Hybrid

image borrowed from sadanduseless.com

Hybrid

“Naked cells, lacking self-respect, do not seem to have any

sense of self, & can divide into monstrous hybrid progeny.”

--Lewis Thomas.

No one completely

recalls their many fevered dreams, 

because what rises

to actual consciousness are just divers colorful random fragments, like

rogue strands of DNA--standing naked in line at Starbuck’s--being attacked

by three knife-wielding muggers & only having a red silk scarf to protect

yourself with--encountering a silverback grizzly in the aisle of Ace Hardware

while holding a yellow watering can--driving in a dead-stop traffic jam in a

typhoon in a vehicle that has no body, sitting on an orange bucket wearing

hand cuffs, steering with your knees--being chased by a pair of white tigers

& barely able to move in super slow-motion--being on some kind of

date with Scarlett Johansson, her wearing a see-through blouse, somehow

knowing you will wake up before you score with her--walking alone on the

desert & stumbling into a huge nest of rattlesnakes, stopping as several of

the larger ones slither over your bare feet--being tied with clothesline, bound

up in a cellar, the rope slathered with peanut butter, with rats chewing on

the knots--spiders the size of lap dogs crawling on the walls of your bathroom

--being at a holiday family gathering in a house you’ve never seen before, with

several of your dearly departed showing up, as if death was not a deterrent to

genuine love--riding a black Harley motorcycle at more than a hundred miles

per hour & realizing you have no brakes--driving a rental truck on the coast

highway with its hairpin turns in a lightning storm, as the truck slides out of

control, breaking through the wooden guard rail, & plunging a thousand feet

toward the angry sea--hooking a 220 pound bass in a strange pond, then

wrapping your legs around a stump to keep from being pulled into the brackish

water--arriving at a familiar theater, not being acknowledged by anyone, not

knowing what the play is, not knowing where the dressing room is, or what 

your part is, or what your lines are, as you can hear the audience laughing

at a play in progress--climbing the sheer rock face of the Devil’s Tower, free-

style & not feeling fear or vertigo--snowshoeing in the back country when you

hear the unmistakable roar of an avalanche, snapping trees, coming for you.

A million scenarios, absurd litanies, a lexicon of illogical tableaus & irregular

plots, a crazy quilt of emotions, adventures, fears, joys, heartbreaks, pinnacles,

near-death & after death experiences, conquests, failures, being lost, pain

& pleasure;

where you are 

the Star of your own

magnificently successful movie,

where

your fantasies

are satiated and

your nightmares blossom black,

like shadow roses

in your

secret garden.

Posted over at dVerse Poets MTB

Today Brian Miller wants us to take a classic poetic form & "make it your own".

My hybrid form is a Haibun, starting with a Collum Lune, followed by a prose

paragraph, followed by another Collum Lune, capped with a stanza of my

own imagining. 

Would you like to hear the author read this Hybrid Poem to you?