In the other room
sleeps
a goddess
of green and golding
leaf-fall cascades
white
the night's moon
near full
calling
my tangled heart
here falling
piece
by
piece
together

I dreamt**
Patricia Golding

I dreamt I was an elephant,
I never could forget
The way your voice rang through my ears
The way your death still brings me tears

I dreamt I was an elephant
I never could forget
Hoping your sun shines down
Upon my skin
With memories in
My gleaming golden crown

I dreamt you are an elephant
That you never will forget
The little girl
Who mirrored you
Every which and way
And even though I lost you then
We will find each other again one day.

I don’t know exactly why it’s
Tantalizingly infuriating
To think of a journalist, ‘writer-in-residence’, falling asleep in his private bedroom
On a U.S. aircraft carrier, jolted awake by an alarm blaring
Man overboard
And he cannot do anything, so he lies in the dark and thinks of the ocean
In terms of his verses, Cowper’s and Golding’s, not as an unfeeling vortex below him
Which has just swallowed a fellow living being. Lies, and pretends to be part of the
Spectacle, the spokesperson of the anxious crowd; relishes the frenzy of immediacy.
Figures. God hates the press. That night, no one died.

“Lying in my rack. Alive.”
Of course you are! You were never in
Any danger. Picking up the flakes of terminology,
Viewing mundane events through sensationalist goggles,
Reality is incomparable
To the fantasy of your poetic nonsense. Once I used to be
Bitten by flights of whimsy, reading articles like this,
Wanted to jump ship right away but never did. It’s
For the best. Can you imagine me drowning
In the cold angry sea
My last thoughts being I wonder what half-assed literary reference
The writer-in-residence will link to me.

You are an intoxicating place
To cling to
To feel myself
In your arms
Golding me tenderly
Letting your masculinity
Console me
Read my mind
Be the right rhyme
That coalesces with
My whole being
Write poetry on the center
Of my chest
Rub your fingers
Around the ring
Of my *******
Titillate them
Sink your teeth
Into them
Embrace them
Make me moan
Each time
You blow over them
Manipulate me
Make me capitulate
To your nation