Hughes’s dream deferred
might dry up in the sun
like a raisin
or maybe harden
like chewing gum
on subway pavement
where I was stumbling last night
in three-fifty thread count
late and unprepared
for a test I might have taken
forty years ago
panicked over math problems
taught in classes
I never attended.
Dreamless vanilla sleepers
cow-jumped-over-the-moon
corn syrup poets
Little Bo Peep thimble
collectors eating Applebee’s
pies don’t get the gritty
news showing up
in their ham and coffee
won’t feel the cold
squeeze of diabetes till
late towards dawn
when a leg comes off.
Even Galway forgets
dreamless sleep is Sappho’s death.
Oh please, wrap me in the moving
car without brakes
throw the loudspeaker to kids in the road
when I can’t hear
my own screams
send me down
though I’m expected
on the fortieth floor.
See me forced to scale cliffs
panic-leap the bottomless gorge
cling by fingers to crumbling rock
just below the edge.
Then watch me mind-pull myself to pasture
crawl bare in bluegrass
stir to lidded dawn.
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