Amazing #sunset tonight. Pink sky tonight makes for tomorrow morning runner's delight. #mankatomarathon2016 #nofilter #iphone7
(Image by gitsul.) Details DMCA
Somebody poked a hole in my dream and found me
They didn't even have a wand
They were just trying to get out of the big dream
Of the f__ked-up world
And blundered into mine
With their war-like mentality
Their hamburger breath
And their angry hurt red eyes of blame and fear and hate
And I tried to be OK with it
My dream is big enough I thought but I had to close the hole
But the newcomer needed things right away
Pills and all kinds of devices and reassurances
So I said Go sit over there
I could already see a bunch of mean faces looking in
And I turned to find
That enormous dark clouds of soot
Were already discoloring the luminous pink clouds
Of my dream but a rainbow was forming over Ukraine
And I realized it was two late
My dream for a better world was out
..............
Here is what I see is going on in the poem:
The dream that is being infiltrated -- call it the poet's dream -- is not simply about pink clouds and rainbows.
The "somebody" who pokes a hole in (my) dream is described as angry, hurt, fearful and hateful and judgmental. In other words they aren't two dimensional like "just" angry or "just" fearful or just war-like. But they are miserable and desperately hunting for a world that makes better sense to them and the poem says they blunder into my dream, the poet's dream.
The poet says that he "tried to be OK with that" because his dream is "big enough", like Alice's wonderland just for example, to hold some pain and dysfunction. What he is really saying is that someone with a healthy imagination is more resilient! Not necessarily hiding behind a happy face or a rainbow, but he (or she) is at least not stuck in the "big dream of the f-ked up world". The poet's dream can accommodate one refugee from the broken dream of the f-ked up world, but not an onslaught! In other words the poet's reality is being compromised. That is a serious problem for any writer.
This is a metaphor for how a creative person tries to keep writing poetry or whatever they do (art, sculpture) while horrible things happen in the world at large, like the burning of the boreal forests and the burning of Maui and the beaching of those 100 whales in Australia.
The poem ends with the irony that, even though the poet's reality (which in truth is sustained by his dreams or dreaming, i.e, his vision) has been compromised, something hopeful has leaked out of that hole into the larger world - namely the rainbow over Ukraine, which symbolizes the poet's dream of peace for Ukraine, which takes vision because it all seems so dark and hopeless over there. If everyone, even poets and visionaries, stopped envisioning that peace is possible we would truly be up sh*t creek without a paddle,
Between the lines, the poem is saying that the power of imagination and the "largeness" of a healthy imagination is a source of hope for those whose visions of the future, a resilient, sustainable future, have completely dried up.
(Article changed on Aug 13, 2023 at 12:06 PM EDT)
(Article changed on Aug 13, 2023 at 12:09 PM EDT)
