Two dreams of my grandmother

My grandmother died three years ago, right after New Year's Day. She had been in and out of the hospital in the year preceding her death, and I had not seen her for several months. Following her demise, I had two dreams that I will recount here.

My first dream was an attempt at lucid dreaming. When she was still alive, she would let me go through her closet for clothes I wanted, and, once I finally got to sleep, I saw myself doing just that. Unfortunately, this dream was interrupted by someone blasting music outside.

I do not remember the second dream well, as most of it had nothing to do with her, but I do recall the part right before I awoke; she appeared in front of me and told me how proud she was of me.

Though I am no spiritual person, I believe that these dreams were her way of saying goodbye to me.

I can, only in my youth, lament

I can, only in my youth, lament the slowness of the years.

I can, only in my youth, regret

adulthood growing near.

How hard is it to understand

that sand continues flowing,

and that the loss of innocence

shows no symptom of slowing.

Scarcely can I comprehend what

past my eighteenth lies;

How I’ll mourn, and how I dread

the day my parents die.

Greatly cherished memories

grow further by the day;

most notably the moment I

accepted I was gay.

First it’ll be a month since that,

the next time it’ll be two;

then it’ll be a full decade

completely behind you.

Often I feel proud of just how

far that I have come,

but wonder if it’ll matter once

I’m buried, dead and gone.

I recall the bygone days

I liked to play with toys.

But now I cannot stand to be

a little girl or boy.

Soon I’ll have to leave this stage

of fantasies and fears,

the friends and hopes that symbolize

these fleeting teenage years.

There'll be a time when I’ll blow out

the last candle I will.

And after that, the birthday gifts

will all plummet to nil.

Then I’ll be a massive fool

to write a Christmas list,

it’ll be all my own duty

to work, and buy my gifts.

I wonder if I still will want

a lovely house and wife.

I wonder if I’m damned to live

a greatly troubled life.

I wonder if I really know

the person that I am;

I wonder if to find that out

is something that I can.

Letters underneath the bed

Run your fingers down her hips, 

plant a kiss upon her lips; 

for the glamour of tonight
should be sought before
it comes right out of sight —
when you come back to racour
within your house’s door.

Letters underneath the bed,
gifts that came just from a “friend”;
your wife smells never-smelt perfume
she knows she never bought:
“Lady, don’t you dare assume
there's some girl I’ve recent got,
for I’d rather than that rot.”

Sleeping in your love’s abode,
the one that is your favored home:
handsome is she when she sleeps —
her beauty makes you almost cry —
but you recall what both you keep
from your wives’ prying eyes:
a full-of-shame disguise.

Dawn raises its morning feathers;
your wife has surely found the letter.
Your life just falls apart —
what else is there to do
than excavate your heart?
Soon all know that it’s true —
you know that that’s your cue.

You call your love to come —
your wife has left the home.
“My life has gone to waste
I’m sure that yours has, too.
So why not we make haste
to elope, me and you,
to a land beyond the moon?”

She without a hunch agreed:
you were to do a final deed,
for both your times had come
to make a last return
to the universal home —
in coffin or in urn,
and buried, perhaps burned.

She prepared for you the gun;
“A word — before I come undone —
to this ruthless, pious earth:
I’ll be a great deal better off
with my love of greatest worth.”
Without either a flinch or cough
her head completely blasted off.

Soon were you to follow suit —
in your head the shotgun shoot —
and soon were you to die.
She gladly led you down to Hell
where the both of you could fly.
The bullets seemed to serve you well,
and neither of your wives can tell.

Delusion of a crimson fire

The captain saw a crimson fire;
He called his young men and their guns —
he knew them rather trusty ones —
and shot right at the air.
The sight rendered the whole crew blind,
the fire costing them their minds,
as warmth engulfed as if a pyre
and left them standing there.

“It surely is the Devil’s play
or demons and their schemes.
It cannot be, to me it seems,
a close to natural force.”
When all the captain’s lead ran out,
he to his crew began to shout
“And must I say, with great dismay
that we have lost our course.”

The crew in loyal creed agreed
their end was close in sight
and all then planned to spend the night
with one final hurray.
They all went down to cheer, before
their God led them to Heaven’s door;
and then they went to bed to sleep
but by morning were awake.

The captain brought the ship to shore
and saw the sky a cloudy grey
“That surely is the Devil’s play,
though I am still alive!”
He summoned all the crew to deck
and wondered why they weren’t dead.
Then he heard the fire roar
and saw its dying light.

They disembarked to find out what
had caused the flame and warmth.
There they saw something afar
had caught somehow aflame.
The captain saw a tower burning;
the smoke had spread, as if so yearning
to keep on Earth its ashy run
and drive people insane.

They spent much time contriving stories —
they thought it Satan’s fault —
and blamed the beast for man’s assault
against the vacant tower.
Within themselves they imbued fear
that this was not an arson mere,
but a brutal rape of Godly glory
by some Satanic power.

The captain told his men the end was nigh:
“I tell you all, I’ve never feared,
till this day, the end was near
and so I bid farewell.”
He with his men returned to ship,
took the pistol off his hip,
embraced his fellow men goodbye,
and with a bang then fell.

The mind's eye

When it’s hours past the start of night
and you can hardly see,
but you can see your paradise
hover beyond your reach;
on your own you’ve made this place
to escape the real world’s unkind face,
but the real world makes an awful slight
and makes the new land dark as night.

You can almost hear the sound
of ocean water splash at you
and see the grains of ecru sand
mix with the ocean blue;
but the real world early comes
with the noise of urban homes,
and drags you, screaming, down
to your life back on the ground.

The place was never there —
that fact, you’ve always known —
the wind that stroked your hair
had never truly blown.
Regardless how it fleeting seemed;
it was nothing but a mere half-dream
that let your mind’s eye wander where
you know that no-one else was there.

The markings on the beach

I walk along the beach
and mark upon the sand.
I wonder if the wind
will sweep it to the sea —
the indent of my hand —
for no one else to find.

I fear this thought the most —
I see more, looking back,
from many bygone days.
But I therefore propose
that most stay not intact
but are, too, swept away.

Is there really any point
in drawing on the sand
if the beach is not to last?
For we cannot avoid
the washing of the land
and of our now and past.

A hundred years from now,
a boy visits the beach
and sees the marking on the sand.
He naïvely wonders how
these marks evade the sea,
and wants to try his hand.

That is, to me, enough
to want to mark the sand
before the angels call;
within my mortal cuff
I inscribe with my hand
to give to one or all.

The Deathbed Boy

The boy lay sick in bed
on a balmy summer’s day;
though his sister went to play,
Death loomed above his head.
He asked his mother that same day
what made him deathly ill,
and why his Sister frolicked, still,
while he wasted away.

He looked out from his window
to the grassy field outside;
at his sister's sight he dared to cry
that he had reached his low.
His mother gave the answer long:
“It’s mere fortune of fate;
it does not choose nor does it wait,
it knows not right or wrong.

“Though such a young man as you are
ought not to have this plight,
fate is bound to drop its might
without a thought or care”.
He fully heard his mother
and so turned his head to nod,
although he thought it odd
that fate declined another.

His skin clung tightly to his bone
with nothing inbetween —
one with working eyes could glean
that he was not for long.
He stared out through his vacant eyes
— empty voids in rings of blue —
with pensive face, as if he knew
that he could always die.

“What point is there in living
without leaving but a trace:
when I with Death meet face-to-face,
I haven't done a giving.
I'll be a wholly useless matter
in half a decade's time;
I'll be less than worth a dime
before I've clumb the ladder.

“I’ll hardly be a person
past ‘the sickly boy who died’.
Will I be known on either side
I'll go to when I'm gone?
Who’ll sweep by once it's my time:
Satan in his wretched wagon,
or angels in sweet chariot?
And will they come after I die?

“Are there really sides immortal
as you, my mama, say;
or do the dead rest in their graves
in an endless slumber restful?
Where do all the souls and minds
for babies like my sisters come?
Are all these new souls taken from
the dead after they die?”

Then he tired laid his head,
closed his eyes
in wait to die,
and sunk into the bed.
Soon the father came back home
to prepare for him a grave;
but he and all the others craved
to know where he had gone.

It was to them a sad affair;
but afterward the mourners went
to accept the dead boy and forget.
In a few years' time nobody cared.
I suppose that that's the fact of death.