Dream....

I have not christened this piece. It is a dream. I remembered portions.

In the shadow of a shade of a moonless night
On a catafalque of a hillock I lay
Through a tunnel devoid of light I sped
My thoughts were clogged like clay.

I raised my coffin to my lips
A square wall with a warning blurred.
The arch of a palm magnified,
Liquid fingers dancing nude.

Twisting and turning, unshackling the chains
That bound me to that dream.
The sheets were soaked, the pillow high,
The hillock steep, a stifled sigh.

The distant lights of million dreams
Illuminated my inquietude.
My eyes half-shut, my silent screams.

The picture tube of my cortex came alive.
Love songs and shadows danced in grey
The soap opera of existentialism blurred.
In Kodak colours a city scene:

A lucent snake that sped through smog
The Eiffel Towers of million volts
The descent path of metal birds
Decapitated hills that we killed.

The channel changed: Nerve fibres flashed.
‘Ache’ transformed into an animated shape
A Blue Film projected on the screen of oblivion.

Ashen clad, he called for me
his voice sounded like a threnody.
His name was “Hope,” I think it was.
But he sounded like “Melancholy”

Flaming passions ignited, an artic void filled.
Ashen clad, now dressed in gold
Intimate, strong, a trifle bold,
Broke through the screen.

We met in shivered embraces
In the paradise of our making.
Mythical birds sang.
Rainbows hung from clouds.

In my dream I saw him once
Devoid of inhibitions and vanity.
In the timelessness of that dream
‘Love’ was born
Its hopelessness prolonged till dawn.


The word ‘Love’ in the last stanza also refers to the Greek legend “The Birth of Love”

Threnody is a song of lamentation for the dead. [From Greek threnoidia, from thernos (lament) + oide (song). It is also the forefather of such words as ode, tragedy, comedy, parody, melody, and rhapsody.]

The second stanza. The coffin is a sleeping pill, and when I held it close to my eyes and looked through it that is what I saw.