Ode to Sleep
O Sleep, descend upon me softly
And close my fatigue-ridden eyelids
O Sleep, let me slip into my shadow
Like a candle waning out into the night.
O Sleep, screen me off from the world’s
Turmoil to create space for the new day
And forge new experiences from a restful
Memory shaped by sleep’s pure patina.
O Sleep, close off my consciousness,
The companion of regret, tormenting me
With bygone conflicts, O Sleep, protect me
From guilty remorse inflicting woe.
The New Order
The minotaur is captive in the poem’s labyrinth.
The beast feeding on sacrificial human flesh
will only forsake the trap when the poet’s
torments subside like the ill wind that sinks ships.
Until then, he must dwindle in the maze,
trying to figure the way out. The king believes
human sacrifice protects his ships and his harbor
yet he cannot control the minotaur’s savagery
nor the poet’s temperament, the energy shaping
the poem. Like the ingenious Ariadne, the poet
unravels the thread leading out of the labyrinth’s
mouth to save Theseus who slays the beast.
The sonnet’s volta points to a new order of courage
Disfeaturing the price of human sacrifice.
The Mask and the Dream
The real dream was forgotten.
My lover’s face floated
on the river that captivated him.
I tore the mask off my lover’s face
to recollect the hints of my dream
buried deep in the sands of memory.
Hard on seduction, the mask revealed
the betrayal he had hidden
when he touched the feline woman.
My lover’s face was conjoined
to his mask that watched him
like the spirit that makes us recollect
the cues of our dream-labyrinths
until we traverse the paths
to the original memory –
the source of our troubled wishes,
haunting us while we are wide-awake.
We dream again and again
to catch a few more cues
until my lover’s mask regains his face
and assure the passage of our lives
retrievable only in dreams.
The Dream Cadence
The real dream was forgotten.
My lover’s face floated
on the river that captivated him.
I tore the mask off my lover’s face
to recollect the hints of my dream
buried deep in the sands of memory.
Hard on seduction, the mask revealed
the betrayal he had hidden
when he touched the feline woman.
My lover’s face was conjoined
to his mask that watched him
like the spirit that makes us recollect
the cues of our dream-labyrinths
until we traverse the paths
to the original memory –
the source of our troubled wishes,
haunting us while we are wide-awake.
We dream again and again
to catch a few more cues
until my lover’s mask regains his face
and assure the passage of our lives
retrievable only in dreams.
The Procession
1564
Breughel painted the death-wheel
As the young shepherd shorn
From his hut hung on the wheel
Hoisted on the city’s outskirts
While his wife shed tears of grief
Mingled with the vultures’ shrieks.
The painter saw the martyrs dragged down
The cobblestones by the Red Militia,
Crucified in imitation of Christ
As examples for the heathen villagers
Dancing in reels. He painted the town’s
Rich politicians silent in their Janus-like
Hypocrisy that kept the mill grinding
Its bitter grains for bread baked by blood.
Unrequited
Upon Pegasus we rode, silk-wings
Transparent against the moonlight,
The mirror of our anguish and flight.
As the night trembled with new-born terror,
You were hampered by the nightmares
Of the frameless forest, with the blind
Bile-pool you failed to contain. Our excess
Desire was quelled into this unrequited
Love locked within my sonnet
Whose anguish could solely be
Vanquished by my words
While from the white page
A hundred starlings took flight
In my daydreams to alight.
