Strange Fruit
My dreams toss aside the sheets
like the skin off a fruit,
evidence of wrestling
with an invincible Other
they make a mockery of taboo
effortlessly blaspheming
with blood baths and orgies
of diabolic intensity or rage
but all dreams are pagan masquerades
of animal deities, amalgams of persons
reconstituted, zoomorphically
hybrid monsters and angels
some visitors from the waking world
others resident of the dreaming one
with its own distinct time zone,
exchange rate, sites and tour guides
whence all this psychic flush
leaving us wet with exhaustion or pleasure
grinding our teeth to a fine salt
or mysteriously amused, with a half-smile
projections or premonitions,
these battlefields nightly revisited
to slay a dragon, save a princess
or, sometimes, vise versa
what of our role in these productions
glistening with irreducible symbolism
are we unconscious directors
or merely quivering screens?
© Yahia Lababidi, author of Learning to Pray