I lie here,
hopeful in dazed delusion
of the chance
as Blake’s
bright burning tiger
in his forests
that I am yet dreaming
perchance to sleep –
but then
breath caught
and throat startled into waking
I find
with plummeting
heart and hope
my belief of
sentient drowsing
is but a glass
quicksilvered –
an inverse and obtuse view,
and night’s clamour
of darkness and dim clawing
in truth
is a madcap horror
of dim and drear reality;
a broken morning’s yawn
of stretched yellow-furred tongue,
with the bed-bending,
back-breaking creak
of sticky eye glue
unwieldy
in its half-conscious
prod.

So the process starts;
that same old
trudge-grudging routine –
everyman’s day
in a bitter world
filled with grimness
and gut-angsty roaring
at being rudely shoved
from a beautiful dream
within a dream
and I recognise
like all caged sunstripes
waiting for their convenient
diced meats
(the thrilled kill – along with their claws –
removed)
I will not soon be prowling
merciless in splendid isolation
blissful sharp-toothed queen
of the cool jungle grasses –
but instead
tramping
the brain-sapping mundaneness
of pollution bounded bamboo –
and the dull, paw scraping
day-sweated
mental concrete
we know
all too well
as
ordinary,
everyday,
life.