When Dreams Go Bad

When Dreams Go Bad


(for J and J Lawson)

a.

A Ghostly Confessional

This is not about unraveling the beautiful
as it presents itself.
My god, we get so much of that!
It’s about the unbeautiful unraveling
of ourselves.
It's about us all like eggs cracking
out and open
into the cavernous mysterioso delirium
of our universal natures
spinning out of control beyond
the viper sharp spider pit of being,
glossed with bright wet pain,
as we break through and beyond
the tentative slender gelatinous musical
sheen of our yolk into the forgetfulness
of the cosmos itself.

But, in being only human,
we never really leave the bloody slime
of our human consciousness behind,
somehow always returning back as if
that taint is a part of resurrection
itself and no soul flies without its
own placental constraining
memory of flesh reminding us where
we came from and will end
when we discover that the body was no
prison at all but a series of small
explosions waking us up to
the passionate fluency of everything
we left behind.

b.

God, are you listening?
"chicago poets do not understand my poetry"
d.a. Levy

There is no accounting.
The numberless phone calls,
the messages sent and no response.
God, are you listening?
My soul pounds the pavement

of seedy nights plunging into
the grit of all night cafes.
God, are you listening?

I curse as I cringe
at your perpetual winking
like I’m one of your freaky jokes.
Are you listening?

Drinking in my own confusion
the truth of myself slurs with
conjugations as these words
collide with this drunken world.

I’m scraped everywhere at once.
I’m uncalmed and ablaze. Lost.
God, are you listening?

Depression is a .22 bullet
burrowing into the flesh of my brain,
I want to put You out of my misery,
God, are you listening?


Scott Malby

Posted over on A Little Poetry