A Metamorphosis of Dream
By Alexandra Seidel
He collects tigers in wells, panthers
and snow leopards
at the bottom of dead lakes, in the
hearts of glaciers;
insects and bugs, spiders with eight
lives and even caterpillars
he hides in all and every kind of nut,
hazelnut, walnut, macadamia and chestnut…
those things, shelled and frozen, he
keeps safely hanging from his trees
grown from a forest floor of sand,
wider than the eye can see.
He sometimes goes by Morpheus and when
he does, the story goes
that he blends squashed snakeskin and
bat's cry into a canvas
and hands you a brush and lets you do
your thing;
he offers you colors that he himself
prepared. Something
garish then escapes, something Bosch
might have painted,
wide awake, sand caked under his
fingernails.
He sometimes calls himself Oneiros;
Oneiros
keeps painted masks tucked in among the
feathers of his wings,
masks with eyes and tongues, with red
mouths and teeth, masks
with words and songs, masks with
screams and confessions;
he might dare you to pick one and wear
it or he might drop one before you
along with a scattering of feathers as
he leaves you standing, feet buried in sand.
You might also call him Morphine, he
who breaks the shells of nuts
and takes all the eight lives of
spiders in his mouth, melts glaciers and drains lakes
and drinks dry all the deepest wells;
in a house of ivory built on a sandy
shore you will find him waiting,
rearranging mirrors in honor of your
coming and scattering his wings for you to walk on;
sharded masks cut your soles and the
sand stings them deeply
as you walk, and with the certainty of
butterflies, you do no longer want to remain
a caterpillar feasting on his un-real
trees and so
you call him Dream and give him even
stranger shapes
that are as real as bullets are, as
real as words that have been spoken;
yes, he smiles. But do not forget that
Dream has masks, slick as oil,
dark as blood, sharp as promises and
manifold as deserts of sand in distant lands.
~
'A Metamorphosis of Dream' began with
the first stanza, the cats in bodies of water as a representation of
the wild and primal forces our dreams can confront us with. The piece
is inspired--at least in part--by Morpheus of course, the Greek god
of dreams.
~~~
(Images from commons.wikimedia.org)
This
poem was first published in Ideomancer. If you
enjoyed reading it, do leave me a comment or click on the woman in white
to your right. She'll lead you straight to the Tip Jar. Thanks!
