What did it mean, what power exerts,
When waking life has just desserts?
A dire-dream slipped through my mind unguarded,
To flame the way, lights disregarded.
Insomniac, I left my night-bulbs on back then;
For fear of the wraiths I slept with my pen.
For fear of my faults I slept through the day,
While workers channelled the abysmal way.
Then here for my Goddess are the terms of that dream,
Like stage-hands our semblance were moved to a scene:
Charged to manoeuvre two living maquettes,
Two grim postured women with lace bertha-necks.
All suppleness gone, dissolved of their flesh,
Their limbs were wood, their joints metal-thresh;
My dreammonger conjured the task for trafficking,
To move in new ways the gruesome mannequins.
The nearer the elder, and less perturbed,
She suddenly seemed in the gloam disturbed,
And to my dream-horror, and my protests for home,
That loathing lady, with eyes of foam,
Grabbed my wrist and fixed my own;
Urged me: “release us from this dismal throne”,
In just one weird moment shared their disaster,
How their bodies became puppets for a far puppet-master,
From a long-lost time their sibling hearts stolen,
For the King of Odessa, his blood emboldened,
And they were exsanguinated, exiles converted,
Deossified sisters with sycamore skirted.
Her grip released, I could not have known
The future dark ways that they would have shown;
That doppelganger split into sisters was mine,
The ghastly hand that touched, divine.
What did it mean, but obscenely teach
Of those bold futures out of reach.
Five years on, that sister’s touch caught up with me;
From a motor vehicle flung, and into a Spanish surgery.
