Rising from the murky depths of an
unconscious soul or a conscious id;
whether Freudian, Jungian or surrealian,
"nightmares" is too soft a word to couch the
wounds they bring bubbling up into view.
Popular wisdom has it you can’t die in one,
but oh, the pain, the pain you can suffer;
sense turns to no sense then becomes
nonsense that seems more real than any
fact, and facts discolor and melt meanings.
Rating them would not be for content,
but for implausibility, as details ebb and
flow with each viewing, becoming twisted
with each iteration, blurring identity between
observer and observed; to both see and be.
Sound? - sometimes; smell? - perhaps for
some with strong associations to odor; and,
color? - on occasion, but like strong film noir
shadows and angles have dialog all their own,
at times a confusion of mirrored reflections.
Like a Screaming Starry Night seen past fog,
a conflation of van Gogh and Munch, wherein
details are superfluous and only emotions reign,
unbidden dreams become a playground for the
unsettled spirits still clamoring for resolution.
Rick Hartwell is a retired middle school teacher (remember the hormonally-challenged?) who just moved to northern Illinois from southern California (?) with his wife of fifty years, Sally Ann (upon whom he is emotionally, physically, and spiritually dependent), one grown daughter, and ten cats! Like Blake, Emerson, Thoreau, and Merton, he believes that the instant contains eternity.