Dream of Consciousness
Gavin Bourke
Housefire, empty church, imagining the imagination,
or having it, imagined for you.
How do you see, your worth?
The colour of a September morning, before school or work.
The grey light, having lost the sun, a few weeks earlier.
What do you, pride yourself in?
Talked-down, from a roof, with a wicker-chalice.
Before them, or after them, the memories, that define you.
The emotional state, of a person.
What is a good day, for you?
Good money, after bad, only so interesting, a layer of pixels,
can be made.
Pirouetted on a broken ankle, in a haze, blissfully,
unaware of reality, to a fault.
It always, has to come back, in some renewed form.
Artificial demand and supply.
Fell in a dream, startled.
Impossibility of popularity, with axes to grind.
The passing through, of everything, through flesh factories.
Alignment of the selves, living with death.
Combusting braille sheets, the falling of rope-bridges into precipices.
Blowholes for the soul.
Do you become your diagnoses, or do they, become you?
Tears that can cut, through the cheeks.
Longer pauses, between the bird-songs.
Those writhing, in order to be heard.
Lost emotional reactions.
Buried deep in locked crypts.
Killed a fly, with a sledgehammer, already dead for years.
Jackdaws, rattling on rooftiles.
Memories of embossed clocks.
The past contained in numbers.
A lifebuoy on a calm sea.
The stinging of the vertebrae.
Interpretations and razor-wires, the struggle with the cast formed.
Automatic meaning, contesting.
Flies, collecting on silk screens, through which the light is filtered,
to the eyes.
He believed the newspapers and number plates, all related to him.
Smoking flint and tinder.
Sun and stillness, waves within waves.
Heavy warm air of suburbia, shrill screams and splashing water, reverberating.
Laughter and tears, suburban soundscapes.
Blue-lighted on a flatline, the yellow tips, washed off by the wind,
in the weather, of the turn in seasons, from spring to summer.
The smell of coconut and beach-blankets.
Cracked the walking-stick, snapped the bamboo, adding to the
vocabulary, of the natural world.
Scattered silences, of varying lengths, among the creaks.
A screwdriver slowly turned, in the sternum, to bring through,
the shadow.
The sound of closing doors, in cavity walls.
Cloud-breaks, totem-poles, ogham-stones, chollas and serious
markings.
The connected eyes, falling into, the sightlines.
Mythological forms that pass through, the aesthetic of Monroe.
Extraordinary blue, that cuts, right through, like current.
Petrol-blue diamonds.
Drawn into the wonders, of the deepest oceans.
Cast a silhouette, on the red-brick walls, walking past.
The high-pitched sound, of a high-speed, dentist’s drill,
burrowing through the enamel.
Time-lapses, time-delays.
The younger you, that never grew, older inside.
Past your peak, that person remained, in there, for occasional
awakenings, for realignments.
The unregulated and dark societal manifestations.
The sale of false empowerments and programmed minds.
The natural resonation of truth, with everyone.
The emptiness of meaninglessness and purposelessness.
Finding ways, to get along, with the deeply insecure.
The unfettered and corrosive.
The freedom from fear, when you have already, been dead, before.
Gavin Bourke grew up in the suburb of Tallaght in West Dublin. He holds a B.A. Degree in Humanities from Dublin City University, an M.A. Degree in Modern Drama Studies and a Higher Diploma in Information Studies from University College Dublin. His work broadly covers nature, time, memory, addiction, mental health, human relationships, politics, contemporary and historical social issues, injustice, the human situation, power and its abuse, as well as urban and rural life. He has been widely published internationally and has won awards and received numerous short listings and commendations. His third collection, Towards Human, will be published (UK) in Autumn 2020. He is currently working on his seventh poetry collection. He begins a PHD in 2020/21.