Years ago, and sometimes still, I recorded my dreams in a little spiral notebook kept near the bed. The first page of the book contains, written badly using a calligraphy pen (of course), the first part of Row, Row, Row, your boat, which I must’ve thought quite clever. Most of the entries are the usual dream stuff - monsters, sex, flying, falling, biting - you know. One entry however takes the form of a poem. I don’t remember writing it, but I do remember reading it the following morning and thinking I was somehow not entirely sound. It goes like this…

It never had occured to me

The way it has to be

is never never only what it should be

Some this some that some other

kid forgets his mother

then take the wasted lives of one another

It never seemed I never saw

true light shine out and on and all

the things that come up/down before the fall

The growth the life before the rise

But once I looked into those eyes

Not knowing what could crawl out of the skies

Peaks first then ebbs it shrinks and grows

Aroma smelled not with the nose

A thorn has fallen from life’s withered rose

Once dust once ash a Phoenix came

from out of pointed angry blame

And nothing else has ever done the same

Over up and once thought dead

A voice that rang in angels’ heads

Now sings a song of loneliness instead

Not gone not here not anywhere

A madnes permeates the air

Strips all and one and thing completely bare

And spoken with a raspy breath

While looking down upon the earth

“All the meek inherit now is death.”

Whatever that means.

Oh, and I’ve put up a bunch of other fascinating poetry by yours truly at http://jackbaty.com/poems/) for your amusement.