Sometimes you write a poem

I still dream about you.

As if it were yesterday,

as if

time hasn’t

ravaged

and

mellowed

me.

                                    As if

I haven’t swum a thousand miles

the salt water

detoxing your touch 

from

       my skin.

I still dream about you

            as if I need you,

as if you matter one iota,

as if my words don’t fill pages, 

as if my photo won’t live on between 

closed covers

stacked neatly and

forgotten.

            As if the heart-pounding hadn’t shifted

years ago to

mere flutters,

then a

                                         flick of a 
                                                  hand.

I still dream about you.

In it

            we smile uncomfortably across a table

in a diner I’ve never been.

            Longing pulls at

my layers

            as if it can possibly                unfold

                                          who I was

                             back

                                          then.

                       

            As if it would make a difference.

I still dream about you.

                        In the dream, a waitress in a peach dress pours coffee.

            The others at our table chat,

stab at their salads,

sink teeth into 

white-bread sandwiches.

            Our eyes

                fight to

                        dart away.

I still dream about you,

            with all the rage and fury for what you took,

            with all the affection and

                        gratitude for what

                                                you gave.

I still dream about you,

like a puzzle, like a condundrum,

like a zen koan not meant to be solved,

            but that eats at me anyway.

I still dream about you,

awaken confused and drenched,

                   like a corpse descending the depths,

                                   resurfacing,

                                       like a fish 

                               glinting

                                    through

               murky water.

                       

Like a marathoner,

            who never learned how to run,

            but has covered the miles anyway,

gaining distance, 

            yet always looking back,

wondering if you will 

ever 

               go away.

- gae 11/15

Dream Five

This is Lori Landau.
She is working on a book of
dream poems and illustrations.

This is my friend Lori Landau. She and I have been friends for a long (long) time. Among many things, Lori is a columnist at Technorati (Lifestyle: Social Goodness) and shows and sells her photography and jewlrey at the Open Center, NYC.

As teens Lori and I wrote endless poetry together, but she has continued to work on her craft and grow as a poet, while I have veered in other directions (she has also forked and veered, but has taken her poetry with her).

And, the truth is, few other's poems move me the way Lori's do.

So, when, I found a poem of hers -- Dream Five -- in my email box the other day like a small gift, I did what I always do: I coveted it.
Her poems make me want to eat them, drink them in. I have tried once or twice to suck them up through the computer screen but the glass intervenes.

So this morning, I did the next best thing. I sat down in front of my computer, turned my webcam on and read the words aloud, hoping by doing so, I could somehow send them into the universe in just the way I heard them in my head and have you understand.

I sent the vlog to Lori and asked if I might post my reading of Dream Five here and she said yes. First I will post the written version below.

-gae

Mixed media dream dog by Lori Landau.

Dream Five

The plane has already taken off but I am unseated. The rows are full of travelers, settling in, gazing out windows, opening books, leaning back, eyes closed, to listen to iPods. I pass by them on my way to the doorway that separates coach from a part of the plane I never knew existed but enter anyway. The thrust of the plane overcomes the drag and the plane is pushed up through the bright air. I am in some type cargo space, stripped clean of carpet and seating and storage. The floor is whitewashed, with blackened steel planks, held down by rivets and antique fasteners. It is the type of place that in another time might have housed sturdy parts: landing gears, propellers, spare luggage bins, but as of now, it is empty, save for two seats that are anchored to raw metal and facing me from across a divide. They are slatted chairs like you’d find at a movie theater or a ballgame, attached at the legs and bolted to the floor with antique studs. No safety belts, just old-fashioned straps made to wind around knees and waists like a harness, clumsily buckled, like arms that are poised to grab hold. The whole thing feels like a throwback to the 40s, like some kind of old military jet, it hums with the purgatory air of a waiting room. By the force of motion, I know we’re ascending. The plane shifts then stabilizes, and I eye the two empty seats, deciding whether or not they will hold me to gravity, when I see that my two long-dead dogs, Annie and Gypsy, who are very much alive, are here, just a few steps from the sealed exit door. To see a dog in your dream symbolizes intuition, loyalty, protection, two must be doubly so. I know this as well as I know that I am dreaming. I am overjoyed to see them, but I am aware that in waking life they are still dead. I realize that they are here to tell me something I’ve forgotten, some important information that has slumbered long within me. I look out the windows of the plane to see what direction we are going in, to assess the likelihood of turbulance, to see if the plane is trailing some message, skywriting symbols that will decipher why I am here, and where I am going, and I see through the cold glass what has been there all along, the altitude of blue sky and everything beyond, and I am flying through it, carried like Dorothy hurtling toward Oz ,holding on by my feet, rooted to the unseen, to that which has come before and all that is yet to come, soaring toward the unknown without a safety net, flying far over the articulation of earth, away from the bent elbows of women squatting long over muddy water, over corrugated fences and bitter branches weighed down by leaves and birdsong, over the long slow trains that run past crumbling walls etched with graffiti, lifting over the hinge of the horizon, on my way to waking.

Borrowed (Coveted) Poem

This is Lori. She is a poem.

In my email box this Sunday morning was a note from my dear friend Lori with a poem attached.

Lori and I have known each other since our teens, and we wrote together way back when. Her note this morning simply said she was in a winter-freeze funk and was sharing some writing in the hopes I would somehow offer some warmth and inspiration. What I got instead, was inspiration of my own.

As I read her words I was blown away, as I so often am, by the way she is able to balance the fluid with the succinct, the flowery with the direct, the ethereal with the solid -- and create a magnificent sense of angst and flight, hope and longing, that always seems to shine through her poetry.

I asked her if I might share the poem on my blog and she agreed. The artwork below that goes with it is also hers. Yeah, don't get me started. . .

Btw, you may also find her blog here, at ConsciousCreativity.

Lori made this; I want it. What else is new?*

Dream 4/dream for

Prelude to a dream:

Lens retracted, aerial view of snow gridded squares, boundaries etched in ink, black & white topography seen from glass iris of the camera. Land cut like fruit reveals a starry eye:

Dream 4:
is crowded. Friends from long ago roam the rooms of my past, bearing gifts and conversation. Someone gives me a straw hat stiched with knowledge, it hovers at the lip of the driveway. There is some kind of gathering. People spill inside: an old therapist, a friend from Herondale, a woman who Dream tells me is my spirit sister. Clinking of glasses, movement, open doorways. Details from my childhood float overhead like filmy ghosts: blue shag rug, crystal candlesticks. The air is palpable. Somewhere upstairs, we have packed up my son’s room. Nothing is left but the books in the shelves, and I turn to ask him what he wants to do with them and am sucked into a mysterious errand. Steep hill to climb to get there, but Starbucks is a beacon up top, inviting, its glass walls fogged golden with light and warmth, and I seem to know the way. It is snowing. Slushy streets below. No car can take this climb, so I run up the tilted face of the mountain. Arrive in time to kiss my father and three friends, who are arranged around him in triangular formation. Triangle: sacred symbol of the all-seeing eye, of alchemy, angels and anarchy. There’s a buzz here too, another gathering, but Dream tells me I need to get back to my kids who wait for me to take them to school. As if I’d been there before, I sense the hill isn’t the way back down. Zig-zag through side streets that unfold like a pop-up book into a toy-like town. Stores fling open glass doors displaying candly-like distractions: aromatic packages of coffee, bright sheer scarves that float on shelves like gossamer. Mid-dream, the phone rings in the dark room, urgently, dream flickers, recedes.
Dream Redux: light scatters and blurs. I am lying on a wood floor, dreaming a question about my son. Bear appears immediately upon inquiry, nodding his shaggy head yes, yes he’s sure, yes I am welcome. Somewhere in Dream I know it’s winter and Bear should be hibernating, but I have summoned him and he has come. Spirit guide of my son, he is Andarta and Artio, fierce defender of art, blender of intuition with instinct. Symbol of truth. autonomy. We have raised my son fiercely. Encouraged him to find his own way, then flinched when he faltered. “You cannot know what is true unless you know what isn’t true.” Bear tells me this with a human voice just before I wake to see the snow flowering everything to white


-lori landau

*if you click on the photo you can see her work in all its gorgeous detail.