nightmare – poems 2 die for

OVERLOOKED

I awake
fresh from nightmare

lost my way in a city
of memory spiralling upwards
into the mountains
totally transformed beyomd
all that I
can remember
wanting
to get home
needing to get home

but no sense of direction
as with every step
I climb higher
and higher
passing a giant cathedral
like structure, itself
like a mountain with
a trio of spires as
its peaks, its pinnacles

all the wonder
I should feel submerged
by the fear

and no way of phoning you
because I am
out of reception, do
not have
your number
so far for you
to drive
in the night to
collect me

your death three years ealier
somehow dream- forgotten
crucially overlooked

TANTAMOUNT

I stumble
into the temple
past
the guards
and moneylenders
who appear
not to notice

my, how fruitful and prosperous
— a billion, trillion times fold

since
the time of Jesus

and there
in the inner sanctum
I behold a trinity
Pennywise, Baron
Harkonnen
and the hydra-
headed great
of Merkava

brooding on something
hatching their joint scheme

lucky, in fact,
our blessed fortune,
that all this
amounts to
all this
be tantamount to
is a
meaningless dream.

FALTERED

his fingers faltered
that one
writing the script

and so best sibling
stepped into
replace him

but that one
not
weaned
the same

was of outlook
whole different genre

and so the dream
disappeared, we
became awake

congratulated ourselves
on
the end
of the fiction, red
pill reality

but it was
embedded level
of dream
and
move into nightmare