blp
09-25-2008, 06:21 PM
dream poem's not really the name of the poem. I wrote it for this thread on dream poems (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2008/sep/19/poster.poems.billy.mills?commentpage=5&commentposted=1) on the guardian website. It's still pretty rough and doesn't have a title.
I've rarely allowed myself to be so oneiric.
*****
Are you sure that they’ve banned smoking here?
It seems to smell of it. I fell asleep and left an imprint
of dark grease
on the audit papers.
Ink on my face, like shame written
The black blind dropped and the dust rose off it. Grey light came over the scene. Grey-brown mud seeped in. The window opened and dirt cascaded into the room, a pale arm appearing from it and a soft bulb was extruded and plopped onto a chair…
That day we walked out in red-brown leaves
Piles of them emptying themselves of blue-grey smoke
sweetly
while all over the Virginian forests and gardens
the snow sat like a layer of fresh fat.
And I found she was walking along a wall in the house beside me
wrapped in a white sheet
and didn’t know me.
‘Can you call my daughter for me?’ she asked.
It all meant getting in a car
again.
We went around the city her playing at being grownup driving the car paying for things with cheques, getting groceries and saying whatever grownups say and it was really
like a horror movie
an atrocity
a dark, bloody hole
in reality
Driving, lurching, veering across lanes, cream butter of buildings, black holes, windows. Driving, not seeing. face in grey shadow.
A public sculpture looms like yellow hope out of the intersection, kids climbing on it and some promise for the future,
except that
the thing to let go of in your past is the promise of the future.
Goodbye
Pretty, ruddy cheeked people putting on goggles
for a ride in their
flying car
a bare breasted woman with a jewelled forehead
consorts with a prince at a churning ambrosia soda fountain
A sandy haired boy in a pale green shirt, buttons undone
stands like a challenge in the intersection
long hair falling over sunglasses
strange building works all around
scaffolding
with hessian covers flapping like ragged flags
people in Prussian blue jackets
share secrets and walk around
perch in rooms in the public sculpture
on rough wooden planks
discovering strange drawings
hearing new musics
In this story we are always driving.
In this dream we were always driving.
missing it all
The new worlds you could buy
in magazines on the newsstand.
The new colours you could find.
from elaborate ornamental gardens
water shooting from the mouths
of prettily lichened stone sea monsters
topiary hedges and trees
spreading across the lawn like clouds
we fled on to the terminus
in Smalltown.
got crewcuts
bought baseball caps
drank milk
and passed
new legislation
to ban clouds passing skyscrapers
so they could never again create the illusion
of falling.
I've rarely allowed myself to be so oneiric.
*****
Are you sure that they’ve banned smoking here?
It seems to smell of it. I fell asleep and left an imprint
of dark grease
on the audit papers.
Ink on my face, like shame written
The black blind dropped and the dust rose off it. Grey light came over the scene. Grey-brown mud seeped in. The window opened and dirt cascaded into the room, a pale arm appearing from it and a soft bulb was extruded and plopped onto a chair…
That day we walked out in red-brown leaves
Piles of them emptying themselves of blue-grey smoke
sweetly
while all over the Virginian forests and gardens
the snow sat like a layer of fresh fat.
And I found she was walking along a wall in the house beside me
wrapped in a white sheet
and didn’t know me.
‘Can you call my daughter for me?’ she asked.
It all meant getting in a car
again.
We went around the city her playing at being grownup driving the car paying for things with cheques, getting groceries and saying whatever grownups say and it was really
like a horror movie
an atrocity
a dark, bloody hole
in reality
Driving, lurching, veering across lanes, cream butter of buildings, black holes, windows. Driving, not seeing. face in grey shadow.
A public sculpture looms like yellow hope out of the intersection, kids climbing on it and some promise for the future,
except that
the thing to let go of in your past is the promise of the future.
Goodbye
Pretty, ruddy cheeked people putting on goggles
for a ride in their
flying car
a bare breasted woman with a jewelled forehead
consorts with a prince at a churning ambrosia soda fountain
A sandy haired boy in a pale green shirt, buttons undone
stands like a challenge in the intersection
long hair falling over sunglasses
strange building works all around
scaffolding
with hessian covers flapping like ragged flags
people in Prussian blue jackets
share secrets and walk around
perch in rooms in the public sculpture
on rough wooden planks
discovering strange drawings
hearing new musics
In this story we are always driving.
In this dream we were always driving.
missing it all
The new worlds you could buy
in magazines on the newsstand.
The new colours you could find.
from elaborate ornamental gardens
water shooting from the mouths
of prettily lichened stone sea monsters
topiary hedges and trees
spreading across the lawn like clouds
we fled on to the terminus
in Smalltown.
got crewcuts
bought baseball caps
drank milk
and passed
new legislation
to ban clouds passing skyscrapers
so they could never again create the illusion
of falling.