THAT TEARS IT! (photo) & DO MY EYES DECEIVE ME (dreamku) by Roswila

DO MY EYES DECEIVE ME

it’s said that he’s dead
I’m invited by a man I know
to view the body
the chill up my spine colder
than the air in the morgue

at first he looks dead
a pale version of himself
but this does not last
he morphs rapidly into
a grinning zombie

his flesh splits in long
strips, his hook-like hands reach out,
his voice hypnotic –
the other man grins also,
waiting for me to be caught

their voices combine
compelling me to step forward
even as every
cell in my body says “No!
I’ll not get sucked in”

in a flash I recall
a brain dysfunction in which
only sight is fooled,
hearing still knows what’s real,
I squeeze my eyes tightly shut

through my horrified
disappointment their cold voices
still utterly compel
not even just this once
have my eyes deceived me


[six tanka on a dream of 2-4-12. Well, I suppose this might be classified as a nightmare by many folk. However, the true horror I felt was not so much over that gross zombie, but that I could not see – as in comprehend – differently. BTW, I learned about that brain dysfunction from a T.V. show I watched the night before this dream. I thought to post this nearly month old dreamku today since the theme of “seeing” showed up again in a dream just a few days ago (see post below of February 24). Photo “That Tears It!” by Roswila]

PLEASE NOTE that I never have nor do I now lay claim to having been the first to suggest writing about our dreams in the haiku form. In fact, the haijin (Haiku Masters of centuries ago) sometimes wrote haiku on dreams. But even more importantly, what I have been developing for several years now on this blog is not even truly haiku or tanka or monoku. The ways in which I have been using and experimenting with these forms makes the results more akin to kissing cousins of these small Eastern poetry forms. Therefore, I mostly use the term "dreamku" to distinguish what I do from those traditional forms. Click here for a more in-depth INTRODUCTION than follows below, including links to my THREE PART PRIMER on the basic (most haiku-like) dreamku form.

Also, the photo accompanying a daily dream poem or non-dream based poem is not necessarily meant to illustrate it, but to reflect some small, even slant aspect of the verse -- similar to Japanese haiga (illustrated haiku). I've also recently realized that although the dreamku (i.e. dream based poems) posted here tend not to have metaphor or simile, the accompanying photos almost always act as such.

To write a metaphor or simile into a dream scenario is something I rarely do. It can be confusing: did it really look like a hand, say, in the dream, or am I just being poetic to make my conscious point? As these dreamku act as a dream journal, my over-riding tendency is to try to stay close to the actual dream scenario itself. Admittedly making for a tendency to less "poetic" dreamku. Then why pay attention to any haiku, tanka, or monoku parameters at all when writing about my dreams? Because I find in even attempting to adhere to them I'm making choices that relieve my dream recall of a great deal of chatter so that I can get down to some important dream aspects. Here's a link to THE AREN'TS OF DREAMKU & ACCOMPANYING PHOTOS in which I go into some of the basic parameters for dreamku and the photos chosen to go with them (and with any non-dream based poems I post here, as well).

The archives in the sidebar hold years of the daily dreamku, tanka, monoku and photo posts I've made, grouped in one post by month. As I no longer post dreamku (or non-dream based poems) strictly daily, each post will appear below and then in the archives by the day on which it was posted.

There are many other sorts of posts here, not all dream-based. I indicate which are about or influenced by dreams. Some non-dream focused posts are book reviews, "regular" poems (some by other writers than myself), scifaiku, writing exercises, Tarot haiku, photos, haiga, and so on. However, most of those are in much older posts. There's a listing by month going back to early 2006 in the sidebar.

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‘til next time, keep dreaming,

[aka: Patricia Kelly]
**** If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”) **** My other blogs: ROSWILA’S TAROT GALLERY & JOURNAL; ROSWILA’S TAIGA TAROT; and OPENING TO THE LIGHT ****