My dreams are dumb, and I’m sick of it. My wife dreams of things like travel to alien worlds where she swaps ketchup and beer (aliens loves them their ketchup and beer) for a talking horse and some “mining equipment” (weapons are banned) to hunt the local velociraptors. My dreams, well, you’ll see. This came about because of a recent thread on bad poetry in Cafe Society, remembering that I once was a published author of monumentally awful verse, and realizing that I could both complain about my dreams and see if I could still knock out pointless crap with random meter(s) and inexcusable rhymes, delivered in unpolished verse that that only qualifies as verse because, well, it doesn’t, but it’s not worth polishing. I believe you’ll agree I succeeded.
*
My Dreams Bore Me to Death, Alas!
Others tell of lovely dreams,
Of running gaily thro flower’d fields.
I often dream of walking home,
From a mall in Niles that isn’t real.
South on Harlem, West on Lawrence,
South again on Mannheim,
And then West on Saint Charles Road.
I never reach my destination,
For night is short,
And that’s well over twenty miles.
I sometimes spend the night
Walking through those eldritch stores,
Not buying, because that might be fun,
and all my dreams are stupid bores.
Or I will walk over to Wheaton,
Via the Prairie Path bike trail,
Dodging puddles and little kids,
Picking mulberries, if they’re ripe,
With a side trip to a neighborhood
In Glen Ellyn that isn’t there.
I have other dreams about
A general store outside Aurora,
And all the streets around it.
I have to explain to friends,
How to find it
Because I need a ride.
I believe my mind is telling me
I need to walk more, despite my knee.
Others whisper of their dirty dreams,
Where they nightly soil their underwear,
But I haven’t since I was three and ten,
In retrospect, that isn’t fair.
“But what of celebrities?” you ask,
“They can inspire solitary vice.”
I dreamt once of Marie Osmond.
She came to visit, and was nice.
“But what of loves that you have lost?”
I don’t usually dream of folks I know,
Last night, though, a woman I once loved
Sat naked while I stroked her hair
And shoulder. I can’t help it,
I’m a romantic who likes to cuddle.
My joy lasted for a minute and a half,
Before my alarum began to whine.
My happiness lasted half the time
It took for me to write those lines.
I weary of my boring dreams,
There is no point in sleeping
If all I get is exercise
When dreaming comes a-creeping.*
