Untitled Poem by Jacqui Thewless

(1)
A dream enactment:
the slow-growing feeling of
it's ok to kiss
under his wild hair,
my lips on his own shoulder -
license-filching, stopped
for years in real life;
something so transgressive it
must hide, like a thief
or like a promise
of some skill only the next
life may offer me -


even more wondrous,
his returning kiss as safe
as air on my skin,
as certainly not
half-heartedly there: his touch,
placed. Even in dreams,
I am kindlier
to me, these days. As one door
has been shut, at last
an interior
existence develops roads
with public transport.

(2)
All morning, I brood
on him and the dream's unlikely
images making
egg and mushroom break-
fast in the hot frying pan's
clear liquid that spits;
while lifting the forked
food from plate, cupped coffee from
surfacetop - brushing
my hair, blindly face-
ing the mirror's bright reply -

morning becomes mid-
day; work-time, wasted; lesson
plan still unwritten.
The question, not asked:
how to convince my learners
of haiku's value -
bearing in mind their
lives of action, practical
minds far sharper than
mine? - The old woman's
bus pass seems to slip
from her open purse.

(3)
The bus conductor
is no longer a lover;
the driving-seat is
occupied by me:
Where do you expect to go
with nothing to lose? -
All kindness evaporates
at action's threshold:
as if (like Arjuna's will
before the battle) .
I'm lily-livered..

ordinary life
is terrifyingly close
to the dream's steep edge.
I topple over - as I
first did when I was a kid,
suddenly on the rocks, then
landing on rough sand
with brain out of sinc,
gazing at an inner sky,
asking my non-sexed-self:
why am I lonely?