I awake to a morning without dream.
The sun made me blind.
The mind failed to catch.
I only hear dry gears turned in some grey
Distant sphere,
Predictable, repeatable, mere process:
A washing without object,
Exercise without effects.
The bird sounds have no place to go.
The forest is left to bullying crows
And rapacious squirrels
Corrupting the air itself, all skill,
Cleverness and intent.
And I no longer a boy
To look on with wonder
Or a God to ascribe sacred patterns
To motions,
I see a garden to barricade
And a window to close,
Mechanical catches to suppress
The nothingness
That permeates the empty room
Of the dreamless
Present.
The bird that is not there,
A grouse or such,
Is no longer in the air,
It does not sing with the bagpipes,
It does not devour the lettuce flower.
A tarpaulin has been laid down like a law,
The pleats made strict.
I am only myself again, hopeless
To enlightenment, paralyzed to grace.
Is there nothing else?
Surely in this peopled world
There is something of value?
What stands on its own, apart from my own
Possessive thievery,
Is like a far island veiled in grey,
Horizons obscure, ridges indefinite
And a chorus of critical winds
That chide, deride and deny
The authenticity of its mist.
The tracks are closed east of Ontario.
Piles of scrap litter the depot.
The women are needy and fat,
The men intolerant and distant.
The children’s pleadings carry as they
Act out the madness in the suburb sulfurs
While the loner always leads with his fists
And shape-shifting vagrants have vape trysts
By the lazy housewife beans;
Another happy protest where exalted victims
Dance on strings like would-be escapees
From the consensus illuminati reality,
But the party ends when the bongo player stops,
And it’s like the ideal
Was never real.
By evening the hoodies return
From the park
Carrying tunes in their walking gloves
That mark at the time but won't soothe
The fever in their minds.
Life could be better.
I could be better.
The wires should not be so thick with charge,
But then the dream that erases them
Would not play on
Like Victrola wax, endless music that
Never existed.
