We All Dream
Every night I dream
And these dreams usually revolve around me
The same way my waking life does.
But the me in these dreams
Is as diverse as my imagination
As diverse as life itself.
The me then isn’t an individual person
As much as an individual identity
Applied like a template
To anything this identity experiences.
It’s really not a problem
As simply what such a program does
As it seeks to survive
In ever changing situations and contexts.
This is the world of our dreams
And the world of waking life.
And yet this survival seeking entity
Is what suffers, in effect making us suffer,
As it applies its template
Like a factory robot stamping out
Another generation of robots…
All the while we hover as a ghost in the machine
Centered in our pineal gland
Like an alien in its pea brain control capsule
Pulling levers to stamp its template
Relentlessly on every moment.
And still the ghosts dream on
Dreaming not so much as with a vision
But simply by compulsion
Like a blind guide
Entrusted with our most precious cargo
To cross a mine field
Blindly and blithely striding on
Confident because it hasn’t been blown up yet
Because when it steps wrong and blows
It is instantly reborn like a robot
With amnesia.
We all dream, and then we wake,
And quickly all we have learned fades away.
(9/23/25)
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