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two am
October 23, 2013
wake up from a white dream
bedding down beneath trees
breathing under water in a
fractured skintight world and
through my wide eyes i see stars,
i see everything, i see
god, i see everything
in a silver shuddering
layer cake, i don't know what it means
to be this free
or see that frightened nightlight shimmer,
try to catch it, hoping
for a glimpse
but now it's gone
just like i fell into a white dream
bedded down on green leaves
drowning under water like a
fractured skintight girl and
through my window i saw spaceships,
i saw everything, i saw
god, i saw everything
in a silver shuddering
question mark
i don't know what it means
to be this free.
© Steve S., Marblehead, MA
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This article has 4 comments.
Yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes! I LOVE that song. I don't know why I can't fathom you liking Lana Del Rey. Any who, I agree. Also, I have heard that entire album by Bowie. (His The Great Thin Duke, for whatever reason, is my favorite alter ego of his. Ziggy Stardust isn't that bad. But the Duke...I dunno. The voice, the clothing, the attitude.) And I did read about his stange diet during the process of that album. Rather disgusting. Though I assume all the co.caine surely had him up all night to write and work on the album. With editing I'm much the same. It's not a process I particularly enjoy. I believe it takes away the raw-ness of the whole poem. And yet, without it, the poems, often, are disjointed and disformed. Very beautiful poem. And the process by which it was begotten is just as enjoyable to read. Keep writing. (I've been suffering from writers' block...and a certain laziness to submit.) XD
So this is kind of a funny story. For various reasons, I do not actually remember writing this poem. David Bowie allegedly does not remember writing an entire album (Station to Station, 1976), as he subsisted solely off of cocaine, water and peppers while working on it in Berlin. I wasn't in quite half as an impaired state as Mr. Bowie, however, just very sleepy, a little punch-drunk. From what I can recall and infer, I think I woke up late at night for some unknown reason and looked up. There is a window above my bed and on a clear night, I can see the whole universe, right out my bedroom window. Very nice. I like waking up to new material because then I can edit it from more of a third-person standpoint. Sometimes I have a hard time editing (particularly cutting) from poems I have spent a while writing while alert and focused. Because it was harder work for every word. Rather than just... sleep-writing. Heeheeee. Anyway, try listening to "Videogames", by Lana Del Rey, while reading this. It enhances the poem, to a degree, according to the notes I left myself.
As humans, I think, it's in our nature to long for limitless-ness. To be boundless by nature, time, God, etc. Then, when we attain it (though not necessarily entirely), we seem to be helpless. Freedom is an unbound force; it doesn't necessarily make us free. I find at times that it bounds us to other rules. The irony of Life, no? Lovely poem. I love the repetition of certain words. It felt dreamlike and musical all at once. Congrats on the Editors' Choice.
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"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present." --Marcus Aurelius