In death's dream kingdom
           These do not appear:


                     I

They're handing out maroon balloons
And saying they are free
But grasping children grip them fast
And the monks amidst them disagree
Dispassionately, but en masse
While they liberate the children
With obliterating oms.

A nearby Byron expiates
And mildly reiterates
The soporific broken ode
He bellows over holy oms
To the smitten women who approach
That "a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose"
Dispensing with disinterest
Crimson bliss amidst the women
Who ignore the sinful image he bestows.

He hands them out like red balloons
To grasping girls all afternoon
Imploring them to trust their nose
Insisting they are free
And so continues to propose
To the smitten women in the street
That "a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose"
As if the word could smell as sweet
As the perennials he grows.

And in the corner – Romeo
Who greenly mourning understands
The worth of poison in his hands
Imagining a life of night
Where roses wither without light
And only stars through windows break
Through all the countless nights of fate
and every breath's an endless wake...

Meanwhile Byron's distant yells
Prevail over the choral swell
And plant a seed in grasping ears:
Salvation can be engineered!
Which Romeo soon understands
As kissing death, he takes her hand
Thoughts germinating into schemes
If a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose
...then a dream is a dream is a dream.


                     II

A griffin, a hippogriff, and a wyvern
Admitting me and
Gripping crimson
Dripping strings
So none of them will fly away.

Inside, Cain is killing Abel  
(How few! yet how they creep)
killing Abel
(Through my fingers to the deep)
killing Abel
(While I weep — while I weep!)
killing Abel.
(O God! Can I not grasp)
It is the first story:
(Them with a tighter clasp?)
A samsara of carnage and drama.

Somewhere above
On a city street
Desire's handing out balloons
He clips their thorns
And trims them neat
He says they're free
And just as sweet
As the women he impugnes
He belies his guidance on repeat:
That love is the light is the sun is the moon.

A widower laments and moves the world
That has such people in it:
A snake, a guard, a god, a dog
A wife by no other name
A faltering of faith, a peek
A pillar of salt, a severed head
Adrift on a river
Singing:

I'd transcend five hundred miles
And I'd transcend five hundred more
Just to be the man who transcends trials
Sprawled out on your floor
(Thy drugs are quick.)
Searching for a souvenir
To prove to you our world was here

Isaac, bound, blank and free
Bleating, looking for meaning
(All that we see or seem)
In his father's violent eye,
And finding it.
(Thus with a kiss I die.)
Abraham swings his knife.
A son is a sin is a ram is a rose.

A man pushes the sun up a large hill
(LET THERE BE LIGHT)
Every day, and then it rolls down again
And then an eagle eats his liver.
(I am the resurrection and the life.)
One must imagine Prometheus happy
The alternative is dark

The moon, by any other name, would—
But do not swear by the moon!
For she changes constantly
(Then said Jesus unto them plainly:
Lazarus is dead.)
Everything changes
But nothing is truly lost.

(at times
the fact of her absence
will hit you like a blow to the chest
and you will weep.
but this will happen less and less
as time goes on.
she is dead.
you are alive.
so live.)

A man pushes the sun up a large hill
A day is a year is a life is a death.

One must imagine Orpheus happy.


                     III

In dreams, the sun resumes her loving glow
I'm reunited with my silhouette
I glue myself with soap to my shadow
And find myself beside my Juliet

No longer a balloon without a hand
I'm rooted to the earth where she grips me
With purpose guiding us through life's demands
I push my boulders uphill happily

I build a world with Juliet my wife
Where roses are all roses and smell sweet
We live a loving happy magic life
Together til our journey is complete.

[Enter, at the other end of the churchyard,
FRIAR LAURENCE, with a lantern, crow, and *****.]

In union Eve and Adam are redeemed,
Not in a rose but in a living dream.

If you must sing me a song,
make it soft and gentle enough
for a baby's skin.
If you must shut the lights off,
give me a colorful nightlight
to reflect bouncing shades
about the perimeters of my walls.
If I must sleep,
allow me a sweet, sinking feeling
in the center of my everything
as I drop from reality into dreams.

While we were sleeping, the sandman was creeping, whilst we were weeping he waited while peeping.... Dreams were then seeping into bags he was keeping... Ones  we were lapping up laughter, whilst skipping and leaping with joy, that was sweeping through love we were reaping, so much it was heaping up to sizes so great, then oh no, there's that bleeping we hate! Oh that wee thing we berate, that won't even wait whilst are dreams recreate, such a magical state we wishfully want as our fate.... Now the buzzer has buzzed, we're awake, it's too late! X

Hey, did you hear?
Sandman called yesterday
He asked me why my dreams are dead
He asked me about my nightmares
and how he couldn't change them into dreams

Hey, did you hear?
Sandman called yesterday
He asked me if I wanted depression
He's selling it on special
By the cost of a broken heart

The ground connects us through our feet
We connect the Earth through our minds
And connect our hearts through our hands
Until the ground beneath our feet
Begins to crumble
We dig up hatred and then repeat
As we stumble
Attacking the planet to cut our connection
And severing our stability
When the ground is filled with holes
And the ground is filled with those
We chose to dispose
For what they know
Or what they show
We told them no
And dimmed their glow
We feel dirt between our toes
As the quicksand embraces our ankles
We let a malicious mudslide flank us

The Sandman continues to introduce us
To our own eternal rest
On his endless conquest
For minerals in his midst
Sentiment unable to penetrate his sediment
The dirtiness in his heart becomes evident
When he drowns us in dust
And colors us rust
He feels he must
But he made a fatal mistake
Not realizing we are attached by soil
As the soil becomes a lake
We find relation deeper than oil

The Sandman seeks our species' slumber
But the power of our tears
Are strong when shared
And shower us with love
That runs through our blood
Moistening man
Soaking the sand
Once we see life grand

You need not visit right now.
For I wish to stay wide awake
In the arms of my loved one.
And if you were to exhaust me,
I would have to retreat to my own bed.
So please, let me enjoy this.