I'm Not Real

Among the cheerful flavored swirls 

of paperback books and unbound worlds

I find the sound that is my own 

and it’s unveiled through magic song 

of pen and ink and whim of mind 

that does not leave the dream behind.

Here in the recesses curving along

is the Imagi Nation where I belong.

I’m not real, though one would think

I was if they should pause to blink, 

but really I’m not because all that is here 

is the air of my thoughts and the ash of a fear 

that got left behind before the world came to be 

and so long ago before there was me. 

I’m not real, this hardened shape 

but rather illusion that yearns to wake 

in a world where flowers dance in the seas 

and all the fishes dance on the trees, 

where all is what it wants to be 

and nothing is hidden, not even me. 

I’m not real but a flowering soul 

asleep in the dirt with the worms and the mole 

or the tiny roly poly so precious unfurled 

but easily takes to his shell where he curls 

in on himself in utter delight 

that we mistake for his fright 

for he loves his flexible hinged body 

where none other can fold in such entirety.

I’m not real for I live in the soil

that claims all the dust and bones of the world;

here we are snug in our beds and our hearts 

united with particles, beams and parts 

dismembered and remembered and slung on the backs 

of the breezes that soar to a galaxy’s starry tracks.

I’m not real because I’m not this body, 

but isn’t it pretty and ugly and naughty? 

This body is all of the mind driven roles 

and houses a flowering, blossoming soul 

that is always here yet sometime gets buried 

in a world full of quivering faces all worried 

they can’t get it done or finished or started 

and yet I’m not real so I’m never downhearted.

What if we visited ourselves in a zoo 

where we’re all pasted together with glittery glue 

and then we could see how the shapes are unique 

yet fall all to pieces whenever we speak 

of a falsity buried in minds all confused, 

who think we are real and yet so abused 

by our own delusions we can’t stop to flower 

unseated by blinders of glory and power.

I’m not real, I’m a smile on the wind, 

a flicker, a firefly, a reed that will bend 

in watery rushes yet rooted in ash 

that is sand and the gritty bones of the past.

__________

I feel in my heart that the nonsense is setting a part of me free, maybe just a little cell sitting in an organ or riding the red jet stream through my body. Maybe that one fancy cell of nonsense is reborn into health and innocence by the free flowing thought forms, the random experience of writing without restriction; just word association--or absence of connection--it doesn’t really matter. This is me at play!