I’m afraid I’d be damn near unemployable in the world of dreams. If I’m not running from something or falling down, my teeth are falling out. (I certainly couldn’t get anyone to provide decent dental coverage in dream world, and I’d be suspected of Meth addiction.) Unlike the real world, in which I’m hyper-punctual, in dreams I’m always late and I often go out of doors to find myself on the other side of the world. Besides, in dreams I’m usually not lucid more than once a month, at best.
The houses are haunted By white night-gowns. None are green, Or purple with green rings, Or green with yellow rings, Or yellow with blue rings. None of them are strange, With socks of lace And beaded ceintures. People are not going To dream of baboons and periwinkles. Only, here and there, an old sailor, Drunk and asleep in his boots, Catches tigers In red weather.
Asleep on a leaf beneath lotus blooms, Their fragrance floats across the misty lake. Sudden rain - taps upon the canopy; Its sound snaps me from sleep to wide awake!
The lotus is beaded with rain droplets -- Like pearls, drops roll together and apart; The clear blobs coalesce like mercury, Dripping to the river... back to their start.
Drunk, I'd keep a lamp lit to find my sword, The blare of horns sounded throughout the camp. Soldiers ate meat under waving banners; The military band played boisterous tunes. Autumn brought our troops to the battlefield.
Carried by a charger at full gallop, My bow thwipped, sending swift arrows flying. We restored Imperial lands, boldly, And won great fame for fighting gallantly, But fame grows thin and gray just like my hair.
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with the golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
NOTE: This poem is also sometimes entitled, “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven.”
Why fades a dream? An iridescent ray Flecked in between the tryst Of night and day. Why fades a dream? -- Of consciousness the shade Wrought out by lack of light and made Upon life's stream. Why fades a dream? That thought may thrive, So fades the fleshless dream; Lest men should learn to trust The things that seem. So fades a dream, That living thought may grow And like a waxing star-beam glow Upon life's stream -- So fades a dream.
I don't remember my dreams -- not in the middle of the night and not in the morning.
But, sometimes, I catch a glimpse at a random instant: composing a poem, reflecting on a passage from a book, eating a cracker...
But my dreams are like frightened animals, turning my attention directly upon them, makes them skitter off...,
vanishing into the thicket.
My dreams vanish like they were never really there, and I am left wondering just what I saw.
The harder I try to remember, the more severely I scrub my mental hard drive, purging all shapes and motions, until my recollection is nothing but a vague residue of feeling.
I don't KNOW that it was a dream.
I couldn't swear to it.
All I know is that it's an image that I can't tie to my waking life, can't tie to any person, place, or thing I know to be real.
(And, often enough, it's an image that couldn't exist in the real world.)
I couldn't remember it as a dream, but - somehow - I intensely FEEL that it was a dream,
but the Dream is deep down in its hole, shaking like a critter that was almost snatched up by a monster too awful to contemplate....
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and tower were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossom'd many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But O, that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced;
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reach'd the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from afar
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she play'd,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me,
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 