Shadow Self/Dante Dream 10-13


10

I am lost to the present.
What madness is this
that imagines souls speaking
prophesy, spewing parts of my failing life?
This insanity beyond cure.

The dream never ends, only
shifts shape.  New selves suffer,
cry, wail, this endless I.
How long must I . . . ?

The dead do not sleep.
I am among them asleep.
This is past as future.
My body breaks faith
my mind cannot hold.



11

There are too many within,
the voices, I mean.
Endless arguing, hoping 
to explain degree and kind,
aimless wandering, wayward fault.
As if understanding brings pardon.

Everyone serves full term.
Each damned for a flaw.
I weary of this hard judge,
this deathless chronicler
of even my smallest faults.
No escape.  Myself, my selves
pitch and scream as if
life is not a lie, a betrayal,
the closing of a door, a clicking
of a lock.



12

A bull charges from a grassy knoll
toward the fence where I sit.
About to flee, I look down.
A bloody river sweeps by one side,
the heads of violent men bob,
gasp, curse.  When I try to leap beyond
the bull's pasture, the grass
becomes arrows that target me.

My screams are soundless.
My shadow appears on the bull's back.
He whispers in the beast's ear, calms him,
then hoists me on his back.
We ford the river.
Heads rise and fall.
I cover my ears.
I know I must release regret.


13

A tree murmurs words
of self death.  Its leaves 
become mouths; the words
hit a symphonic pitch.
Surely, I have lost my mind.
There must be a tumor in my brain,
one that's about to burst. 
Full-blown from the side of my head,
some monster is about to be born.
I make no sense.
I awake to myself
running naked through woods.
Angry women chase me 
with butcher knives.
I am never caught, never not.