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The Ancient Ones showed us how to dream
and not die. For the demon lurks there
and will devour your thoughts, memories,
replace them with torment. No escape into
consciousness. Adrenalin-locked, our hearts
explode from screams in red nightmares.A millennium ago, the scaly devil-gremlins
hid in the recesses of the mind.
They’d jump and prick the cortex, puddle
blood intumesced with the lurid dread.
We survived the hematomas with surgery.
But time changed them — now drape dreamswith red veils, incisors hidden in the folds.
We slept with demons in our minds. The fire
in their bite clamped nerves shut.
And we screamed in silence. Each dream
closer to the brink of death. The morning
is always purple and the day full orange.We live in a land of two suns, forever awake,
and in its twilight, a wink from insanity.
Nearly extinct from ravage of beasts
that awaken in hunger when we dream,
we are desperate for rest, for survival.
Will the oracle of the Ancient Ones save us?It is written:
Go to the cave of antiquity, to the spaceship.
Open the ampoules stored there, the ones
with strange letters — Lavender and Jonquil.
Crush these leaves and petals, warm
the herbs in light of the second sun, smell
the ancient world preserved in them.Then sleep to dream. In those chambers
of your mind, use no telepathy, only speech.
Dream deep, past the monsters. Do not run.
Look deeper to where your soul used to be.
Remember the sacred book, utter its words.
The devil in your dreams will disintegrate.
Dream to the time of your ancestors, unlock
them from your genes. Dream. Dream
from whence you came. Dream of oceans,
of blue skies, of green grass. Of that place
with a single yellow sun. Before it turned red
with fire burning our home, burning Earth.
John C. Mannone is a widely published award-winning poet nominated for the Pushcart Prize (“Hauntings,” Inglis House Poetry Workshop, 2009) and for the 2010 Rhysling Poetry Award (“Layers of Man,” Liquid Imagination, Issue 4, 2009). His poetry and short fiction appear in numerous literary and speculative fiction journals such as Pirene’s Fountain, Aethlon, Iodine Poetry Journal, The Linnet’s Wings, MO: Writings from the River, Astropoetica, Silver Blade and Liquid Imagination, as well as in several anthologies. Professor Mannone teaches physics in east Tennessee. He loves to cook, a form of poetry to him, and of course, eat. He’s also an avid amateur astronomer, and the senior editor for a radio astronomy journal.
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