Sweating and Yelling with Our Physical Eyeballs Gouged Out

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

We go deep diving in our shallow dreams.

Those dreams, though, may not be that shark-depth deep.

The deeper dreams are down below in streams

Much deeper than the Gulf Stream.  In our sleep

Between the twitching of our eyelids, we

Endure as if in Mariana Trench

Those nightmares deeper than the shallow sea

Near surfaces of waking.  These dreams drench

Us in our deepest fears and archetypes.

We scream inside and even sometimes in

The darkness of our bedrooms.   There sleep snipes

Our guts with nights of unspeakable sin.

  Too much like Oedipus we wallow through

    Supressed desires too awful and too true.

©  Phillip Whidden