed by storm warnings, walks across my tv screen.
Lightning flashes. Aurora Borealis daubs the night sky
north of Island View with its paint-box palette of light.
Memories, according to the song, are they made of this.
But what is this? Is it these shape-shifting, heart-stopping
curtains of shimmering grace? Or is it those darker
shadows cast by firelight on the smoky walls
of a pre-historic Gower cave where my ancestors gnawed
the half-cooked bones of the aurox and never ever
dreamed of Jung’s racial memories as they communicate
information from the unconscious to the conscious mind.

Dreamer

Dreamer

A once-upon-a-time god struts past the table where I drowse.
Once I stole his nose, breaking it from a sacred statue.
Now I watch it cross the square: a proud beak nailed to a face.

Casting shadows on the cobbles, zopilote flies over the square.
I caught him once, dozing on a local bus filled with love-birds:
he begged me to fold his wings and let him sleep forever.

The balloon lady sits in the square selling tins of liquid soap.
Released from school, the children charm my days
blowing colored bubbles that seek freedom in the skies.

Eight Deer, eight years old, sets out on his conquests.
Nine Wind gives birth to his people, releasing them
from their underworld prison by carving a door in a tree .

Faces crowd the trees above me, as long-dead friends
come back to life, chattering like sparrows in the branches.
Roosting time and their voices slip slowly into silence.

Sometimes, at midnight, they scratch at the window
in my head and tumble through my half-awake mind.
They need me, these dreams, for I bring them to life.
Without me, the dreamer, they would surely fade and die.

Dreams

Dreams

All my former lives gather at night
thrusting their way forward
into the half-light of my drowsy mind.

Alive and thriving, they descend
from midnight’s tree of knowledge
and besiege me with grasping fingers.

Do my dreams fish these colors and shapes
from my own interior seas?

Or do they watch and wait for these spirits
to emerge from sleep’s cocoon
and be reborn in fiery blocks of color?

My neighbor’s dog greets the dawn
barking bright sparks of color
into secluded corners of my waking mind.

I dream dark angels with butterfly bodies,
their inverted wings spread over my head.

Dreamcatcher

Dreamcatcher

In my dreams, I track the sails of drifting ships,
white moths fluttering before the wind.

I think I have caught them in overnight traps,
but they fly each morning in dawn’s forgiving light.

I give chase with pen and paper, fine butterfly nets
seeking wild thoughts waiting to be caught, then tamed.

I grasp at something just beyond my fingertips,
but I can’t quite remember what it is.

I wake up each morning unaware of where
I have been the night before.

Dream

Dream

I dreamed last night
that angels lofted me
skywards and wrapped me
in cotton-wool clouds.

The nearest rainbow
was a helter-skelter
that returned me to earth
where I landed in
a pot of golden sunlight.

Red and yellow
were
my hands and face.
I stood rooted like
an autumn tree covered
in fall foliage with
no trace of winter’s woe.

“May this moment last
forever,” I murmured,
as the rainbow sparkled
and I rejoiced in
my many-colored coat.

Comment: I have noticed on several occasions that when I am reading a text, I change the wording on the page to a new wording that seems more in keeping with the rhythm of the moment. I see that I have done this here, more by accident than by plan. I have noticed this too when listening to Dylan Thomas’s recordings of his own verse. Each reading then becomes a new variant on the poem. In this case, I rather prefer the second variation, but I am not sure that I approve of the first one, nor nor do I approve of leaving words out. Naughty! I am afraid that I still haven’t developed the skill of reciting instead of reading my poems. I guess it will happen soon enough. In the meantime, I’ll just have to put up with these little flaws.

Dream … A poetry reading from One Small Corner

Deer Dance

Deer Dance

They came with the snow, of course. Last year there were seven, this year six of them sniffed their cautious way, step by step, into the yard. I looked out of the bedroom at 3:00 am, and there they were, standing beneath the mountain ash and reaching up to the lower branches to snaffle the berries. They also dug into the snow and ate the fruit that had fallen beneath the tree. The night was cold and dark. I didn’t want to risk the camera and have the flash or the laser beam frighten them so I just stood and watched.

Next morning, I wondered if it had all been a dream. Then I saw the dance-steps in the snow. They have been back a couple of times now and this morning Clare spotted seven, in the early morning light, ghosting their almost perfect camouflage through the trees. So now we have a couple of questions: are there two groups this year, one of six and one of seven? Or had the seventh deer from last year rejoined the group?

We think the group of six has larger deer while the group of seven has two seemingly smaller ones. But this may be a trick of moon light and shifting moon shadows. Climate change: the local deer at sixes and sevens. What would Ocho Venado, the Oaxacan / Mixtec King known as Eight Deer, think of it? Ah, a conundrum indeed. And when and if I work out any answers, I will let you know.

Dream World

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Dream World (Solace 2)

… dream worlds circle outside my bedroom window … starry sky … two full moons floating, one real, one mirrored in the glass … inside the bedroom, tulips inscribe red gashes on white-washed walls … sharp fingernails scrape across paint, blood red shadows trickle down to the floor …

… above the azotea, the temples of Monte Albán string out their sheets on the sky’s washing-line, glowing in the moonlight … against a background of granite and stucco, trenchant shadows sculpt dancers into grotesque, pipe-wire shapes as they struggle to escape their carved imprisonment …

… priests in long black robes gape at the night sky. From their sanctuary in the observatory, they plot how they will persuade the people to believe the future they will foretell as night’s giant finger herds the wild-cat stars …

… three young women walk at an angle up the temple steps … when they reach the top, a moonbeam holds them in its spotlight and they wax with the full moon’s beauty … the doorway to an unclosed grave opens its crocodile jaws and the three women descend the temple steps, ageing as they walk … at the temple’s foot, they enter the tomb’s dark mouth … an old man in a faded grey suit walks behind them … the grave swallows them all, burying them in the hidden depths beneath the mound …

… dreams back themselves into a cul-de-sac, a wilderness of harsh black scars … an ancient Aztec god catches Rabbit by his ears and throws him against the second sun that sizzles in the sky … his sharp teeth burrow, burying themselves deep in the sun-fire’s light … the second sun loses its glow and turns into the moon’s cold stone … the rabbit’s skull simmers in the new moon’s dwindling pool …

With a clicking of claws, knitting needles come together to pluck me outwards from my dreams and upwards towards death’s golden guillotine that floats in the sky. The moon sharpens its knife edge on the keening wind and sets my blood tingling. I want to be free, free from those nightmares, those nocturnal visions that rise up from the past and stalk me as I lie in bed.

Drowsing, I long for the alarm clock to shuffle its pack of sleepless hours and to waken me with its piercing call as it tears me from these winding sheets, these grave clothes in which I lie. I wait for the sun to shine into my window.

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