I am thy fool in the morning, thou art my slave in the night.
– from The Paradox, by Paul Dunbar
Bladder nudges release, now intermission,
cuing curtain’s whoosh, open
into bright.
Duty calls, urgent, while captive on reprieve
holds tight to the sentences of night.
Soon blurry-eyed scrabble
on the bedside pad, bits
weave and dabble
with scripts and
diagrams.
Laughing at the puzzle that was
so perfectly put together in one’s cell,
yet now lies in a delightful disjointed heap.
Soon curtains fall; so begins the next act.
Top Image: Theatre Curtain for Parade, 1931 by Pablo Picasso
Laura is today’s host for dVerse’ Poetics. Laura says:
For this Poetics challenge I’m giving you choices but you can only choose ONE!!
1. Here are some lines from Paul Dunbar’s The Paradox: – select ONE and build your poem around it.
•I am thy fool in the morning, thou art my slave in the night.
•I am the mother of sorrows; I am the ender of grief;
•I am the bud and the blossom, I am the late-falling leaf
OR
2. Take the last lines of Wallace Stevens’ The Snow Man and write a poem that is imbued with the existential paradox implied there. [the meaning of which is the ridding of our usual human observation and viewing winter as a ‘man of snow’ (more HERE)]
-
For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Tao Talk 
I have truly forgotten how it can be on a theatre… intermission to me is when I put on the pause button to go and wash my hands.
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The theater of dreams gives world-class performances every night. Sometimes the intermissions of day pale by comparison.
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I know I’ve said it before, but what I love about this kind of prompt is that the responses are so different. I love the tone of your poem, the rapid delivery similar to that of a stand-up comedian, and the suggestion of the poet as performer, especially in the lines:
‘Duty calls, urgent, while captive on reprieve
holds tight to the sentences of night’
and the ‘blurry-eyed scrabble on the bedside pad’.
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Thanks, Kim! I like how you view the poem. I was thinking of trying to write dreams down in the morning before they get lost to day. It seems like what’s happening in the dreams is scripted but in the morning when they are written down they are all over the place.
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your poem is a topsy turvy surreal weave which has a kind of comedy of errors feel and perfectly aligns with the Picasso
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Thanks, Laura. What I find as a paradox is that when the stage curtain opens the performance ends (waking up after dreaming all night) and when the stage curtain falls (night, dreaming) the performance commences (again.)
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an intriguing take on the wake/sleep life – do we dream that we are awake I wonder 😉
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Ah, yes, the flutter of Zhuang Zi’s butterfly dream 🙂
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I feel the magical atmosphere of the theatre as I read your lines here Lisa, and I miss the nudge of the bladder before the intermission. Those were the days!
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Thank you, Ingrid and like your view of the poem. The theatre of dreams is always entertaining and what makes perfect “sense” in the dream is nothing but a jumbled up bunch of events.
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There is so much to love here Lisa. I took ‘blurry eyed scrabble on the bedside pad’ as how we are awakened at times in the middle of the night with a verse or line running through our head. Perfect!
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Thank you, Linda! 🙂
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This is absolutely brilliant! I love; “Laughing at the puzzle that was so perfectly put together in one’s cell, yet now lies in a delightful disjointed heap.”💝💝
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Sanaa, many thanks 🙂
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I love your theater of dreams and the analogies and paradoxes you use add to its exquisite entertainment.
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Thank you much, Dora, glad you were entertained by it.
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Lovely piece – all those insights and brilliant thoughts found round midnight…also thanks for Dreamweaver (though I can’t bear to play it lest I spend the rest of the day with the infernal earworm)
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Thanks, Peter! Glad you grokked it. With Dreamweaver, I can’t listen beyond the second verse or the same happens to me.
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(they orta put a warning on the youtube clip 🙂)
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🙂 I promise I’ll try to find a non-earwormable tune next time.
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I enjoyed your weave of dreams and theatre, a magical mystical mix!
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Thanks much, Kate!
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What a remarkable take on the prompt
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🙂 Thank you, Sadje.
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You’re welcome 😇
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You have done some interesting dream weaving on this one. The mind does do strange things in the captivity of our dreams!
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Yes it does, Dwight! Thank you much for reading and your comment.
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you are welcome Lisa!
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Wonderful Lisa, very well written?
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Thank you, Rob. I hope so?
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Beautifully crafted, MS.
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Thank you very much, Doug.
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Great wording.
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Thank you.
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Fantastically clever, Lisa.
❤
David
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Thank you, David. Glad you enjoyed it 🙂
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holds tight to the sentences of night….they are there, and then they aren’t–truly a fool’s game. (K)
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Yes!
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Bubbly like in a beautiful dream. Only to wake in the mess of reality.
I love the poet in you that sees things differently.
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Thank you, Biko!
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Awesome, msjadeli.
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yet now lies in a delightful disjointed heap… Great job Lisa…
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Max, thanks! I liked how this one turned out.
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