The Other Eye: A Dreampoem

Posted on December 9, 2013December 10, 2013 by rita kowats

Sunday December 8, 2013

What seemed silly upon awakening has become an awakening:

There is an eye in my left leg, below the knee. It bulges out, making walking difficult. I know it is an eye, because it feels like the one they removed from my right leg last year. It keeps vigil from the top of my dresser in the bedroom. I feel both anxious and eager as I await the extraction. I walk into the pure white lab and climb onto a table. Technicians sedate me and when I come out of it they hand me the eye, which is entirely unlike the eye on the dresser in the bedroom. That eye is just an ordinary eye, while the extraordinary nature of this eye dazzles and delights. It is the Eye of Horus, resplendent in violet and lapis and gold. I leave the lab carrying the eye in my outstretched hand.

The Other Eye

We get by with
The faithful ordinary eye…
Let that sleeping dog lie!
Why risk exposing
The Other Eye?

Fear
Sheathes the sacred eye in a
Safe shroud, away from
Mocking taunts and response-ability,
Deaf to neighbors’ silent pleas to
Restore second-sight
To their first eyes.

Grace intervenes, and
The Other Eye becomes
Too overwhelming to contain.
Integrity replaces fear.
We carry the gift in our
Extended hands,
Inviting. Challenging.

Walk on the Wild Side Salon: Dreampoem

Posted on November 25, 2013December 18, 2013 by rita kowats

http://img1.123freevectors.com/

Wee Hours of the Morning 11/24/13
Dream

As the Spirit “drove Jesus into the desert,” so was I driven to the Walk-on-the-Wild-Side Salon, all a jumble with trepidation and exhilaration. It was time for something eclectic and edgy. I sit in my chair and wait until my stylist arrives: tall, slender to the extreme, head a vision to behold. Half of his hair is layered into sculpted spikes, splattered carefully with hues of chartreuse, pink, and purple. My heart hammers to the rhythm of, “Mayday! Mayday!”

“So, what’s shakin’?” asks Zeus? I describe my desired cut. “O.K.,” he says, “But are you prepared to walk on the wild side? You have to do exactly what I say.” “Yes. I’m ready,” I assure myself, more than Zeus. “First,” he begins, “You have to get loose.” With that, he slams his hip into my hip, shaking my shins and rattling my teeth. “Hey!” I shout. “You said you were ready. Now get loose, girl!” Zeus retorts, and he hits me on the other hip.

At last, all loosey goosey, and raring for a revamp, we get started. Zeus is an artist in the studio of his dreams- or is that in the studio of my dream? He designs sans mirror, I suppose to keep me loosey goosey. Finis! Zeus brings out the mirror. There before me sits Lisbeth Salander, the Girl with the Dragon Tatoo. OMG.

I awake with a guffaw that evokes a startled meow from my cat. “Where have YOU just been?” she demands. By the time this dream hit paper, a picture of Lizbeth Salander is hung on my bathroom mirror.

Poem

I stroll the promenade of my dreamscape,
Inebriated with the freedom
Of the Unconscious,
In search of a new DO, RE-DO. FOO-FOO,
In lieu of life-as-I-know-it.

Wild Spirit calls “Can you do the loosey goosey spirit walk with me?
It goes like this:

You put your right hip in
You put your right hip out,
You put your right hip in
And you shake it all about.
You do the hokey-pokey
And you turn yourself around,
That’s what it’s all about!”

“What will it cost me, ” I ask.
“Nothing. Everything.
But you have to be All loosey goosey.”
“I’m in.”

ADDENDUM: December 18, 2013

You will have to walk on the wild side to believe this. I got my hair cut today by a new student, a delightful young man. We had such a good time that I decided to tell him this dream. After the telling he revealed that his surname is DeWilde. Honestly. As in untamed, wild, uncivilized. We agreed that he should someday open his own salon, the Walk on DeWilde Side Salon. No, I don’t look like the Girl with the Dragon Tatoo!

I sit here in awe of the synchronicities of life that teach us so much.

Immortality: A Dream/Poem

Posted on October 30, 2013October 31, 2013 by rita kowats

“BlackWhiteSpiral” by Kurt
(Used with permission: sumo.fm)

Dream

I sit on the plaza steps overlooking the beach, taking it all in. wind-whipped waves create high drama, luring visitors to the edge for a closer look. Teenagers hang out in high spirits as they stake out a place on the steps in anticipation of the evening’s rock concert. Dogs cavort and children chase kites. Three young men wander behind the plaza, to the vault created by the steps. Three alert crows follow them and vigil outside. Soon, a man enters the vault, carrying a large piece of driftwood like a battering ram. His sinister demeanor does not bode well for the boys. I follow. Upon entering, the scene immediately accosts my senses. The man has brutally battered the three teens. Their bodies instantly disintegrate, leaving only three drops of blood on the floor. The man knocks me flat as he flees from the vault. The three crows fly in and surround the blood drops. Each crow takes one drop in its beak and flies out. I run out into the plaza, desperate to see where they take the blood. They land on the opposite side of the plaza, and drop the blood on the floor before an old Buddhist nun who sits in meditation. She stretches her arms in a wide arch around the blood and blows on it. The spray from her breath shapes the first arch of the spiral, then the next, and the next, until new life has a new path. Unable to sustain the mesmerizing effect of the process for long, I wake up, reaching for breath.

Poem

Immortality

These interrupted lives will not see the
Thirtieth chamber this time around.
They have morphed into mere mortal vestiges,
Immortality a dim dream,
Until…
Shelled lives reshell,
And Yin becomes Yang.

The winged clairvoyants carry the remnants
To rest and wait in the
Genes of their souls, until buoyed on the
Breath of Expectation,
They rise
Again.

Creative Process

This is a dream I had a few years ago. I remembered it when I saw the art work of the nautilus shell. At the time of the dream, that image was strong and insistent. It took a couple of days to let it meander around my unconscious. As I entered the hypnagogic state I consciously re-entered the dream. It took me to the same place with only a few fresh nuances. The theme of immortality came in a meditation on the art work. That bright light at the core of the shell conceived the poem.

The Land of Nod and The Feast

Posted on October 16, 2013 by rita kowats

Recently, a fellow dreamer, Kayla, (www.dreamerly.com) posted this dream:

“Last night my dreams took me to the strangest places – to a little neighborhood of modern buildings nestled among the familiar imagery of my hometown. On our way to our destination, my companion in the dream and I passed a light blue modern structure, a restaurant called “The Almond.” (I think that name is delightful and if I were to start a restaurant, I would surely name it just that!) Our destination in the dream was the house of a woman who served dinner from her home. It was a Sunday, and we were uncertain if she would be serving dinner that night. She was. When we were seated, we were the only ones there, but soon more people came and more and more, so that the room was completely full. A strange feast of the oddest foods was served. It was a marvelous dream, one that evokes memories of Babette’s Feast and that has had me moving through my day with an inward eye and a strange state of mind.”

With Kayla’s nod, I made an attempt to enter her dream and create a poem:

The Feast

Thirty-Seventh Ave. S.W.
Basks in the glow of yesteryear,
Yester joy, and the abandonment of youth.
Its aura creates an illusion of “All is well,”
When it isn’t….But THIS part is well:
Re-enacting every movie we saw,
I at the top of one vacant lot, a virtual Carol Burnet, singing at the top of my lungs,
“I’m calling you, ooo, ooo, ooo,”
Melania Wozniak echoing from the opposite vacant lot,
“I’m answering you, ooo, ooo, ooo.”
A “gemutlich” time, a hospitable hiatus
From a sometimes inhospitable home.
Out on Thirty-Seventh Ave. S.W.
I didn’t have to fit in where I didn’t fit.
Here, the wild, tomboy-seer
Fit.

The neighborhood of my youth
Tenders a gift:
“Return to my table and re-member the memories.”
I return.
New table.
Renovated restaurant.
And in the breaking of the bread
I see.

Deo Gratias

The Golden Kiss: A DreamPoem

Posted on September 19, 2013September 19, 2013 by rita kowats

I descend cracked concrete stairs into a tunnel that winds under the streets of NYC. I have some fear. It is very dark and feels hollow. I hear subtle rattling in the distance, the sound pinging off the damp walls, calling to me? With every step comes a commitment to the journey and curiosity about the destination. The longer I walk the louder the rattling. Light ahead. Closer…to what? Silence. I gingerly walk through an aperture and am greeted by several skeletons. Each one has a gold kiss on its cheekbone. Light from a crack in the tunnel’s ceiling wraps them in warmth. I feel embraced, welcomed, as if they have been waiting for me for a long time. I know I am home. There are so many questions: Who are they? Why are they here? Why have they waited for me? Who left the kiss on their cheeks? Before I can ask, one skeleton steps forward and offers me a loaf of bread, saying, “For the journey back up.” I don’t want to leave, but waking life intervenes and I “feel it in my bones” that the tunnel has brought me to the mountain top.

Bare Bones Truth filters into the soul
Between the tendons of our lives,
And like a hungry dog, doesn’t let go
Until it has done its work.

It gnaws down,
Pulls up,
Seals us with its golden kiss,
And heaves us back into the thick of life,
Stark but strong.