the stowaway

delivered
in dreams
he is here
being me
completely

i tell you
when i wake,
but you look
the other way
or say that
dreams are
mysteries

nobody
believes me
when the nightly
conquest slips
into day

at the edges of
thought he peers
through my eyes
and rifles through
my life's file folders

his force intensifies
and i feel myself
dissipate until . . .


I walk in the
world again.

Hello!


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you to Writer's Island for the prompt.

Eternity's Villanelle

She used her mother’s vanishing cream,
because other kids said she was queer.
Eternity slipped like silk from a dream

never belonging to any class team.
Trying to make life disappear
she used her mother’s vanishing cream.

The principal called her make-up extreme.
Said she’s young to appear so “austere.”
Eternity slipped like silk from a dream

and cried when she wanted to scream.
The day her best friend forever steered clear
she used her mother’s vanishing cream.

Invisibility is a swift flowing stream
but it fails to eradicate fear.
Eternity slipped like silk from a dream.

Her future inspired a letting go scheme.
Pills popped to stop one more year.
She used her mother’s vanishing cream
Eternity slipped like silk from a dream.

Earth Dreams

Worry for the earth
circles my dreams.
A revolving desecration
empties her
of oil,
water,
minerals.
How much vacant space
does it take for the shell
to collapse on itself
in one last hurrah?

With pure heart,
tend the earth.
Plant trees to bind
and tunnel her soil.
Marvel when her rivers sing
and listen to her voice with heart.

My heart needs this
small blue dot
so it can race me awake
late at night
from dreams of
cavernous collapsings
that suck me
deep into the belly
of my mother,

Earth.

Hunger

Dreams of a massaging octopus bruise my sleep,
then manipulate my form into a macabre marionnetted tarantella.
Drumming death away, tambourines startle the air in shivers
across my sweat soaked skin. I wake weakened.
A rattling jingle resounds.

Last week I ate the fried talons of a vulture picked
from a barren pumice field where it fell from the rotted sky.
Putrid fumes preceded the foul feast washed down
with gray green water gathered in pails from the rain.

My belly burns for food fruited and festooned
a jug of jam, brown sugar floating on cooked oats . . .
Whispers stir the fringe of my reverie.

We need to eat.
She won’t last another day, let’s do it now.
Gather the killing stones.
We feed each other. Get it?
Shut up, show some respect.
Strum your guitar, play the song she likes.
Gather the killing stones.

Cat Stevens’ wind blows over my bones, and
a rattling jingle resounds.

Dream History

The waters of Lake Vermillion run like childhood
through my blood.

In a recurring dream, I sit with Grandma
on a dock bench over Wake ‘Em Up Bay. She
tells me stories about fish, birds, and boys.

Wearing bright colored swimming trunks,
and black numbers in big white circles
on their bobbing backs and chests,
super tan dead men float in the bay.

I think they look like Ken dolls.

Grandma keeps spinning yarns
like the corpses are nothing but logs bobbing by.
At one point she stares out over the bay,
“Musta been a big storm last night.” she says,
then she spins a tale about this frog who became a prince.
She ends with, “But that, my dear, was before you were born.”
and lights shine from behind her eyes somewhere.

The dreams vanish until years later, after Grandpa passes.
They visit again, but this time stories spill
from my life into Grandma’s ears, and she laughs
while the well proportioned bodies buoy about the bay.

The Dream Train

People seldom see him
few know that he exists
the funny little ticket taker
who propels us through the mist.

Wispy gray hair halos
his scalp above blue eyes
that wordlessly greet dreamers
as they rumble through the skies.

His smiles contain answers
to all things that we wonder
but nobody remembers him
once sleep has pulled them under.

petal

As far back as her memory took her she woke up every morning with a petal in her mouth. She never told a living soul about it. Each morning, she took the petal out, and turned it round her eyes taking in the soft curving shades of yellow deepening toward its outer ruffled edge. Each morning, she placed it on her tongue and washed it down whole with a tepid cup of rosehip tea placed on a bedside table, saucer and all, by her grandmother when she brewed her own.

Every time a blue moon filled the night sky, her grandfather’s ghost visited. He told her everything he knew about anything she asked. Without fail. And he always told the truth. Unfortunately, he did not understand the petal, but was certain it was a mark to signify something special that would occur in her life. He always said, “It is a talisman, you will see.”

Sometimes she doubted her grandfather’s words. She wondered if everyone woke up with a petal in their mouth, and not one person ever talked about it. Why, there could be hundreds, thousands, even millions of people who woke up with a petal on their tongue. She let that thought simmer for several seasons and closely observed other people. She watched her mom wake up, she watched her grandmother wake up, she watched her dog wake up, she watched her friends wake up. Unless they secretly swallowed the petals, not one person woke with one on their tongue. She grew convinced that she was not at all like most people. She believed her grandfather. She pondered the petal’s significance.

Enter the young man. She met him at the Harvest Fair. When he said his name, she drew in breath, through no power of her own. It was as if the instant took hold of her and created the gasp. She knew he would be her first. He thought she might be his only. They explored tenderness through the Ferris Wheel’s magic circle, rising and falling and kissing and touching until the world disappeared.

It was almost the end of November. The crisp air held enough moisture to blur the stars. She met him in the cornfields behind the livestock barns at the fairgrounds. She stomped a flat area and spread out the love quilt her grandmother constructed of her grandfather’s clothes. Her grandfather might show up tonight. She listened to her young man stumble through the stalks and felt the blue moon rise. He did not perceive her until he fell upon the open quilt. She fell upon him with hunger, and then sleep took her far away.

She looked up. The morning sky was pale. Her young man appeared and held her eyes with his own. “Every night since I was a child I have had the same dream.," he began, "In the dream, my grandmother tells me I will wake to find a yellow petal in the mouth of my one true love. I did not have the dream last night.” He held the petal in his hand, and turned it around between their eyes. Then he placed it in his mouth, and swallowed it with a cup of tea from the thermos he brought. Rosehip tea.