GOOD OLD DREAMS
These days I’m busy admiring dreaming.
Turns out I’m one of these athlete-dreamers
producing mind-movies, reading aloud
from a student’s poem in a stadium
where the kids in the grandstand wildly applaud
line after line — I’m so proud of this girl
who wrote the thing, but wake to the fact
that I was the poem’s “onlie begettor”
(who else? It’s me clocks-in for dream time)
no need for revision, the biting of pencil,
self-doubt, come-ON! you can dream whole novels,
(once, with no sweat, an epic poem).
What if some cyber-device could print out
a DVD of such churning dreams?
A night-job! Making a living by sleep!
“Goodnight, Hon,” we’d say, “we writers
must get to work,” and there next day
would ease from the skull a masterpiece
with Amy Adams, costing millions
the Hollywood way but here for free,
plus also the dreamer achieves the sex-scenes,
he’s everyone in the dream, the grips,
the whole Art Department, DP, Best Boy,
and, um, Amy Adams —
O, fierce work of dreaming!
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