that.

if memories are things, like dreams,
and if dreams are intangible things...
it's unimaginable
as well as unnatural
to treat dreams as ordinary scenes.

for these scenes, that are in fact real things
at night-

Reign Supreme.

...after a night of lucid dreaming I stumbled upon this in a reading for class, and of course, I had to store it in my memory bank of quotations (aka my blog)...

"Dreams are not something outside of the course of events; they are in and of it. They are not cognitive distortions of real things, they are more real things."

~ John Dewey

Born like this
Into this
As the chalk faces smile
As Mrs. Death laughs
As the elevators break
As political landscapes dissolve
As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree
As the oily fish spit out their oily prey
As the sun is masked
We areBorn like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it's cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it's cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes
Born into this
Walking and living through this
Dying because of this
Muted because of this
Castrated
Debauched
Disinherited
Because of this
Fooled by this
Used by this
Pissed on by this
Made crazy and sick by this
Made violent
Made inhuman
By this
The heart is blackened
The fingers reach for the throat
The gun
The knife
The bomb
The fingers reach toward an unresponsive god
The fingers reach for the bottle
The pill
The powder
We are born into this sorrowful deadliness
We are born into a government 60 years in debt
That soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt
And the banks will burn
Money will be useless
There will be open and unpunished murder in the streets
It will be guns and roving mobs
Land will be useless
Food will become a diminishing return
Nuclear power will be taken over by the many
Explosions will continually shake the earth
Radiated robot men will stalk each other
The rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms
Dante's Inferno will be made to look like a children's playground
The sun will not be seen and it will always be night
Trees will die
All vegetation will die
Radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men
The sea will be poisoned
The lakes and rivers will vanish
Rain will be the new gold
The rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind
The last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases
And the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition
The petering out of supplies
The natural effect of general decay
And there will be the most beautiful silence never heard
Born out of that.
The sun still hidden there
Awaiting the next chapter.

~ Bukowski

I'm not a poet.

the man
the man deceived.

in all he’s perceived
in all that he’s achieved.

swallowed, consumed
sorrow resumed.

the man’s failed
the man has been derailed

from life
from love
from strife; all the above.

but there’s no doubt
but there can be nothing without

the man
the man deceived.

because
for all he’s “achieved”
that he is still me.

Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.

~ James Russel Lowell