Dreams Not Written

© 2013 by Joyce Mason
All Rights Reserved

I sleep in night vision goggles

pieces of my psyche

float

glow in the dark

swirl

magnetize

to a center of gravity

form a montage

where my inner story

tells itself.

The stage vaster than the sky:

I see fears

old sorrows

lingering wounds

laid bare.

Sometimes the Mask of Comedy

inserts itself

adds Technicolor

and sit-com

to the Panavision.

I’ve written these stories

for so many years

notebooks full

as many as I can remember

and have time to record.

But busyness often robs me

of the best dreams

both waking and

sleeping.

They go unrecorded.

Yet I know

deep within:

the dreams that still live

in my body and soul

are the most powerful

weaving a script

that will tell the whole story

when I finally
fully awaken.

~.~.~

Photo Credit: © bruniewska – fotolia.com

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Between

Poem © 2013 by Joyce Mason
All Rights Reserved

This dark place

between lives:

I live here too often

mutating

 waiting for the rebirth of

who I am

what I do

how I see myself

hoping I don’t come out

a freak

or worse

don’t come out at all

stuck in lost.

The darkness is a closet

without the dimmest light

not even the long dirty string

of my childhood wardrobe.

Barely a walk-in

it’s cramped to overflowing

with things that no longer

fit me.

Old masks line

the dirty walls

with chipping paint.

My discomfort
with uncertainty

mounts:

 nothing new in sight

no Goodwill Store

with cheap make-do's

to carry me though

my latest transition.

No wonder

I don’t want to come out

of the closet

naked.

From this place of withdrawal

I fight the demon depression

hoping for enough strength

to beat him down.

I channel Jackie Chan

ducking karate chops

to my solar plexus.

I limbo dive

under the pitchfork.

I see depression’s beady red eyes

smell the sulfur.

He offends everything

I stand for.

Talking to myself

my words

stun me.

Maybe there’s nothing

to stand for.

Maybe it’s time

just to sit …

… to sit and contemplate

what I want to do and be

 in the last act

of my life

shelving the shoulds or dreams

I have outgrown

or the closets

full of clothes so out of style

they’re a welcome moment

of comic relief.

Maybe I should sit

and contemplate

the real me

the naked me

and what it would take

to streak down Main Street

wind in my hair

living not in-between

but right in the moment.

~.~.~

Photo Credit: © deviantART – fotolia.com

Don't forget to check out Astro-Poetry month during April on The Radical Virgo! Learn about all the poetry that's going on in the sky.

Chicago

Poem © 2013 by Joyce Mason
All Rights Reserved

 I bear your

longitude

latitude

on the grid of my psyche:

endless Lake

ice cold winters

sultry summers

every childhood impression

on the South Side

of my chakras

when I was growing up,

a dangerous neighborhood.

The Windy City

bore gangsters

good schools

passion-worthy sports teams

a melting pot

bubbling to a boil.

You also bore me

but were never boring.

Still I ran

to a smaller city

then to California

as far as I could get
and still retain

country of citizenship.

I ran from the past:

abandonments

joy and pain intermingled

always ready to drown me

on the Lake of Happiness and Grief.

But when I came back

on Social Security

a homesickness

set in

a cancer

in the pit of my stomach

a gnawing loss

sharp as any I’d ever known

scene of the crime

St. Bernard’s Hospital

cut off from mother

family of origin

since then reconnected

now one more reunion

I had to embrace

lost birthplace

found again

dis-ease cured
home

at last.

~.~.~

Photo Credit: An oil painting of the Chicago skyline my husband purchased circa 1971 by artist J. Scheuber.

Note: Posted in celebration of the 27th anniversary of finding my birth mother  on April 14, 1986.

Don't forget to check out Astro-Poetry month during April on The Radical Virgo! Learn about all the poetry that's going on in the sky.

Centered

Poem © 2013 by Joyce Mason
All Rights Reserved

Weight balanced

through my core

anchored to the Earth

I sit tall

 and solid 

still as a redwood

in a cemetery

fine-tuned to

the most subtle nuances

of every noise and sensation

all around me.

A stranger to this place

at the same time

so familiar

a touchstone of bedrock

inside me

where sights and sounds

breeze by my senses

in slow motion

a place where observer mode

is the rule

and any kind of upset

is someone else’s:

the exception.

Like the early stages

of falling in love

the honeymoon

is over too soon

but I plan to do

everything I can

to keep my romance

with rootedness

alive

until the final uprooting

where Earth yields to Air

and I wrap myself

in the ultimate

Cloak of Invisibility.

~.~.~

Photo Credit: Girl and the Moon © Sassolinoviola - dreamstime.com

 Don't forget to check out Astro-Poetry month during April on The Radical Virgo! Learn about all the poetry that's going on in the sky.