Carole’s Neighborhood

What odd things dreams are when we have them. We experience quite allot of things during REM (rapid eye movement). How such complexities arise; we are shown that brain wave activity is just a little bit higher during REM. Why do we have dreams? Well there is a large proportion of scientific matter on the subject and though I find such things interesting I shall not speak much about them so I may not retard my reader's interests. Though one line of thought is that dreams have a therapeutic quality towards them. If so then I may need a lot of therapy :)

I cannot say how lucid my dreams are but I suspect them more lucid than others. I can remember certain time intervals such as a week or a year within my dreams. When I awake the entirety of my dream time compacts into basic flashes. Much like a different time as described in Mark Twain's novels "3000 years amongst the microbes" and "Letters from the Earth". One of my greatest curiosities is my ability to notice a different kind of history.

When I am there in the dream at a certain place or with a certain person that I know or am familiar with, I can tell you the entirety of what I know of the history of that place, person, or thing, (noun) and of its past, of days prior that is of my present memory, for I often dwell on such things while dreaming. This also leads to another curiosity that I have, why is it that I can daydream or postulate about such things while dreaming. I wonder if this is adding even more of a thought process in my brain and makes me worry that I may be thinking more while I dream then when I am awake.

Though as one reads this passage you may have bob on a question or two you wish to ask. "Does this person realize he is dreaming while he is in the process or does his dreams seem so ordinary as if everyday real life that he cannot are hardly ever does? I can assure that 1: there have been times that I have notice that I was dreaming but not often and 2: that my dreams can be far than extraordinary if not quite bizarre. As are the people that I meet and indeed they seem very real I may argue even more so then some I have met awake.

I can say that I have long conversations with certain people very interesting but not those famous from the past. And I have fun though not wild adventures on occasions. One of my latest exploits was having a very fond love affair with a certain person I only know in my dreams though sadly not yet in reality if there is such a person. It lasted for what I recall a year but there is one week during and prior to the my meeting with this person that hangs vividly in my head. There is also one more characteristic that I remember well, a middle aged business woman that often criticized and praised my relationship.

Indeed I am quite fond of these experiences but there have been some of the most dreadful kind. One such instance has been so devastatingly terrible that the entire memory has been blanked out of my mind. I awoke from this dream with tears in my eyes and heavy lump of lead and iron where my heart should have been. I had no knowledge of what had conspired, I had only the deep sense of losing someone dear to me. Not to the bed loom of death but just becoming completely unreachable that it may have well been if not worse of a distance between us.

It has caused such a huge impression on me that it still haunts me to this day even after six years. From time to time when I am in a small and secluded place where no one can hear me I will scream agonizingly. In my minds eye I am alone with no one recognizing me. It reminds me of quantum theory. Where an atom is in a state of existence only when it is recognized. Thus I find it hard at times to affirm my own existence even amongst a large amount of people or socializing with friends.

I say this not to acquire your pity but to conduct the memoirs of these unreal people that I know. For though they may not be confiscated by death they live quite abundantly in men if not me.

I am constantly disturb by the apathy I see in peoples concerns for the worlds state of affairs. Never -- at anytime in history -- such as now is there a demand for us to obtain an equilibrium with our cultural, economic, environmental, and our living standards. What are we planning to do about this other than squabble the same old complaints that have been tirelessly thrown about to dangle and distract us for over six if not twelve generations already?

Can this truly be the era of procrastination that gives way to the era of consequences as Winston Churchill proclaimed. Already we have seen that resources are faltering crippling our means of transportation while we set up a global economy. It seems a bit careless that we are now returning toward deregulation creating a quote on quote free market. We have seen the drawbacks of this system by the reprehensible actions of several companies like Enron. Already they are making energy into stock that can be controlled by just a few idealist monopolies. The only thing this will do is shorten available resources to the customer and put higher costs on the resource not already taken up.

As it has been said "Companies are more dangerous than standing armies. For if any nation were to allow it inflation of money and economy to be controlled by such an institution, they would be enslaved slowly and surely until their children awoke to see their fathers conquered and the land swept from under them."

Whales for the Wealthy

It's been really amazing staying in a 18 million dollar home here in Maui on Makena beach, (and also having friends that like to spoil you at their expense) but now there's no housing left for the middle and low income classes in Hawaii. A one bedroom on the beach is 1.5 mils, a two bedroom condo $379,000 plus association fees. Sugar plantations and pineapple lost out to international competition. Was it meant to be, that such beauty should be reserved for only the wealthy? 

Totems Lost

An orange ball sun sets
as a green streak explodes.
Lava rock, palm leaves, and breeding whales
crest, then submerge                                                                                                   

Makena Beach, Maui

into subconscious levels. Negro
clear crystal waters, energy
dispersed, chilled chi waivers.

Terra homo sapien bellies
lay supline on wood floating, earth
sealed by lava fires, chilled with
trade winds returning. Rivers ran
red as man prevailed over Gods
and nature. Sharks now swimming
backwards, humans rise into darkened
skies, green only a mirage,
a pretense, omens forgotten
in totems lost.

Spiritual Shortcomings, Historically Speaking

The first deadly disgusting behavior
Pontified in the fifth century
by Pope Gregory the Great
was predictably punishable in hell
by being broken upon the wheel.
Pride goeth before

Lust, the second deadly sin
in descending order of seriousness,
of the seven offenses against love itself.
Avarice guaranteed the sinner perpetual
dunking in freezing water, while Anger
would cause one to be dismantled alive.

Suffering from Sadness (or Slothfulness)
would find an eternal bed of snakes. Avarice
(or Greed) victims were showered
with cauldrons of boiling oil. The Gluttonous
were fed rats, toads and hissing snakes. While
the lustful amongst us were merely smothered
in everlasting fire and brimstone.

Salvation, by way of the seven contrary virtues
delivered souls to heaven above.
These counteractions were guaranteed by
Humility against Pride
Chastity against Lust
Kindness against Envy
Abstinence against Gluttony
Patience against Anger
Liberality against Greed
Diligence against Sloth

Worthiness of redemption could also be purloined by a designated
tithe to the local medieval priest. “Good Works” as well, entered
into the confessional equation for eternal forgiveness:
Feed the hungry
Give drink to the thirsty
Give shelter to strangers
Clothe the naked
Visit the sick
Minister to prisoners
Or bury the dead.

Authors Note: Regardless of these noble altruistic behaviors, (which usually occur late in life) , I would hope eternal rewards exclude the unrepentative, immoral, shiftless, self-gratifying, good-for-nothing, arrogant shits, that continue to profit in the commercialization and packaging of death by sin.

Cheryl Lynn Moyer

New Year's Resolution 2008 -  I must work on my anger management issues.

Black Belt Blues                                                                   

Womans.home

One day Rosa Parks was just too tired
of accepting that's how things are.
Martin Luther King had a prophetic vision
he wouldn't live to see the mountaintop.

Sweltering heat, poverty, racism and despair
still claim all the breathing space
between the catfish ponds and the cottonfields.
 
The blind, the crippled, the poor, and the elderly
bundle up in layers hugging their own warmth
to sleep at night, staring at  falling stars
through their cracked and rusty sky.

Children nibble a mouldy potato.

Abandoned cars, corpulent vultures
loveless dogs walking nowhere
claim these back rural dusty roads.
Raw sewage pours into the open grass.
The sun bakes it all hard and crusty.

You can clean motel rooms for a dollar each.
Walk four miles to wash a white woman's clothes.
Beg a ride to the grocery store.

Mothers sing their Baptist prayers.
For your children's sake you stay alive.
 
The young people have escaped
rewarded with real jobs, real pay, real benefits
In the cities and way up north.
Their mothers used a switch with loving hands
to help them find their blackbird wings.
 
But once they've tasted
respect, human dignity, a life worth living,
they can't go home again.
They can't sleep there.
There's no peace in their souls,
only fear, anger, defiance
and the god damned bloody tears.

Cheryl Lynn Moyer

(Published in Down In the Dirt Magazine - 2006)

Milk of Life

A pure white Persian cat had just carefully
shook each of her kittens throats
until they were asleep.

She had no milk to feed them.

She laid them in a row in the sun's
last rays to keep them warm.
Their eyes dimmed into the night.

Now as I stare into empty cupboards
and the bottomless grief on mothers'
faces, I wonder

how many infant souls
have been silently laid to rest
gently beneath the daffodils?

Cheryl Lynn Moyer