Shared Ribs
Shared Ribs
My unconscious deflects the cryptic, oscillates
between the quotidian ho-hum
and the quotidian urgent,
makes a big to-do of the to-done–
fetishizing all those t’s foolishly dotted,
i’s crossed–
though often, turns only my torso,
doesn’t even scan
dream pages.
While you, asleep, leap
from penumbral cliffs,
wheel monkey-wrenched helicopters,
exact precise control
over the trigger kegs
of ravening St. Bernards
and, whenever I reach across, are chasing hard,
some sure inkling
of salvation.
You want, upon waking,
to tell me about it.
Pupils amplified by night’s close,
voice as husky as if it wore
an aviator’s jacket–
you tender word montages
from the irrational geographic, a tout
for your disappearing country,
while me, I pout about needing tea,
willfully weighting
the baggage that keeps
me here–
for I fear,
shouldering the sheet,
that you are Jung at heart,
while I find myself an old hand
at schadenfreude.
Oh, the heart, the gloved heart, mittened
by its own chest, caged
by those expanding, contracting ribs that join us
on some anthropomythic level
(which you will likely describe
one morning–how the curved bones moonscaped
Lethe skies–while I silently bite ribbed lips, nodding)–
for you listen to me often enough
mornings, evenings, afternoons, even without
kegged St. Bernards.
Why we love so much
the ribs beside us
in this dream
of fitfully shared
sleep, companion heart beat.
****************************
Here’s a poem posted for a prompt by the wonderful Hedge Witch (Joy Anne Jones) on With Real Toads. The prompt, accompanying a very cool article on Mind and Symbol, is a list of words taken from the first chapter of Man and Symbol by Carl Jung.
Tags: comparative dreams poem, http://withrealtoads.blogspot, Innocent by-sleepers poem, Jung at heart poem, Man and Symbol prompt poem, manicddaily, Shared Ribs
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ManicDDaily 
March 27, 2014 at 9:41 pm
ha. wicked flow in this and some fabulous play with words…co much to like here..love the rib play, to the rib lips, the contrasts of the even voice to the husky, the questions and yet still love in the end…
March 27, 2014 at 10:20 pm
I love how your words allowed us to peak and ride the descent of your adventure. I agree so many fabulous phrases, twists and turns.
Cleverly written-I must read it again-I always wanted a St. Bernard. I love your ending-the dance of warmth after the clinging fear.
Bravo
March 28, 2014 at 4:46 am
What a rush this was! Phew… I only felt my brain catching up to the words by the final stanza, which is like a tiny poem all in its own perfection.
March 28, 2014 at 4:47 am
Two people waking from their undiscovered country, that realm of sleep and dream in which they have traveled from each other and yet have been right next to each other all along. What did we learn or gain there, what can we share? Adam and Eve share the rib-cage of their shared heart. And how wide and wild that territory, as testified by the dream. Love that shaggy pooch come to rescue us from the white-out. Great draughts of Jung from the keg around his neck. Really loved this.
March 28, 2014 at 6:47 am
You’ve taken this prompt on a marvelous journey. For me, this swings wildly from the personal to the universal and back again– moved along by the most vivid imagery. Most of all, I enjoy the imagination displayed in this. I’m traveling and writing from mobile, so forgive any formatting problems with my comment.
Steve K.
March 28, 2014 at 7:46 am
No problems! Thanks much. K.
March 28, 2014 at 9:35 am
This was SO worth waiting for, as I knew it would be. There is a frenetic feel to parts of it which works well with the subject matter–your current hectic life, I’m sure, but also that seething, never-resting unconscious and the fever of dreams–yet there is also a sense of something evolved, something higher than the grinding and shocks of mechanics, triggers, explosions, than being stranded in a perilous coldscape waiting for mystical St Bernards–something that reads the tea leaves even before it drinks the tea. I love what you’ve done with the ribs here, the sense of joining that yet retains an indestructible, ambiguous separation which allows us to remain ourselves even in intimacy…resolving in a melt of union in the last lines. I especially like the music of the stanza with the gloved heart, but the preceding ones (the pout, the schadenfreude) are so human! I just loved all of this, the cascading, tumbling form, the surreal and complex but so visual and vivid language and imagery, and the wisdom at and of the heart. A wonderful, wise poem, Karin. Thanks so much for sharing it.
March 28, 2014 at 5:05 pm
Thanks so much. k.