Friday, July 09, 2004

 

Baby

of what do you dream, baby in blue,
as you sleep snuggly in your stroller?
Do you dream of the oral, gustatory delight of the milk
that flows warmly from your mother’s breasts?

Have you passed the Mirror Stage?
Are you even aware that there is a difference
between dreaming and not dreaming?
Are you even aware that you are a “you”,
that you and your mother are separate entities?

Perhaps, baby in blue,
you dream of your past lives
when you were once a king, a jester, a slave
or, maybe, of the ones when
you were a Hindi princess,
a Jewish housewife who died in the ghettoes of Warsaw,
a tom cat crushed dead by a car driven by a drunk,
a klansman who helped lynch a nigger,
a Chinese poet who wrote about rivers and love?

Of what do you dream, baby in blue?
Do you dream of your future?
When the blueness of your garments
is replaced by the blueness of your sad,broken spirit?
(Let’s hope not.)
Do you dream of a time when the breast in your mouth
won’t be your mother’s?

Or are you not dreaming at all?
Are you just sleeping like a
you know.



Baby (Rewrite)
What are you dreaming about, baby,
as you sleep in that stroller?
Perhaps, you dream of past lives
when you were a king, a jester, then slave.

Or, maybe,
of the life you lived as a cat that was crushed by a car.
and reborn a Chinese poet who wrote about rivers and love;
who died in a war forgotten about in history books?

Do you dream of a time
when the blueness of your garments
is replaced by the blueness of your spirit?

Could it be that you're not dreaming at all
that you are just sleeping?


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