Last night I drifted between dreams.
The dawn was too weak to keep me awake.
I closed my eyes with intention—
to step back through the curtain.
The dream re-opened lucid,
not as I had left it then,
but as I wanted it to be.
I warped the path of the flowing stream.
Its waters following my lead.
I called to the spirits,
the half-seen and half-forgotten,
and they came in up close.
They hummed their mantras,
their eyes enlivened with flame.
Their fire did not burn.
It melted old dregs away;
things I had clung to.
Renewal rose through my chest,
bright and oddly burden free
I pressed through the ashes.
Sought not to awaken but to reshape—
To change what was fixed.
The dream became pliable.
A soft-clay under my breath.
I felt doubt and concern as,
I opened the door, entered the space,
feet bare on the floor.
Each corridor was pliant for me—
the walls redrew with each sleepy sigh.
When morning awoke and returned,
the dream’s pulse still beat in me.
As my eyes opened, I knew,
that we can rearrange whorls,
when sleep and waking coalesce.
Dawn arrived beleaguered
and redrew the peaks
across a bruised sky that churned
a displeased blue and pewter.
Soon lightening, a brilliant white
with titanium opacity,
crackled with scraunches
and screeches across the horizon.
Rain labored brutishly
against the grueling winds
savaging the already sodden,
soppy, soupy earth.
Multi-dimensional, phantasmagoric,
noctidial nightmare till, conterminally,
the broken sky refashioned itself
in vivid electric pink and tangerine.
We created a dream…
A collage of triumphs hoisted high,
We spun a misty halo
And left
brisk utterances hidden inside
our pensive sigh
They redrew
a nexus of sun and doom colluding
with inexplicable shadows
For our freedom to be whisked away,
To await
a freshly arching course
This freedom sows nothing
but
an estranged black hole returned to life…
and borne anew
Unfelt and wielding a people’s wish,
turned to ash
Confirms
a grinding and sapping strife for all,
bar the few…
A covenant trampled
and delivered as doubt
It’s meant to flow unhindered
but ours is sated
Resting to regain its lost breath
amid whispers and tears
Regains its image to emerge
as a fallow truce
A seething trust before
real freedom brews
Words lie broken and promises creased
Winter smog mixed with liberated fatigue
A cocktail of sweat and pressured peace
Leaning on a state of grime
imbued
with loosened tricks
Each species has its tools
to do what it can to ensure
its own survival.
We, try our best to
separate,
and say we are not
the same.
We pick a trait to denote
our exclusivity.
Other species prove
their relativity.
Once it was tools
and to our chagrin
we found they all
were using them
and so we redrew
the line.
Language is what
we are good at
until we found
that dog and cats,
parrots and dolphins,
chimps and all manner
of beasties with tales
or not had their own
tales to tell.
What's left for us
to claim as our
special trait?
I vote for
self delusion.
It seems to us
unique.
We murder and convince ourselves
it is for peace.
We raise boys to be killers and then
pretend surprise
when they are.
We foster hate among each other
and pretend
it is not really happening.
We enslave each other
and claim
to believe in freedom.
We pretend concern for
all mankind,
yet make sure that
few succeed.
Yes, I think in all these things,
the animal, we far exceed
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.