Old World Smoke

  Who cometh forth from the Dusk, and my birth is from the House of Death

  How many dreams have whistled

  through my untamed imagination,

  the sleeping mind? Chances to fly,

  chased quickly by the dilemma of the hero

  or the grappling fear of the hunt.

  Sometimes I haunt the same reality,

  the sequel or the remix of a drifting moment,

  like hanging over an abandoned opera house,

  a classic bad guy forever two moments away

  from wrestling control over the dream,

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  illusion. Or swimming like shark or dolphin

  through dwarven tunnels of concrete pool.

  Or nightmares, the color and weight of midnight, bucking,

  eyes rolling—so many spiders.

  Always a blender of the real, the could-have, the books,

  movies, imagination high.

  I usually wake in relief, or sorrow—

  dreams come in two predictable flavors.

  But when the heart stops and the skin grows cold

  and pale as printer paper

  and I leave the body, skin and dirt,

  it crushes into me like powder:

  the life beyond the living is so real

  it pinches my skin without my having to.

  This cannot be what not living feels like.

  Death should be smoke and haze

  like the husky aftermath of the Fourth,

  not clear as marriage day, first child,

  graduation or moving.

  This dream will not die easily,

  for the spirit longs to live.