In her dream,
She was drinking latte in an unknown country,
when the man approached her,

my wife hates you, he said,
you have to pay extra for the coffee.
She had to go,
for fear of the jealousy in his wife's eyes,
because of everything she had.

She has always been privileged,
The princess of a rich kingdom.
The precious one in the family.

Occasionally she heard bad news,
about women in other countries,
but surely, she thought,
they were too violent to be true.

Then she's walking down the street,
newly paved, the king's pride
a group of girls and middle-aged men
gathered in the town square.

A girl's arm reached out from the car window,
She took it, their fingers briefly unite,
before the girl's head was split by a knife.

The streets were saturated with red things,
The girls were murdered one by one,
while she watched, helpless.

Then she felt a hand tightening behind
the back of her head,
In her dream, she became one of the girls,
She's no different from them.

Always at that point, she woke up.
What's wrong, he asked, you were paralyzed with fear.
I had the most lucid and helpless dream, she'd reply.

But surely it must be a dream,
It's too violent to be true
or is it she's sleeping now,
oblivious to anything?

I used to keep a bell jar
full of old fine fishing line
arrowheads, gold coins
and stuff not easy to find

like cherry cured shine from
my mountains of Tennessee

buried in a lunch bucket
twelve paces from the coop
waiting for the moon
who took his own sweet time

slower than a long night
listening to the same hoot
of the same old hoot owl
in the same old dying tree

knowing it was the end
of my days on the Creek
me, I could see it coming
like a dead star's light

from so long ago
I couldn’t possibly know
which old road I’d follow

so holler at me my
friends, my loves
from time to time
wherever you be

whenever your heart strings
are feeling a need
to tell this spirit of mine
your sorrows, your joys
or wishes for
better tomorrows

and I will from somewhere
be there with open arms
and ears and a heart

sewn tight with that jar
of invisible string
that binds our lives together
forever and longer than that
light from a dead star still
burning on shining so bright.

She sits rather still, stitching her loom
shackled and bound to the whispering room
While the walls shutter speeches
she slouches then reaches,
her stitching resumed.

Threads of silk pool in spools
cast to the floor
Hushing the voices
as they pour

the voices repeat their crippling phrase
dancing the space
bound to their maze

We dance in the ashes like
Literary scavengers.
In the ruins and after rages
We draw the shreds of words and pages
Around our naked bodies like Blankets,
A quilt of the quintessential struggle
Which all people suffer