A Poem Is Born.

I dream sentences. Sometimes they’re songs. Sometimes they’re poems or parts of weird little stories, same difference. I was woken up at 6:35am by a couple sentences, which hurt, but I forced myself to reach for my phone and write them down.

It felt good all day.

Licking yourself in the grass.

I know technically it’s one sentence but in my dream it was two and I respect dream sentence structure, unless people use it during the day- all day.

But after that I couldn’t go back to bed. I tried but I couldn’t because I was too bothered by what came before them, because I knew they were the last two sentences. Not just because they were the last sentences I remembered. Sometimes I dream the first sentences and sometimes they turn out to come in around the middle.

I had clues. When I woke up with them I saw Harley lying on my comforter, on top of me, licking his paws. So I knew they were sentences about Harley or some little animal. I knew it was a story about peacefully licking oneself (possibly erotically, animals don’t distinguish) then being interrupted by something monumental and terrible. The monumental terrible could have taken place anywhere and time that little animals lick themselves, but this is the place and time that poured out first:

Some alarm is sounded

Perhaps the bells in Pompeii,

which rang too late

and were soon choked up 

in ash.

Did anyone kick 

the little dog or cat?

Unintentionally,

but just to get through the doorway?

From the tiled room?

Or the sand carved hovel?

I hope they didn’t.

Don’t worry baby, 

we won’t make you get up

out of the way for us.

It felt good all day

licking yourself in the grass.