You wake up suddenly in the middle of the night. Your heart is pounding. Something wonderful or horrible has just happened in a dream and it seemed so real. But it's fading. You have flashes, a couple images, but you can't quite remember how they fit together or what the dream was about.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a poem about or related to that barely remembered middle of the night screamer of a dream!
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a poem about or related to that barely remembered middle of the night screamer of a dream!
Unremembered Dream (cinquain)
ReplyDeleteVagueness
Yet fear fills me
Quatrain from hell transcends
I tremble from forgotten words
Nerves quake
For a short poem, it gave me goosebumps!!! Very good Bonnie. I enjoyed your cinquain very much.
DeleteThis says so much in so few words. You leave space for the reader to conjure up terrifying images on their own, which gives this piece a not so subtle horror effect like an old school horror film.
DeleteLove it, but wish you would have written it as a quatrain. LOL.
DeleteVery compact! Love the line "Quatrain from hell transcends"
DeleteLove your opening two lines in this! "Vagueness" and "Yet fear fills me". I'm certain we have all experienced this many times. For a short piece you were able to say a lot that makes me wonder what it was that filled your nighttime fueled subconscious mind with such things that it would bury them from your memory but that lingering fear.
DeleteI sat up thinking that her arms
ReplyDeletewere wrapped around my throat
her upper body came in the mail
"Do not feed", someone wrote
and put it on her chest
suddenly it changed to just her hands
I gasped, sitting with the box in mom's house
"You shouldn't have fed it" came reprimands.
The dream was so confusing
I remember that I said,
"Why would gramma leave me just her hands"
"What happened to the rest of her, what happened to her head"
That when it happened!
I woke up in a sweat!
I thought her arms were wrapped around my throat
I really couldn't breathe, I gasped for air
"Do not feed", someone wrote...
very strange dream and frightening! I could see the images and they were scary. wonder what happened that you should have such a dream about our gentle grandma.
DeleteWow. Leaves me wondering if you are having dreams inside dreams. It actually made me feel my breath shorten. Awesome write.
DeleteIt's so amazing in dreams when something you are looking at changes into something else while you are watching it!
Delete"I thought her arms were wrapped around my throat" this is a very powerful repetitious line. I must say you made an excellent choice there. You are able to throw the reader into your nightmare and thus make them experience the raw fears you, yourself did. Fantastic write!
DeleteWaking up fast
ReplyDeleteI don't remember how I got there
or why I was flying a plane over a road
a big plane, an airliner kind of plane
.
and I was just noticing how low to the ground we were
Noticing the telephone polls below, cars busy on the road,
treetops brushing the plane's belly, a hillside in the distance.
.
I was thinking why is the plane flying so low,
moving so blindingly fast, and why am I the pilot?
And someone was screaming at me
.
Pull up Mar Pull up now!!! as the ground got closer.
I woke up right then shaking. Not sure why I was flying
or where I was going, or who left me in charge,
.
if I had changed course or crashed in the ether of the dream.
But it was time to get up time to pull up out of bed
and into the new day. So I did.
Wow!!! How exciting!! What a night of anxiety and tension! That is one fascinating dream. I have flying dreams but never in an airplane! Great poem, Mar!
DeleteAn interesting variation on the "falling" dream. And yeah, my first thought wuld have been "Why the hell did they put ME in charge?" LOL. And yup, it could have just been telling you to get up.
DeleteWell maybe the plane was flying so low because the pilot had a split personality episode and was lost for a minute...lol. Just kidding. It would seem that many times our minds conjure up images and situations like this as a way to tell us things that could be going wrong or on a crash course in our lives. The fact that you were able to just get out of bed after a night like this and get back to the business of living says a lot about your own personal strength.
DeleteI wonder what that dream was trying to tell you? that you felt something in your life was out of control? a premonition of things to come? dreams like that stick with me for awhile. I once heard if you die in your dream you will die in your sleep which is why our brains shift into gear and wake us before that can happen.
ReplyDelete(NOTE: For anyone not familiar with a cleave poem: read the left column, read the right column, then read across the columns.)
ReplyDeleteDREAM SPARK
a cleave poem
_____ echoes of a scream - I flip, flop
_____ under cover moves - breaths taken
___________ lives taken - remnants of a dream
something rushes headlong - I wake, curl against
_____ toward the curve of - Karl’s back
_____________ infinity - drifting back to sleep
First let me say how impressed I am you can do this form! I have tried and tried and it is most difficult!
Deletethe poem itself leaves the reader chilled and uneasy with the knowledge something unnerving happened to wake you to seek comfort before you drift back to sleep exceptional write!
Fantastic form! I'll have to give it a try. You did a good job and created a very eery tale! A lot of imagery here...I could see you curling against Karl's back! Good job, Victoria
DeleteLove the two dimensions, the dream and the sleeper Nice cleave!
DeleteWhat Was It
ReplyDeleteIf I remembered my dreams
I could write a poem
about one I didn't remember.
Wait! Am I making sense?
what if I remembered
what I didn't remember
or made it up? Could I?
Can a memory be invented?
Of course, but a dream?
(sigh) gnashing my teeth
I reach for that elusive
conclusive, bit of
what was it I had for a
moment there, and lost,
as the dream I didn't remember
slipped into the river Lethe,
lost forever or else forgotten.
awesome write! and that is how you write about something you don't remember and make it make sense and interesting. that willow wisp that just escapes your minds grasp... i love the 'elusive conclusive, bit of what I had for amoment...'. Sums it up beautifully!
DeleteTasha! You did a great job with the theme! and I loved the inner rhyme and the line "slipped into the river Lethe,"...Great poem!
DeleteMany thanks for your nice comments. I truly thank you both for these nice observations. I feel humble and happy!
ReplyDeleteYou are quite welcome, Tasha. We enjoy your poetry very much. But, we would also enjoy some feedback from you on our poetry. It would help up improve our poetry and also give us warm fuzzies. Thanks, Linda
DeleteFaceless
ReplyDeleteFuzzy Visage
On the edge of consciousness
Who are you?
I have had that dream!!! It's very vague and thoughtfilled. I usually think about it all day. Great little poem. Says a lot in a few words!
Deletewhoa! powerful write! a lot said and felt!
DeleteNights with Mom
ReplyDeleteFifteen years dead, my mother
still drives me nuts. She did it again
just last week.
All day I puzzled over what to cook
for a party. Something special seemed
in order, a bit fancy yet acceptable
to the non-dairy, non-gluten crowd
as well as the vegetarians.
In the middle of the night she showed up,
my mother, cookbook in hand. Here,
right here on page…and just like that,
she was gone. I didn’t even see which
cookbook she was holding.
Once I lost my cell phone, spent hours
searching to no avail. I had fallen asleep
when Mom came to tell me where it was.
I was sleeping so soundly I wasn’t sure
that she said, asked her to repeat. Too late.
She was already gone.
Some nights she just drops by for a chat.
We engage in pleasant conversation, I
know we do, yet next morning I cannot
remember a word we said. The more I
try to remember, the less certain I become
that she was ever here at all.
It’s nice to know Mom still remembers me
from wherever she is now, but sometimes
I think she’s as frustrating now as she seemed
when I was in my teens.
©Priscilla Anne Tennant Herrington
I kinda like this one. It tells a nice story about talking to the dead. I talk to my daughter in dreams and I can never remember what we talked about. So I know the feeling. I just wonder, did you find your cell phone??? lol Great poem...
Deletelmbo! love that last verse... yeah my mom rearranged my furniture in one of my dreams... mothers!!!!
Delete