Palimpsest

Dream Time

Sometimes when I dream

I become ungrounded, set adrift

On a Picasso landscape

That seems uncommonly normal.

Dreams are grand adventures,

Mystery tours to faintly familiar landscapes

By unfamiliar means.

Dreams are like that.

I remember in stiletto-etched detail

The day I became lost at the age of four

In a foreign land inhabited by giants

At Christmas time in a big city retail emporium.

My father stood before the moving staircase

Sending me off to the unknown world of “UP”

Whereupon I scrambled around

To find the word “DOWN”.

Dreams are like that.

Giddying. Dizzying. Intoxicating as a sugar rush.

And in the noise of shoppers shuffling

The delicate rustling of red and green tissue

Giving cover to the surprises within

And cash registers ringing out with holiday cheer

And the fur lined hems of expensive coats,

The laughter, the cries of annoyance.

In the midst of all this, I was lost.

Dreams are like that.

I turned right instead of left,

Or was it left instead of right.

At the end of this final circuit

There were no welcoming arms

Only the pasty white faces of strangers

Towering above like ghostly forms

Seemingly annoyed at my presence.

So there I was, ungrounded, set adrift.

Dreams are like that

The signposts melt and clocks tell no time.

Yet all things have a déjà vu quality

Following a logic turned upon itself

Slowly to become unease and then disquiet

Then tearful panic

That only a four year old can know.

Dreams are like that

Things that are not but could be

Frustrated desires fulfilled

Wants become mixed with needs

And all things become possible,

A garden of impossible flowers

A curiosity cabinet of improbable things

My biography written by a madman.

Dreams are like that

Resurfacing like arms of kelp

Ripped from the sea floor, set adrift

And sent to bemuse me, to amuse me

To confuse my expectations

Of what should be

What aught to be

Dreams are like that.