Dreams: David Lawrence

I’M NOT DREAMING

In this dream where contours are outlines of edgy behavior and hallucinations are meager shakings from the salt of parched reality I am not dreaming.

My life travels in front of me like a cloud in which words are kites posted with hieroglyphics of my failures.

I tell you its not a dream. But you aren’t there to catch my drift. I think of the drift of a boat at sea and snow falling at Vail when I was young and still could afford to ski.

It’s not that I fail to remember my night time dreams but that my dreams want nothing to do with me. They disappear into their own glamorous world of retrocession and ignore me because I am too soaked in reality like a self-immolating wick.

At night my mind is vacant and stripped of dreams. During the day I wander around like a discarded image and hang onto a mirage that is burying its camels in an oasis of sand.

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COUGHING DREAMS

I choked on a dream.
I lit your cigarette in the hope that you’d die.

I couldn’t remember an image
Except you burning in your sheets throwing
Matches at me.

This was a nightmare.
Or was it?
I didn’t know you or the dream.

I was full of negative hallucinations.
My lungs couldn’t take it all in and my sinuses
Dripped bizarre antagonisms.