Sleeping Well by David Bowden

Mute by David Bowden

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Sleeping Well
by David Bowden

Album: Mute

What do children dream?
I want to see through the seams of sheepish sleeping skulls into all the strata of spontaneous synoptic signals
I want to hear children's dreams like whispers and colors
So I listen
to
Mid-western Tulsa Twins hunched on bunks in a suburbia drunk on urban artificial sweetener
Linger in sleep
Entering twilight carnivals, carnivores of sun-sugared cottonized candy
Landing on a multi-colored wheel braking at the crest of Ferris Mountain
While the last of the cane cloud wisp melts in their mouths
then south down to the tent littered floor
the clown surfed shore
and they wander in wonder
What do children dream?
I listen
to
West Coast steep street dreams steeped in San Francisco foam washed seas, sipping on dark hot golden gate teas
as they race in sprees shopping in toy stores, sprinkling lines of carts with the utilities of daytime joy and army men carpet burns on green knee campaigns
What do children dream?
I listen
to
North-Eastern waters rushing in the broken brook of Brooklyn, babbling bloods sweeping young waders deep into the baptized crypts
Alleyway glock cocks and porch step led shots interrupt sleep like dinnertime telemarketers
Eyes close to safe homes
No neon aerosol boarder lines and bandana custom check points with a tattoo cavity search
No more family caskets with the same old dimensions, always
a Nine by 22 by 40 oz and 6 feet
Not as deep as their buried emotions
Just bright suns and smiles on his 2 am bed trip
Clean air breaths after a needless run, no chase, no cops, no gangs
Just grass and bloodless sheets
What do children dream?
The east dipped ladle scooped below the globes equator
The only obtuse in the 16th century triangle
Now, genocides the size of our ignorant holocaust
An Auschwitz built out of a trance of waters, unshipped since
slave harvest sickles ceased sending blacks to the threshing floor of two sail manifolds, like physically abused children of the Mayflower
Where mud is as clear as water and blood holds the clarity of diamonds
and they drink their treatable diseases
Where the children rest, not sleep, after treks longer than we care to drive, hauling contaminated pond scum, no Brita pitchers, farther than our indoor plumbing
And they rest, I hope their rest holds no nightmares
just dreams
of clean water, a well sent from other dreamers
of peace, to sleep yes sleep with no
Night time Commutes
or
Government hoarded tributes
or
8- year-old peers in soldier suits
Just intact families, smiling, with teeth as white as their dream river's foam smiling
Smiling because he won't have to Animorph into his daily beast of burden to carry the brown water that is making the ones he loves sick
Smiling because his village is not dying
Smiling because someone is supplying
Smiling because this wishing well of dreams is indemnifying the one need on which the whole world is relying
Smiling because he is finally lying
Lying in bed and lying to himself that he won't have to wake up and not be able to see his reflection in the water he is forced to drink
Smiling because he is dreaming
but
he's just dreaming
What do children dream?
Some fortunate ones, of fairytales and fables, not able to rationalize or materialize their night time bed transits
But there are many who dream of what we take for granted
So we must awaken from the life dream of our walking slumber
in order to stop chasing our fairytale dreams, to make a reality of their dreams, but really of their reality's needs
Listen to what the children dream