by Mason Powell

 

Magic is the poetry I write in my sleep and cannot remember

A thread of words and phrases—incoherent, ambient

Babbling in tongues, caressing the letters we are made of

We talk of Michelangelo as we come and go—forgetful

 

Walking down an uneven lane

Past the squatting houses

Smoke ascends the cold air

Yellow window light falls

Broken by shadows  

 

Perfection is the supposed frantic shape of nature, intricate

She dreamt in black and white and red

Not in the floral paradise you so often see under sleep

Haunted by her grandmother’s dead siblings—fallen twins from the woods

 

Her shadow raps her windowpane

I help thee descend

Barefoot we tread in the snow

Leaving behind no footprints

As dead as the ghosts we run from

 

God is what binds everything together

Filling in the spaces where you claimed there was nothing

You say that dreams are just a taste of death

God evades us as we rouse—extant in our visions

 

She recites Dante and

Clasps my hand tightly

We hide beneath the streets

Watching them float by

From our grate and gutter

 

Music is the language of dreams, which we cannot speak in wake

A resonate realm of lost languages we have bastardized

Yes child, Angels sing but Devils too

Their orchestras battling in symphony while we sleep

 

As the daybreaks

The phantoms dissolve

Vaporously absorbed

We creep back into our bedrooms

Rousing as the sun is cast inside