CHAOS MAGICK (photo) and OF SWIPES & BITS (dreamku series) by Roswila

OF SWIPES & BITS

Dream One

we’ve been tip-toeing
around, watching for that awful
man – what’s even worse
we don’t know who he is
or what he looks like

I wind up alone
in an empty room with white walls
the door slams open
it’s him! an ancient rail thin man
with claw-like hands and stealthy step

he’s intent on murder
the sickle-swipe of his arm
my terrified shout


Dream Two

where are her new glasses?
she thought they were in her purse
and they’re not in the
boxes of her possessions
forwarded by women friends

she starts unpacking
her old glasses they’d sent, but none
work for reading and
most are ill fitting, sitting
wildly askew on her nose

one bright yellow pair
she recognizes from years ago,
almost meets her needs
but ultimately yields a
distant and fuzzy view

the lenses of a
purple pair so huge they look
like butterfly wings bridging
her eyes, once her favorite pair,
now offer badly blurred vision

she cannot believe
this predicament –
all these ways of seeing
yet none are fitting now or offer
the least bit of longed for clarity


[a dreamku series on two dreams of 3-25-12. Dream One was the first of the evening, and Dream 2 the last. I’m aware I had dreams in between as well. And as a night’s series of dreams often do, clearly they made some progress along the way. The first dream above fits my personal definition of a nightmare: I struggled to wake myself up to get out of it. In this case, I shouted once very loudly in fear. Given the second dream I’d say that my psyche is suggesting I re-evaluate how I see things. That maybe some of my waking life beliefs are based on inaccurate – or at least extremely out of focus and out-dated – perceptions, making them the true nightmares. Photo “Chaos Magick” (an important tenet of which is said to be “belief is a tool,” which makes it peculiarly apt for accompanying this post) 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.

* * * *

‘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 ****