[Newspoetry] Re: You are dreaming of a poem

[Donald L Emerick]

Re: Thinking of who happens to me
When "You are dreaming of a poem"
Trying to raise intriguing questions
Of art form intrigues by upraising one.

If poems had directions, would dreaming happen to be so?

Rettberg diversifies some reality rather well in dreaming
Of a fractal implosion waiting as a vast catastrophic maw
That signifies its desire always already to happen to us,
And (more to the point) is always already happening to us,
And (also to the point) has always already happened to us.

Dreaming is what one seems to do, in some remote past
Like late last night or, perhaps, early on this frosty morning.
Dreaming is what one also does, pointing to any future,
As if it could be just out of sight, but heading toward us,
Like some locomotive train on a track, destiny bound,
If we could just see the tracks while not standing in them.
(The damsel in distress tied to the tracks by evil hand
Would be me or you -- appealing virtue, feigning horror.)

Rettberg's poem would lack all direction by indirection.
It shows us a fine way to make a dream come through
The open eyes and impress their waking consensus.
If one of the criteria of what must be true were to be,
"This is presently something that is now here before me",
Then Rettberg shows us true reality lies in all dreamings;
Lies, skeptically, in some dreaming morphing all reality.

Indirection erases its tracks, vacates by negations,
Evacuates by evasions of terminations of meanings.
For instance, phrase structure auxiliaries, ie punctuation,
Vanish, maximally (perhaps), as it could disappear,
Leaving only minimalist elements, inescapable here,
Generic start and genetic stop, and rows of words,
Each having, as well, a first and a last for betweens.
Yet, the roamings of phrase structures over these rows
Offset, even when unavoidably unavoidable, location
That locks into place, of time, resolution by definition.

Somehow, in the midst of all this seeming indirection,
We find that Rettberg still is removing us elsewhen.
We find ourselves against bare naked reality, theming
That what a poem is dreaming is no dreaming, but real.

Let me ask, "Do you prefer to think that you are dreaming
Rather than to let me ask to dream that you are thinking?"
Like impenetrables, the solidity of one essential modality
Seems to require some emptiness of the other's totality.

I was going to mention God, when speaking up above,
But He got away before the words could get out of me.

Thanks for speaking and for listening,
Donald L Emerick