Thursday, December 25, 2008

Dream/Jimmy Silva


I just woke up
from this eerie dream.
There was a soccer pitch
upon which I tried 
to put together a game
of pick-up football.
The people milling about
were diffuse and mumbling.
It was hard 
to get a good look 
at any one of them.
I cussed about the fog
and realized it was clear,
they were clouded.
These people
seemed quite diverse,
not only in where they came from
but when they came from.
They spoke in rivers of babble.
After a few failed attempts 
to throw the football,
they all moved off the pitch
down a narrow road
towards an old hotel.
Okay, I'll follow.
The hotel was laid out 
in a quadrant of buildings
all overlooking 
a manicured lawn.
At one corner,
between the once stately
white columned structures
was a gaping mouth 
to a tree tunnnel.
Without anyone specifically
mentioning it
I knew we were there 
to look for a little girl.
I followed an inuit guy around
as he moved through the suites,
then a hippie woman wearing a sari
and finally went down to the lawn
behind a brush pilot type 
smoking unfiltered Lucky Strikes.
On the lawn
I could see down the tree tunnel.
The oaks that composed it were 
hundreds of stories high.
Christ, how'd I not notice that?
Drawing up to the mouth
I looked down it's leafy throat
and got deep shivers 
of weird electricity.
Something primal inside me
was urging me away 
from this path.
Turning around
I noticed the lawn had filled up
with these faded folk
all milling about
like a garden party 
of somnambulists.
A great murmur 
came from the tree tunnel
and I began to see people 
trickling forth on to the lawn.
The little girl had been found
in one of the rooms.
How the hell do I know that
when nobody here talks to me?
Somehow I knew her name.
I'd heard it mentioned on television.
She lived in the southeast.
Not anymore.
At that point,
I had a very strong feeling
I was about to see an old friend
coming out of that tree tunnel.
He hasn't been around 
since that night,
December 23, 1994.
Jimmy's gonna show up here
among these flickering souls.
That's when I woke up
tingling from head to toe.
I just missed you Mr. Silva
but I sing your songs 
each passing day.

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