Palimpsest

Foreshadowing

“ To sleep, perchance to dream “

Do dreams foretell?

Are they harbingers of things

That hover ever nearer

Like vultures circling, descending

Ever closer to roost and feast

On decaying flesh and bone?

Make ready the winding sheet.

Prepare my tomb, my solemn bier,

Rehearse the psalms,

Tune the pipes, shake off the dust

From sombre suits and mourning veils.

I feel their need growing near.

The ghosts of last night’s haunting tale

Retain a lingering, oppressive air

That shades, infusing these early hours,

Belying sun and morning breezes.

Not me, but one I know too well.

Dear friend, close relation

( neither here nor there )

But close enough to feel their presence

Peering over my shoulder.

Miasmas drift around my face

O’re-coming all efforts to brush away,

Demanding to be written down,

Pinned to a sheet beneath a glass

To bear examination, to peer behind,

Pull back the curtain to reveal

The Freudian meaning

Of what it means.

Was this a dream of portent,

A Dickensian tale from Camden Town,

Offering hope of true redemption?

Or echoing the words learned long ago

“Giving sweet foretastes of the festal joy”?

Neither sweet nor festal

For this is a fate I no longer fear

But do not yearn to hasten.

Not yet.

It followed an elaborate script

Complex and almost logical,

Both detailed and revealing,

All the harder to dispel.

The cause of Morpheus’s mischief

Has spawned many theories

From guilt to conflict resolution,

From life-lesson rehearsals,

To blind firings within our neural net

No matter.

Despite the lingering effect

Or it’s power to affect my future course,

It was, at the very least,

Entertaining