"We are such stuff as dreams are made on," Prospero observes in Shakespeare's The Tempest, "and our little life is rounded with a sleep." Perhaps these words were echoing somewhere in the back of my mind when I wrote the following prose poem.
DREAMING
is this the dream of a dream of a dream or am I awake? maybe I'm more awake when I dream bit by bit I peel the Infinite Onion each peeling fascinates yet its only the tiniest shred of a Reality that's boundless and inexhaustible I feel the sunlight on my back but I know the night's deepening inside me if you're dreaming me dreaming this please wake up or sink further into your dream to where I keep watch for you
perhaps there are countless universes cupped within each other like nesting dolls each is the dreamworld of the next every word every touch matters yet differently each time our altered heartbeats echo strangely down scintillating corridors of mirrors from dimension to dimension we're intergalactic time travelers half asleep half awake a million light years divide us but we grow so much faster than light!
when people no longer drink thirstily from roots webbing out like subterranean antennae through the loamy sediments of their dreams they begin to sicken and die or else go crazy programless cyborgs crashing helplessly against the sterile walls of cyberspace I carry my dreams in a wind-colored knapsack and take one out to wear whenever cold calculation threatens to freeze my soul here I brought an extra dream-coat for you
***
I never wrote a poem to my toes before. But now I wonder how I could have lyrically ignored them for so long. Viva my toes!
MY TOES
thank you little piggies for hanging in there all these years forgive me if I've ever taken you for granted as I know I have you line up so alertly by size places flex so eagerly as if trying to grip the earth wherever I go you thrust right out in front even willing to be stubbed just to get there first remember that warehouse job when both big toenails were crushed? they turned black and finally fell off you guys are my heroes!
I think of all the times I stepped on a land mine blundered into a quicksand bog or recklessly waltzed where Angels fear to tread yet you never complained never cringed in abject surrender never begged to be let off the hook no matter how rough the going or how long the march you always showed up and did your best with ten more friends like you I'd be king of the world!
not only that you were my earliest playmates: this little piggy went to market this little piggy stayed home this little piggy had roast beef this little piggy had none and this little piggy...went "wee wee wee" all the way home! look you can still wriggle and splay and I realize that's how you laugh one thing's for sure -- whenever my toes curl I'm in heaven! we've been loyal buddies for a lifetime and even death won't part us
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