OSTARA'S JEMS (photo) & APRIL IS THE CRUELLEST MONTH (dreamku series) by Roswila

APRIL IS THE CRUELLEST MONTH

I

maybe her number’s
coming up – photo file numbers
keep appearing
filling the screen of her dreaming
mind with cryptic significance


II

is he or is he
not flirting with her? as always
she can’t be certain
he offers her a ride to
the bus stop and she gets in

it’s a crowded ride
as she takes up so much room --
she tries to squash down
but she’s still too much for his
dark low-slung sports car

when she can’t understand
his accent he gets angry
calling her stupid --
turning his car around he
takes her right back to start


III

she determines this
time to make her own way
home from their house --
before she can leave, their young
blond boy whispers a snark at her

hiding her surprise
and deep hurt at his nasty
rejection she says
openly: “We know how we
feel about each other”

everyone else there
thinks she’s totally to blame
since as usual
she was the one to acknowledge
the elephant in the room

and as usual she's also
alone again, naturally

[tanka series capped by one two-liner, on three different dreams of 4-14-12. The title is from T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Wasteland” and it occurred to me as soon as I realized I was going to write about all of the dreams I recall from last night. Here’s the opening of Eliot's poem:

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers...

(Apropos of nothing in particular here, decades ago during my one ultimately unfinished attempt to get a college education I wrote a paper on this poem, a Jungian analysis. What an experience to use a Jungian framework from which to approach this amazing poem!)

The last line of the above dreamku series is from an old Gilbert O’Sullivan song, which occurred to me immediately on recalling my third dream’s ending. Here are some of the relevant lyrics:

I truly am indeed
Alone again, naturally
It seems to me that
there are more hearts
Broken in the world
that can't be mended

Left unattended
What do we do
What do we do
Alone again, naturally

Think maybe I’m into a bit of self-pity? Ah well, better to name and own it all and not just let it lie like a denied elephant in the middle of my mind. Maybe then I can move on. Photo “Ostara’s Jems” by Roswila -- This may seem like a rather cheerful photo for this dreamku series. However, Ostara is an ancient Goddess of Spring. And one of the numbers in the first dream above turned out to be the file number for this photo.]

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 ****