Not Exactly the Minotaur’s Maze at the Bottom of the Marianna Trench

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem 

You know what dreams are.  Poetry in sleep

They tease us with their challenges and knots.

Our nightmare depths drag monsters that will creep

And lunge.  These dreams persist as plotless plots

With turns and twists like tentacles that grasp

With suction cups and draw us towards a hole

That chomps and swallows.  In our beds we gasp

Or would if we had not been gulped down whole.

Vanilla nightmares take us back to times

More normal like our schools but with a change

To make them even worse when bully crimes

Loom swollen making even good parts strange.

  We’re late to class and we are trapped in goo.

    Our feet can’t slog through.  Octopuses chew.

~ Phillip Whidden