Sunday, 7 November 2010

Bad dreams

The early hours waiting dawn
exercise powers of memory drawn
from all the years of pallid places,
buried fears and nameless faces,
faceless names, embarrassments,
mistaken blames and harrassments.

Sleeping awake and sinking diwn
in some deep lake where reasons drown,
a mental soup of random scraps
whose every scoop some morsel traps
which, thought they differ, taste the same -
the too familiar flavour: shame.

The satisfaction of the day
in dream reaction leaks away;
what seemed so clever now looks wrong
and weakness ever downs the strong;
now watchers jeer my consternation
and constant fear: humiliation.

The day's events and people met,
the varied scents from soap to sweat,
the scenes imprinted, God knows why,
albeit tinted, past the eye
are disassembled, pulled apart.
and then re-modelled into art -

a work of gaffes and slights and snubs,
of hooting caffs and hostile pubs,
deceits uncovered, lies revealed,
old blunders suffered still unhealed,
incompetence idealised,
inadequacies realised.

Youthful confusion re-appears,
doubt and delusion, sexual fears,
exam room panic, her rebuff
although loved manically enough -
then at a stroke, the morning chime
turns all to smoke - until next time.

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