Sunday, April 01, 2012

CCLXXXVIII - Nightmare I - In your dreams.


dVerse had the prompt 'Nightmare'.
I had two takes on it.  This is the first:

A quick Google found that these are the common nightmares:
Being Chased (but not chaste?), Drowning, Being Trapped, Partner Leaving Them,
Being Injured, Teeth Falling Out, Being Naked in Public, Missing a Plane or Train,
Contacted By the Dead, Natural Disasters.


Nightmare I - In Your Dreams.

As our heads make a pillow impression,
The squatters take up vacant possession.
Goblins, distilled from our deepest fears,
Take control of our internal gears.

With banshee howls, wide-eyed folk are chased
Endlessly, pointlessly and with relentless haste,
While hearing the ghostly spite of Uncle Fred,
Made all the worse, as he’s not yet dead.

Earthquakes, floods and New Year sales
Add tribulations to their tormented tales.
And just when they think there can be no more pain.
They are lost and naked and have missed their train.

Then their partner, clothed and teeth all there,
Has upped and  gone, to who knows where,
In search, they swim into an unflagged zone
And drown;  injured, toothless and alone.

I, too, have a nightmare, horrible and distressing
I’ll tell you rather than leave you guessing:

It is that a motley herd of wide-eyed, terror filled, unclothed, toothless,
entrapped and yet awkwardly mobile, largely unwanted, unwell,
hallucinating people with the watery stare of long drowned sailors
who caught the next ship and didn’t live to regret it, pursued relentlessly
by the nameless abominations of the Apocalypse, the Taxation Office,
the Collingwood Football Club and a tumbling tsunami of
all my lost ball-point pens, burst in to my study and spill my wine.

My language would be quite extreme,
Their nightmares, comparably, would be a dream.

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© 2012   J Cosmo Newbery
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9 comments:

  1. sorry this cracked me up a bit...the uncles ghost and not yet dead...new years sales...and that next to last stanza is a rip....loved tis...thanks for ending my night on a humorous note...now to go check my teeth

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  2. Makes me glad that I almost never remember my dreams.

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  3. Same as Brian- this have me a chuckle....that second to last stanza is a riot- spilling and vitriolic- I'm sure that they're nightmares would indeed be incomparable to the language you hint at unleashing!

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  4. What sadness to have the wine spill....especially on a white carpet. That would be a nightmare indeed!

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  5. Written with humour and much talent as usual dear J Cosmo, you made me laugh also.
    xoxoxo ♡

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  6. Cosmo, this had me roaring. The run-on final stanza is brilliant! The ghost of your Uncle Fred, who isn't yet dead... oh, lord, I can't tell you how much I needed a good, irreverent laugh today. THANKS! Amy
    http://sharplittlepencil.com/2012/04/01/reflector-babe-three-prompts-in-one/

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  7. The common nightmares humourously presented. If only they were funny when we are in them>

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  8. Love this! Tis a worry about Uncle Fred...

    Anna :o]

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  9. TigerbriteApril 03, 2012

    Oh excellent. Made me smile. My two nightmares were teeth falling out (a terrible fate for a Tiger) and missing the plane :)

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