What Boys Think About Dreams
Reading The BFG in my Grade 3 classroom in China, discussing how the giant bottles up dreams. Sensitive, overweight, shy Chinese boy asks: Do dreams die? (He dreams of fast food and being loved.) Fiery-haired ferret-fast third-culture Brit is convinced: Yes, they get used up. Simple. (He dreams of sports glory and growth spurts.) Paper slim, tree-clambering mountain Swiss boy: You can use dreams three times. (He dreams of saving endangered jungles.) Bespectacled, ill-behaved son of a female CEO states: Dreams disappear whether you like it or not. (He dreams of futuristic travel and seeing his father.) Furiously imaginative, home-work hating German boy: If you don’t use them, they become nightmares. (He dreams of speaking his mind without anger.) The debate continued but was many years ago. Boys all teenagers now, hopefully living the dreams. The Wisdom of Photons But the dark embraces everything: shapes and shadows, creatures and me – Rilke I wake up in the middle of the night. A single star winks at me. Photons fired out thousands, maybe millions of years ago, skimming space, slipping solar systems, sneaking past planets—one true beam sometimes bent by the gulp of gravity, but always adhering to its lucky destination. Looking at starlight, I feel the glaring truth: on the long road of Order to Disorder-- a journey of trillions of years uncountable in this fleeting human mind—I am just a flicker, a tiny finger of light and heat, hardly noticeable in this minuscule moment, yet a flame nonetheless, with heat and light and worth and rage. So I must try to shine, shine all the brighter for the dying light I am. I thank the photons for teaching me. What they lack in mass they make up for in wisdom. The Fireflies My wife tells me to go to the car park, to the wooded edge where the night starts. Tiny bold lights lazily carouse the air. One or two at first are amazing enough. Then a cluster. Some come to investigate me, landing on my trousers, blinking approval. I am amazed there is such magic here in the woods of Montagnola, metres from overpriced food for Ferrari drivers, rants, alcohol diffusing any wider awareness. Hesse knew this, he found the fireflies and bemoaned the shrinking of woods. Published in Lunch Ticket May 2021.
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Poetry Biography:I have had over 70 poems published in the following worldwide magazines and literary journals: A Handful of Stones, Acta Victoriana (Canada), All the Sins (UK), The Amethyst Review (USA), Amsterdam Quarterly (NL) The Blue Nib (Ireland), Bolts of Silk, Borderless Journal, The Brasilia Review (Brazil), Bushfire Literature & Arts Review (US), Cadenza, Cake Magazine, Carillon, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (Hong Kong), DASH (USA), Clackamas Literary Review (USA), Cooch Behar Anthology, Dawntreader, Dreamcatcher, The Dillydoun Review, Earth Love, The Ear (US), Eastlit (East Asia), Erbacce, Envoi, Finger Dance Festival, Ginosko, Gloom Cupboard, Hidden Channel, Inlandia Journal, IS&T (Ink, Sweat & Tears), Into the Void (Canada), The Journal, The Lakeview Journal (India), Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Lunch Ticket (USA) The New Writer, One Hand Clapping, Orbis, Oregon English Journal (USA), The Passage Between, Prole, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Sonic Boom (India), Third Wednesday (USA), Of Nepalese Clay (Nepal), New Contrast (South Africa), One Hand Clapping, Opportunity Publishing, The Oregon English Journal (USA) Origami Poems Project (USA), The Paddock Review (USA), Panoplyzine (USA), Paper Swan Press, The Passage Between, The Peacock Journal (USA), Pens on Fire, Poetry Salzburg (Austria), Potomac Review, (USA) Prole, Pulsar Poetry, Rear View Poetry, Queen Mob's Teahouse, Qutub Minar Review (India), Red Ink, Shiela-Na-Gig (USA), South Bank Poetry Magazine, Stand, Waterford Teachers Centre, (Ireland) We Are a Website New Literary Journal (Singapore), Weber - The Contemporary West Review (USA), Windfall (USA), Writing Magazine, Words for the Wild and Verbal Art (India). Archives
March 2024
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