I wake up in a dream,
Without fear, without doubt.
Without a desire to divine its meaning.
Shedding the stupor of existence,
I wake up in a dream.

~~~~~~~

Gloomy skies and silence
Greet me as I cross the dead fields.
I see a mountain in the distance,
Its peak shrouded in mists.
I walk through a drab world.

As I draw near to the mountain,
I see sparks of colour.
I am drawn to them
Uncaring if they are an illusion -
Like the Lonely towards Love.

I see butterflies flitting to and fro
Between flying petals of every colour.
I see the ground littered with fruits
And blue puddles on the lifeless earth.
I see rodents scurrying into the distance.

I see colours everywhere,
Of every hue and shade.
Here a golden moth,
There a mauve lamp.
Rainbows springing from the ground.

A golden rain falls to my right
As if the sun has melted.
And in that patch of deluge,
I see formless faceless children
Shedding black tears.

I look to my left
And see the air wriggling -
Many moving dots of no colour.
And looking into its expanding mass
I feel as if adrift in a void, weightless.

I force myself to walk forwards.
I see birds of many wings,
And red flowers dripping honey.
All whirling as if caught in a tornado
And at its vortex, a man.

I see him standing infront of a canvas,
Moving his arms and moving around.
He is painting but not only on the canvas.
His brush moves even on thin air,
The paint changing colour as he moves.

He is drawing a multitude,
He is drawing them everywhere,
And he is drawing them into being.
His eyes closed, his head bent,
Bringing his paintings into life.

He stops after a while.
His hands fall to his sides.
All the space around him
Is filled with his living paintings,
And yet there is silence all about.

He notices me and seems puzzled
As if wondering when he has painted me.
He beckons me to come closer
And I go to him without fear.
There is only trust in his eyes.

He tells me that he is a painter.
I look around and nod.
He shows me an inkpot
And tells me that it has magical ink.
I believe him.

He asks me to try painting with the ink.
Anxious about the formless anamolies
That might come out of my artless hands
I politely refuse.
He looks baffled.

He draws a pen in mid air, catches it,
Fills it up with the magic ink
And offers it to me.
'Write, if you can't draw,
Life, one way or the other', he says.

He points to the dead lands all around,
Asks me to help him bring them to life.
Others before me have accepted the Ink.
He tells me he never saw them again.
And yet he trusts another.

Or if I'd rather return to the world I'd come from
He advises to take the pen with me.
I tell him I can't carry anything
From Dreams into my Reality,
Except for things untangible.

I tell him where I come from
Hope is a dangerous currency;
That Rivers of blood would flow
Long after Rivers of Ink dry up
Magic or no.

I tell him where I come from
We don't need a pen
That can bring to life everything it writes.
More a pen that can
Write Life into others.