Both Sides Now, An Assortment of Dreams

I awoke last month after dreaming I was Mohondas Gandhi, my assassin on the beach gazing at my bloody footprints as gulls wailed overhead. I felt at peace, whereas he was already feeling the rope that awaited him for his deed. The next week I awoke after dreaming I was John F. Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald shifting nervously from foot to foot at the side of my bed. I smiled my Irish smile at this sweat-stained, nervous man whose success meant his death, because I had restored Camelot, and the world felt new again. Not long after, I awoke with the words in my head, "I have a dream," and I felt a new sense of hope that others with skin dark like mine might ride that dream to glory. Meanwhile, James Earl Ray was preparing for the life of flight and imprisonment that trailed him to his grave forty years later more tenaciously than the best of bloodhounds. Finally I dreamed that I was Abraham Lincoln, and I awoke stroking my beard and chuckling at one of the comedic lines that preceded the actor's bullet piercing the back of my skull. I, whose step in freeing the slaves laid the groundwork for Dr. King's dream, died peacefully in bed, while John Wilkes Booth, who had played out. his title role, died lying paralyzed in a burning barn. Strong hearts beat firmly on beyond the grave, while the heart full of hate finds no peace.

Bluejay

Veteran of old My Poetry Forum before its hiatus. Happy to be back.

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