poem 112 of a poem a day for 2012

symphony dream in the key of A minor abstraction 

office building

in the faded light

part of the day

there might be

a dozen of us

inside a glass society breakdown

outside the architecture of meltdown

soldiers on ropes in adjacent buildings

are attacked by unseen forces

people become reactive

though I remain strangely calm

and venture to exit the building

and even though it seemed

to be under some sort of lock-down

every door was opened

to the wind whipped up

with the Sun following

its destiny into the horizon

squeezing time between things

saw shape shifters many of them

soldiers were fighting them

soldier came up to me and said

good luck stay here

in the middle of the road

and make sure

this person is okay

until an ambulance arrives

I drag the person

to the grass and watch

as the soldier leaves

and the myriad undulations

of innumerable crows dance

into view above the wind

moving and swirling closer

til I'm caught up in black

in all that I see

the congeals into

the densest murmur

of crows that might ever be

catching gasps for breath

before turning its entirety

into a woman with the brightest

dark wide eyes I have ever seen

she didn't seem dangerous

just misunderstood and

completely at ease

when she smiled at me

with my mouth still open

as she watched me

watch her skin as it radiated

in momentary sheen

popping in and out of the shift

without words

I was convinced of her validity

and I drew to her way

and her guiding hand unseen

soldiers in this instant

became robots with humanity

squeezed from them toothpaste

bled until spent and empty

waiting metal to be recycled

returned the Earth

returned to the rust of animals

and the shepherding of forests

back to the stars

I became convinced

we were all like this

even those still trapped

by the building held tight

to what once was when

we were all shifters then

but some how lost the link

lost the way to the garden

lost the way to the part of night

that says shhh  

let's finger paint again

every one of our dawns

outside the window

EJR ©








Hello...so this came from a recent dream/nightmare, and as most of them are similarly themed,I thought it would be appropriate to share...I have always been chased by the bloated grotesque of humanity's abandonment of emotional connection in a society or civilization e.g."Lord of the Flies", "Brave New World"...growing up, emotionally and physically abandoned probably led to my connection to this archetypal fear of never knowing Eden if you were born outside of it...though these days with fear a contagion too...most of my dream-state monsters are of this kind of concrete and steel as metaphor for the slow increments of coffin-izing our souls...zombie virus,bird flu,spanish flu and hordes in the unseen that shift shape to show us how to abandon our fear and climb through to ourselves again...back to the garden through the darkest part of the night right before the Dawn...Edward


Thank You to Stu McPherson and the folks at dversepoets.com for this blood-thirsty prompt.