LETTING GO (photo) & WAS THERE ONCE A GARDEN (dreamku series) by Roswila

WAS THERE ONCE A GARDEN

harmony fades
into a late morning dream:
she climbs the school stairs

on a far distant
landing, a huge glass door
or maybe window,
mashed against the other side
wild herds of reddish horses

no, not reddish,
bleeding in their tumult,
not an inch of space
between one tortured body
and the rearing biting next

she sadly accepts
she can do nothing to help when
over there! fighting cats!
an open elevator door
reveals one black cat, one gray

they’re attacking
something she cannot see
something that fights back
the black cat not bitten
but the gray bearing wounds

the cats win at last
she phones for help for the gray
not certain she should

gray limps after black
down the stairs as if she’s not
even standing there –
which way now, she wonders,
there’s deep pain wherever she goes


[two dreamku and five tanka on a dream of 10-22-11. This several months old dream/ku is not reflective of my current inner state, though it does all too well describe where I’ve been for much of my life, was when I dreamed it, and still was until just a couple days ago. However, I’m posting it today not as an inner mood mirror but as an exploration of what I’ve been thinking recently about life as a whole. How too often all we can offer is the prayerful silence of our witnessing compassion. For the world, for our neighbors and families and friends, and for ourselves, as well. Photo “Letting Go” 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 ****