Nightmare of the Leaf
I've forgotten how to dance.
In that panic freeze
something's wheezing behind me,
ponderous but light
ponderous but light
on its feet
as a fat man
who dances like helium.
as a fat man
who dances like helium.
Big-Belly bumps me
into a darkroom
into a darkroom
whose unlikely window
displays a maple-leaf,
red
red
rhymed with diamond grief
just past my hand,
a moment away
from falling
forever.
~November 2013
55 deciduous dream dilemmas for the g-man
Image: Leaf Motif 2, Pattern of Leaves, both by Georgia O'Keefe
via wiki-paintings.org
May be protected by copyright. Posted under fair use guidelines.
seriously...when i dream of dancers, they are never fat men....just saying...unless its a nightmare....with banjos...smiles.
ReplyDeletediamond grief...great descriptor...sharp and hard...
Georgia O'Keefe is brilliant! Love her. And you are companion her well as this is a bit abstract - I have seen some light "fat men" on their feet (but sweating profusely :)
ReplyDeleteHuzzah!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI've finally become the Fat Man of your dreams!!!
You sure Rock Out the Nightmarish Adventures
Loved your Freudian 55
Thanks for sharing the innermost dysfunctions of your sleep patterns
I'll send you the bill.
Thanks for another Outer-Limits episode
Your The best Joy....Have a Kick Ass Week-End
Ha! Sometimes a fat man is just a cigar. ;_) Thanks, G--have a posterior-impacting weekend your own self.
Deletelol - that's an interesting dream. The helium made me giggle and the imagery (as always) was sublime. Even your dreams are poetic, hedgewitch!
ReplyDeletei don't know which is the worse nightmare ~ forgetting how to dance or being a leaf falling away forever! brilliant!
ReplyDelete♥
I love the use of words here: panic freeze, ponderous, wheezing . . . the fat man dancing like helium. I see him and his big belly. I hear him wheezing. I don't want to be in that dream.
ReplyDeleteI was looking at it from the perspective of the leaf and the fat man felt awful but also rather like a big gust of wind bumping the leaf about though it also felt like a person (and the leaf not a leaf). The panic freeze is rather like the cold snap that turns maple leaves so red and the rhymed diamond grief. To me at least.like ice rime. Or something like that. And the fall forever-- you know-- what happens to leaves. I could also see the big belly bundling the leaf in a big trash bag (black)! But it also felt like the description of a terribly abusive situation and the leaf a rather sad figure of a person. Wonderfully distilled and vivid--tha big belly has great menace. K.
ReplyDeleteThanks, k--this is just a very literal transcription of a dream--one of those terrifying ones where you can't move or run while something very inimical is pursuing. I remember quite sharply the color and shape of the leaf, scarlet, white-edged, and waiting in vain for me to catch it on its way down. Who knows what this means? not me. ;_) Hope your weekend is refreshing and productive.
DeleteYour dreams just amaze me, as does your poetry. Lovely imagery.
ReplyDeletea bit creepy, with some acid flashbacks thrown in. I get a feeling of being in one of the other rooms at the Red Queen's palace, an alternate story line, if you will, with this imagery ~
ReplyDeleteI've spent a lot of time down the rabbithole. Thanks, M.
DeleteCreepy dreams but I do like the red rhymed with diamond grief ~ Happy Friday ~
ReplyDeleteWell, that is nightmarish!
ReplyDeletejust for a moment there, reading, I felt I was that leaf, falling into forever - & a leaf forgetting how to dance (just as I too have at times forgotten)... somehow brings me to tears
ReplyDeletebeautiful image & imagery
Oh if fat met men where like helium sounds both scary and hilarious
ReplyDeleteSo from your tags I'm going to gloss a burp from that part of the belly where all the indigestible LSD is still groovin' -- or some other fetor of history dreams keep dissembling. We write poems when we dream, dream when we write poems. Same soul-gurgle, diff'rent day.
ReplyDeleteYou've certainly caught the panicky, helpless feeling of such dreams here, Joy, where everything is imbued with weird importance and the threats are often indistinct but all the more disturbing for that.
ReplyDelete