The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of
To Gulliver
Ray Fenech
I live the dreams you dream
in wasted night-long sleeps.
Death rather than that!
Without sleep, they say:
you live very little.
Like Dante’s “Divine Comedy”,
dreams arouse fantasy.
Nightmares come to life
in night’s deep shadows,
crawl lightly into the feathers
of your soft pillows
those you bang every morning
while hating yourself for remembering
or forgetting.
Fatigue and rest are drugs -
close your eyes
and it’s all over for that day.
Sunset, fast-forwarded is within you:
enter the world of adventure!
Sunrise is folded in a curtain,
at the command of your alarm clock.
Open your eyes, look inward,
there is no rest in slumber,
only in dreams.
The child becomes Hercules,
Ursus, Ulysses, Perseus;
he fights, never dies -
under the sheets.
This is why I fly
whilst you fall, breaking your bones;
I see red in the darkness of anger,
white in refrigerated ice,
black in oblivion’s infinite,
yellow in cowardly escapades;
but what the hell?
Like Gulliver
I live the dreams you dream
and deal with far worse monsters
than your everyday office routine.
I am not safe like you,
when you wake shaken by a nightmare;
for all the time my life is at stake,
whether asleep or awake,
like snow flakes, it all can all vanish
on touch down in the lake.