Years ago, and sometimes still, I recorded my dreams in a little spiral notebook kept near the bed. The first page of the book contains, written badly using a calligraphy pen (of course), the first part of Row, Row, Row, your boat, which I must’ve thought quite clever. Most of the entries are the usual dream stuff - monsters, sex, flying, falling, biting - you know. One entry however takes the form of a poem. I don’t remember writing it, but I do remember reading it the following morning and thinking I was somehow not entirely sound. It goes like this…
> It never had occured to me
> The way it has to be
> is never never only what it should be
>
> Some this some that some other
> kid forgets his mother
> then take the wasted lives of one another
>
> It never seemed I never saw
> true light shine out and on and all
> the things that come up/down before the fall
>
> The growth the life before the rise
> But once I looked into those eyes
> Not knowing what could crawl out of the skies
>
> Peaks first then ebbs it shrinks and grows
> Aroma smelled not with the nose
> A thorn has fallen from life’s withered rose
>
> Once dust once ash a Phoenix came
> from out of pointed angry blame
> And nothing else has ever done the same
>
> Over up and once thought dead
> A voice that rang in angels’ heads
> Now sings a song of loneliness instead
>
> Not gone not here not anywhere
> A madnes permeates the air
> Strips all and one and thing completely bare
>
> And spoken with a raspy breath
> While looking down upon the earth
> “All the meek inherit now is death.”
Whatever that means.
Oh, and I’ve put up a bunch of other fascinating poetry by yours truly at [http://jackbaty.com/poems/](http://jackbaty.com/poems/) for your amusement.
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