Dreams

I find dreams utterly fascinating.  Every night we retreat to our minds to watch a movie or two.  Is there anything better?  This is part of the problem, though, and a concept that has fascinated philosophers since they first fell asleep.  For me, dreams are the ideal state of existence: complete, absolute, infinite freedom of the mind, of ideas, of desires.  They are the utmost expression of who we are, the most direct translation of the soul.  Dreams are the medium of our mind's reality, and, for that, they are the only source of freedom.  In the real world there are physical, social, legal, chemical, biological, religious, cultural, you name it, restraints.  They're endless, and for a dreamer they are endlessly infuriating.  So this is my problem: my dreams are better than the real world.  That's where these two poems come from, that disparity, that yearning, that chasm between my mind and its stimuli.  This is where much art comes from, I believe, one person's desire for the world to be that way when it is this way.  Art is the attempt to reconcile that chasm.  In fact, it seems likely that this is why we do anything, why we go anywhere, why we even dream in the first place: we each have a vision (for ourselves or for the world) that we attempt to materialize.  I can live with that as long as I get to sleep at the beginning and end of every day.

"I Dreamt I Fell Asleep for Good"

Sleep is a dream

among night-

mares. Hooves

pounding

down on daylight

streaks. Across time

and spaced out

memories of you-

th ought to be wonderful.

And sleep is a peace-

ful filling life with wonder-

ment for us.

But all dreams end

when we wake,

when life begins

again.

"Pause for Freedom"

In this massive black sea

where lack is the leading quality,

we are nothing but the dust,

kicked up and cursed

to lust, not love,

and think,

above all, about

that dust and the freefall

halted only momentarily

by the ephemerally infinite dimension of dreams.