Reanimated Lavender Granola Switchblade Nun rides again.

Sunday, October 13, 2019

Rumors Of Wars

image by Rebecca Sygnus
We were foreigners bloomed in exotic soil,
a kind of invasive pet.

Wherever we went, we had nothing,
and so performed and begged and stole,
spreading our arms in sheepish apology as our bellies growled.

We wore the emblems and baubles of our homeland,
as meaningless as gum wrappers here.
We were restless,
resentful,
thrilled to be free of all that constrained us at home.

None of us were ever going to wear
those conical hats
or our men grow those little goatees threaded gray with eastern wisdom.

Someone called my name, in accusation or greeting
and I looked up to see only my familiar ceiling.
There was no "we", no scraping sharp-edged survival,
and so I rose, fetched the morning paper from the step,

And searched through every page, as if for crumbs
to feed the thing I had felt
in the life I never lived at all
with the imagined companions upon whom there was no reporting

Though I missed them with a ferocity that held on for hours
like a dying foxhole brother.
_________

For Sunday Muse #77, from a wild and intense dream I had before waking this morning. Why I should dream of being part of a lost military expedition in Indochina is beyond me, but there it is. 



7 comments:

  1. Wow Shay your dream was so vivid and intense. Your beautiful creativity carries over into your dreams as well! This could be a great story. I also love the way you carried the dream with you into your morning "searching every page for crumbs" I love this!!

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  2. Another knockout. I love the "searching every page for crumbs". Sometimes our dreams take us on journeys that we would never walk in reality.

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  3. Wow, the level of intensity made me wonder if this dream was a past-life memory, re-visited. Which would explain missing the people in the dream. Anyway a total knockout of a poem.

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  4. What an absolutely marvelous tale of waking from a vivid, perhaps disturbing dream Shay. Such a wonderfully creative take on the photo prompt! :-)

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  5. I have had dreams that have taken me to far away places in different time periods. It has felt as if I were in another type of reality. Your poem and dream reflects this deeper side of dreams. Wonderfully expressed!

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  6. But there it is. Damn, girl. That closing line is so good I'll be dreaming of it!

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  7. Such an evocative write! Left me deep in thought.

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Spirit, what do you wish to tell us?