Dream Theme Poem by Tom Courtney

Dream Theme. I word-searched my poems and short stories for the word 'dream'. What do you think?

Mesmerizing game it seems
wishing hoping chasing DREAMS
Stare at life – go right ahead
I do it every night in bed

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He DREAMS of curing troubled me
He says don’t want and thus be free
he says to find internally
all that you need – the best to be

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I’m just saying people keep saying
It seems like a non-ending stream
I hear it all day til my bedtime
and then it goes on in my DREAM

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he postulates hypothesizes
He senses DREAMS he falls and rises
I am enough for here I stand
He looks for rock and finds quicksand

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The crest of the sun will crack a new dawn
the dew will hang on a shimmering lawn
the day holds a promise within its sunbeam
My bed a soft cloud and my pillow a DREAM

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Being what I am it seems
at least for now is not a DREAM
If I could change me I often try
the more I live the more I lie

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Those who DREAM
and those who build
and those who lust
just to have killed

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Jets flying in a sky of perfect white
speed speed speed through the frosty night
Horrific clarity a blinding stunning killing re-creating light
The vast invisible opening at the speed of sight
Monstrous terrifying loss of human permanence cannot quite
describe the DREAM I feel that
holds me tight

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And I found you on a long and dusty road
I saw you away in the distance in a DREAM
floating like an image
something we cannot possess
you were there beyond my grasp beckoning
come to me

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And become again
what we once were
not so very long ago -
Strangers - only now
once lovers and dreamers?

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Here then in this space
where we stand for a moment
I hold my DREAM

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I can feel the DREAM my DREAM
It’s somewhere here inside of me
a wondrous thing but can it be?
Oh yes I have it I cannot doubt it

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DREAMS do not require confirmation or agreement
I shall not force a confrontation
of concept or imagery

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Alone in a DREAM within as we are
enclosed and unencumbered free do I
wish to stay?

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Put a gauge upon my DREAMS the voice
beats repeats the drum unseats all
my notions

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I think now I cannot escape
and wonder when the change came
and why?
What drove me from my stillness to this madness?
And I think it could have been a DREAM
What business have we made
to frighten so our souls?

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I want to pretend the great metal presses
are really giant cookie cutters
They cut and print in chocolate and peanut butter
and I imagine I am not a part of all that I see
and only a silly dreamer

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Politics is the mish and the mash of compromise
It' s the give and take of his opinion and hers
Politics is the confluence of the 'is'
with the 'what ought to be'

Real-politick is the reality of life as opposed to the DREAM
It is life's approximations instead of the ideal

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And now still petite, a taller, slimmer one
sitting on wooden bench
learns to write in alphabet and speak in grammar
come night she scrubs her face and assumes her proper habits
and in moonlight sits with dolls - old familiar play things
and DREAMS of what? Becoming a woman? And more?

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The inspiration the perspiration
a brief island in time
for a curious mix of peace
and the intensest anxieties of youth
Mere teens tumble in
with the wildest passions
and the hottest DREAMS
Many with the perseverance
and fortitude to pursue them

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The moon alone hangs high
as a mirror for our introspection
where we speak without punctuation
simultaneously and unheard

Now surely this is a DREAM
sent squiggling out of time
to remind us there was a time
before our sensibilities

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And I don’t know how it is
to sleep in a DREAM of angels
that melt, turn inside-out
and breathe fire under my skin
To see the blackness of the eternal void
open up with crystalline precision
and tell me it’s time for my next fix
And I have no money
but I have my body to sell
if I can’t panhandle or steal it

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Remembering five is now
a hazy DREAM
of running tanks and placing my toy soldiers
in the dirt
underneath a crusty cement overhang
extruded from the foundation of a house

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Young and trying Sheila
you and I put up in an old apartment
with worn and stinking grayish carpet
stashing away our DREAMS and our savings

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I dreamed of you
and I stand before you now from nowhere
I come and go in an instant
and I am really you
Perceptions differ

And what you see
is not the real me

I give myself to you
I break myself into words
that I may seek your pleasure
I may cease to be but

I came to speak to you
and now have spoken

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And seasons passed me by
Now I realize that some DREAMS you enter into
only to pass on into other DREAMS
the hallways and doorways of the mind
And now I have become old
but wise enough to know that you
don’t look back anyway

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I dreamed that I was awake and
clutching at my bedding
imagined that I was married
with a wife and children
a house and job
and other things

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I gave them great strength
strength to think great thoughts
to DREAM great DREAMS
and to accomplish almost anything
But perhaps I did too well
because with me came freedom
with me came social justice
with me came prosperity

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Alone again
I always knew
it would be this way
So many times
and in so many ways
always captive to my heart
a tear on my cheek old fool
Oh fool yes and over and over
but so suddenly old
Ah it just crept up on me
Youth cannot imagine age
We never really know
Oh I was never young
it was just a funny DREAM
How very, very strange
to be ninety-four

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Don’t interrupt this DREAM of life
by shaking me awake oh God
God don’t ever ever ever once give me a clue
It’s best that way send me to my grave
mumbling the portents and omens
the ruminations of old men
the stories of cloistered wives
the rhymes of little children
God stultify me in ignorance
and send me to the death I dance
on life in pieces of conjecture
and mumble to myself of hoaxes
drool on my pillow and scratch
the question God?

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It was after two
before James fell off into deep sleep
and soon thereafter that he entered his DREAM
A piece of his clothes was caught in the machine
and the machine was drawing him in

In a moment of thirty thousand pounds
of crushing force James arm was gone
The violence sent him into a stunning blackness
but it was not death
It was again the small room with one window
and the faint glow of neon
through the faded linen curtains

Wrenched like a dry cork
from a bottle of cheap wine
James shot up in bed drenched in sweat
and, drained, fell over on his side

It was the same DREAM
over and over again.
I know what this is, he said
I know what this is
and I can handle it.
It’s nothing that wouldn’t be natural
for any animal
taken from the wild
and put in a cage

This is what they’ve done to me
I was a good man once
and now I have DREAMS
like a child
like a child

Here’s some elucidation regarding what I was writing about in several of the pieces.

I mis-labeled this piece. It is not poetry at all. It is flat out prose. Also, I only capitalized the word 'dream' for the posting, so people could scan without reading all, and the eyes would fall on the theme word. I just thought it would make it easier. Of course, I do not capitalize like that in the poem! And I just write what I like. Some of it is no good, but it's me.

Here's the thing about the kid's dreams. Two things, just my perception: I had a lot of nightmares as a kid. These are nighttime dreams, not daytime dreams we aspire to. Plus we need to remember we're inside the character's head. This is a guy named James, and he's saying this: (not us) and this is his perception, or even less, his stunted ability to express himself, caught up in something he does not fully understand. Is that cool?

OH YEA. ON THIS THING, I worked in the forklift business, and one of my largest accounts was a microwave over manufacturer, and the general manager gave me a tour of their plant, and I saw these huge these huge press machines with the people working on them. The engines would run continuously, and the worker would set the metal in place and then ENGAGE the clutch on the machine, and then all the momentum of this huge ROTATING MONSTER would cause a blade to come down and press the proper crease into a sheet of metal to shape it.

I did not mention drinking or alcohol above in my piece, but the fact is, that it's part of a larger story about a guy who does, in fact, drink too much. AND he is bringing the largest measure of his problems upon himself, as, perhaps, we all do. Don't we say, 'We are our own worst enemies? ' Now we ask, if all writing is ultimately autobiographical, does the author have a problem with...? What and what? More in my next installment (I hope)