interlude
but the dream is unmanageable.
The dream is not language or poetry;
it’s not a dog or a brother or a sentiment
sentimentalizable in script, Spanish, Arabic,
Coptic, English, Chinese or hand-made
grammars for the deaf or red warnings
tacked up for the mischievous to read.
I once took a no dream pill, one of those little ones
one must take with warm milk
and dreamed just the same:
I saw whales, patted cakes with bat droppings,
smoothed down a bed made of nails
no matter the pills or the wishes
or the directives, and soon the distillations
of the day will unmake them for new memories,
as the sun slacks, as the rains
smash through the trees
no matter the ants below and their
million eggs drowned.
no, I will not tell you what I mean.
I had a dream of heaven once
and it looked like the thorns
on rose bushes baking in the day’s heat,
like those bushes I plucked
clean and naked in my mother’s garden,
for if she loved the roses in the garden
so much, she would surely love them better
in a little yellow kid’s bucket
I filled and wrapped with birthday paper
and watched for the surprise,
the everlasting love and thankyous
after she’d blown the cake candles out.
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