Dream City

Living within the riotous realm of flesh
we forget duties owed to gravity,
until we stumble and fall to soft earth,
or sharp flinty ground, unexpectedly.

Even within our own teeming city,
our rule is slight, where breath and beating heart,
autonomous and true, make us forget
that their feigned allegiance is fleeting too.

Each motion of limbs seems to follow will,
another name for doing what seems right,
in seeking to satisfy appetite
and dark desiring of the inner ghost.

All our senses tell us in unison:
'this is real, this is you, they are other,
total strangers, outside your city gates,
not to be admitted, at least not yet'.

What goes on within is more alien
than those companions  of our social life;
fellow images on our inner screens
where life's dark drama flickers fitfully.

Geometries of plants and animals
speak convincingly of law and design
but beneath all flows an endless river
of seething chaos so much more malign.

Our weighty substance is forged from pleasure
and increasing pains: the I is dancing
alone in delusion's bright theatre,
treading its treacherous, subconscious boards.

And when the curtain's drawn, sleep lulls us too
into some nebulous remembrance of
a world that never was and cannot be
those unknown canyons of reality.