The dream

I’m not too sure how poetic this piece is.  I consider it more like an extreme version of the basket of dirty laundry in my room – unsorted, unwashed, un-ironed, and more or less a spew of crap (although meaningful crap).  But that’s how my mind is. 

 

 

When I was younger I dreamt

            with eyelids slightly parted

                        like a dead lover’s lips

of bits of bone and flesh leaping, bursting

an open slough spilling

            a dear grandfather’s bloated corpse overripe with cancerous growths, lain

across the hospital cutting board

            a faulty pair of eyes that refused to leak even as

            my grandmother’s wavering trembling anguished

            fingers passed me a napkin to dab my unsmeared mascara

from their confines within the fore of a crushed skull-

erratically propelled by the force with which our grasping

            the tense clinging of a newborn

                        the wishful clasping of my father’s hands around a feeble rice-paper shell

                        that no longer constrained great-grand-mother to her goose feather prison

hands, our clutching fingers

crescent scythes etched in child-flesh with pink painted nails

            metallic sheen smoothslide glint in pale cowering relief

and the hollow echo of pounding feet

reverberating guilt

against that dank underground lot

            cemented urn

had swung my sister’s laughing face

into the unforgiving pillar.

 

I drop my twitching wrist

and wipe the cold flecks of blood from my cheek, only

to peel away a clump of hair with onyx strands

 

far longer and sleeker

 

than mine.