25. dreamword

 

there was | a word

in it | a word for the sense of having had found something lost a long while

there was a | thought

to it | a meaning made real because it could be spoken

there | was in place of

the thing meant | yet

crystalline | as if

made more real | alight

bearing brightness toward | a place

a form of movement | the labored thinking

of a person asleep | the way sleep binds

the sleeper to the dream | tenacious

as if held by all one’s fingers | a drawing-out

as a leech to a vein | a story carried beyond

its finish | the dull sound of water

dropping | onto hollowed wood  

only the urge to remember | remains

of dream | a simulacrum of knowing

a cold unknowing | to leave a person

with the aura | not the substance and hulking depth of the dream

 

in the end | there is

the sense of | falling through infinite space there is no bottom to

there is | the fear

without the horror | the sense of

being alive through the progress | of a mind making the

imaginary | place where no

word can live | for but a second | just a second

enough time | to imagine the dream

as story instead of word | body

instead of | heard

the whole thing | mirrors folded into mirrors

ruptures | leaving a void inside the body

big enough | to hold doubt | but

too small for memory | the word tied

to dream so tight | because word is the mirage

of sleep | the undulating erasures

of that one moment | deep inside

the unitary | separated | self | the dreamer

who shall not wake | for

waking | will leave them only with today

 

as a child | they are taught

the word for apple | is apple

word for table is | table

the word for hunger is | crying

these are simple to remember | if

you have the time | otherwise

the word corrodes | transforms

tell you how | it is some other thing

of other meaning | the carrier of

a thought you’ve yet | to think

burden heavy | as memory

slippery as will | an afront to

the reason | the word had

a sense | or has senses

sight | taste | smell | it has a

sound | about it | and a

touch | of something out of

reach | but just barely

in the sense of a thought | gloriously imagined

then a thought | no amount of memory can return to its seat in your mind