The sky is blue and red and yellow and grey
Churches, electric grids, smoke stacks, and a tree
Bridges, standing water, packs of dogs, a whistle screech
I always heard
You can’t die in your dreams
Or, if you did, you were dead in reality too
But last night while I was sleeping
A guy took a big gun
A magnum something that makes a mess
He put it against my head
Pulled the trigger
Everything went bright white immediately
That was the end of that dream
But if I am dead,
Would I know?
Could be that’s not Newark out there
The turnpike is only a cruel trick
The announcements they make about
Broad Street are some delusion I have
carefully constructed to fool myself
because I didn’t want to die
The Portuguese woman moving attractively to the
nearest door is just some wild fantasy with
lovely dark, curly lies flowing over her shoulder,
her bag not full of oranges and a tin of cocoa
Or the dream didn’t kill me
I lived somehow
Even though expired in my sleep
Another assertion disproved
Another rumor untrue
I’m not sure yet which
Given the choice
I hope it’s just superstition
Death is too much trouble
When you don’t know what it is.
Tom Obrzut manages a homeless shelter in midtown Manhattan called the Traveler’s Hotel. His Total Poetry project documents his daily commute from Maplewood, N.J. to New York and his work with the homeless. Posted January 2006.
