Reanimated Lavender Granola Switchblade Nun rides again.

Saturday, April 19, 2014

The Hospital For Dreams

I had dreams.
This is what had always differentiated me from the usual types
that fall from the moon and the dark blue sky
like sugarbirds.

I was not one of them,
though I wanted fiercely to be, when I was younger.
The snake of tough shit, babe
squeezed that notion right out of me
and told me I had other purposes to attend to.

But, about my dreams...

This latest one, this humdinger that I had,
turned out to be so much bullshit.
So what? you'll say.
So, dreams have been the guard rails on the killer curve of my life.
Intuition has been my merciful angel,
pulling me out of the soup again and again.

Now I feel like nothing but the bone.

I thought I was going home.
I thought it was gonna be warm cornbread and sweet butter from now on.
What it was, was
sorry, not you.
What it was, was
heft that bale, you dumb crazy bitch.

So I took my dreams--the new ones--
to the Hospital where they sieve out the serpents at the door,
and hand all the girls a gorgeous red apple.
I turned my open haversack upside down at the nurses' station
and said, "Save these.
Save this one in particular."
They said to me, girl, you are some wild kind of boho trash
to think anybody here cares.

Out by the bus stop,
waiting to go home,
I took a big lungful of magical Detroit exhaust,
like the last Pontiac giving up the final air filter.
I held my dreams tight in my arms,
and told them never mind, babies, just never mind.
_________

9 comments:

  1. Old age is a bitch, and then you die. But the dreams don't have to go before you do, or so I hope, and so this poem seems to say. I love so many lines in this--from: "dreams have been the guard rails on the killer curve of my life..." to the sweey cornbread, the haversack(!) and the last air filter going down. Really stellar writing here, even if you do have to stick around this dump awhile longer.

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  2. Wow, really great write. I love the use of snakes, especially the line "The snake of tough shit, babe". But those dreams they don't have to die, do they?

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  3. Oh my God.......love that "dreams have been the guard rails on the killer curve of my life." What a fantastic line. I so know the "sorry, not you". All my freaking life. Their loss, not that they ever knew it, hee hee.

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  4. Your dreams being the guard rail...warm cornbread and sweet butter...What a poem, Shay.

    (But there's nothing new about that. ;)

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  5. I sometimes read your poems but don't comment only because your poetry leaves me speechless.

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  6. This is so incredibly alive, Shay. You have such a gift.

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  7. Word perfect. I so identify.



    Aloha

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  8. Holding tight to our dreams is what makes us strong. Another terrific poem, Shay!

    Pat
    Critter Alley

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Spirit, what do you wish to tell us?