My Dreams Write Me Too
In daylight, I write down my dreams
And steal their power for story fens;
With the gauzy winter's day cheering
Me on, I wrestle the monsters still,
Throw them to an ink-quicksand that wills
Away their bale, makes me whole again.
At nightfall, the tables turn. Screams
Pin me down, wielding my own pens;
I am the coiled paper-scrip fleeing
Poems in full roar; I am the quill
Thundering forth galloping dactyls
Punctuated by a shortened refrain.
Break A Leg
Each stone of these stairs rasps like a regret,
Like the memory of a child's flushed face
Clouding with hurt, because of some unmet
Demand for a trifle, some homework help
With a spelling or verb form or math set
Refused in an already festering rage.
I negotiate descent with each step –
‘Don’t trip me up’ – and with my feet – ‘Don’t fall’ –
With a twisted desire that I may shlep
On, that this may be the last day for all
But me to live squirming in a self-wrought cage.