JAMES MORSE

I believed once.

I believed once, upon a time, in a Dream,

a Dream so White as Snow,

Pure as Gold, and Resplendent as the Noonday Sun,

Shining like Silver,

I believed it to be so.

I believed in its Whiteness,

its absence of color,

of so-called Impurity,

in its prim trousers and its neatly combed hair,

oh I believed,

because I was taught to believe,

by those who were also taught to believe,

that a man or woman,

could not become Worthy unless

he or she became One with the White Dream,

and unless color faded in the brightness of the blinding light of Heaven,

‘If only I could get rid of such impurities!’

I would think,

and hope against hope that I was not who I’d become:

impure, base, humilis,

of the earth,

inextricably bound to the grindstone of time,

oh what horror!

oh what shame!

to be wrong,

to be existing upon the crumpled plane of existence

why oh why can’t I just be like them?

the holy,

the saintly,

the heavenly,

the ones ‘who have found the way and not erred in their ways’

and the irony

is that perception.

Now, I live in a white house on a hill

built and rebuilt by my own hands

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

heeding advice

that the attainment of the Dream

will bring Happiness…

but it does not,

The Furrow and The Forge bears fruit,

and that is All,

while I seem to be swallowed up in it,

peering out of the fingers

and sinking like marbles in quicksand

down and out of sight

where I do not see the Dream,

nor have any recollection of its promises

only the heat of the Noonday sun

and its burning

of the imperfections,

the dishonesties,

the Rules,

until dark becomes so Dark,

it transfigures into Light

and Fear is only fear

of forgetting

for all Fears have been realized,

experienced,

with no awful stone left unturned,

Then,

and only then,

all previous knowledge

becomes “like straw”

in bundles,

lying scattered

in a manger.