Recyclopoeticon

He had trouble living up to
his expectation of himself;
when inspiration died he dug out his older poems
presenting them anew,
turning from writer to critic.
When he looked in the mirror, he saw someone
else.

I'm becoming my father
he said with a jolt, staring at
his tired face and thinning hair and sloping shoulders ...
that bitter mouth, that hallow gaze

He stooped to stealing,
first a word, then a line, lose the quotes

I still love you, said his wife
though he didn't know which you she meant:
the you he was and can't locate?
the you he became, this loathsome hack
of words in baskets heaped and scattered
waiting for the churn ...?

I dreamt of being on a bus
full of children going to
Buffalo
It made no sense, nor did the words
that made their way to paper when the
daylight came; not far behind

a writer, chased by his own ghosts;
he seemed so real.
He whispered in my head and said
I've a message for you--
write this word down:  "Recyclopoeticon"
I'm leaving now, late for my ride

and thus I woke, forgot the rhythm;
jumbled words 'mid vapory images,
message lost.  Except ...
he did say he was a con
(or was it his father, disappointed?)
He climbs back in the basket at my feet
(in which I keep my socks)
sifting words, mumbling:
No, no, that's not what I meant to say at all, at all.  Go
back to sleep (except I can't)
and am left with this leftover character
from a dream, interrupted
by morning's
kiss of light

~ ~ awyn

_________________________

I wonder if anyone else has this experience--just before waking up come lines of a poem or story flowing effortlessly forth, yet when you're fully conscious trying to remember them, all that comes out is ... jibberish.  There ought to be a mental waystation between the sliding from Unconsciousness into Awareness where you can halt the doors, so to speak, to make sure you haven't left something important behind.

As it is, one arrives with paltry fragments, and the sense of having lost significant connectors, now irretrievable.  But it was magnificent! you try to explain.  Of course, no one believes you, because ... look at the high weirdness that emerges when you put pen to paper and try to recall.  It's now an empty room with all the air sucked out of it.

Sleep is the germinator, wakefulness the sifter.  Thinking that what you bring out even remotely resembles  what went on "inside", in all its imagined glory, is mind's greatest con. 

A poet recycling, what cannot be deciphered.  A fictional character who emerges to explain his unevolved counterpart in Dreamville.  Not at all convincing.

Recyclopoeticon!

 

*artsketches by awyn