My Poem ‘Wormhole’

From out of nowhere the vortex appeared,
in the blink of an eye there was a bright flash of light,
the second that I saw it I fell into it,
I was travelling faster than light, faster than thought-
the entire universe spun, flashed by,
and became simple and confined,
and then expanded without barrier
and became infinite and clear,
and in an instant I was somewhere else, at another time,
lying on my back, awake, with memories I never knew I had
and I could not remember creating.
Finding myself, finding my feet,
standing up and looking around and at myself,
and every time I looked and I saw what was within me,
I saw a new horizon, a new view, a new world,
that I could see in every detail and in deep colour.

I know where I am, I know who I am;
I know what the vortex was;
I know when this is,
and because everything feels new but familiar at the same time
I don’t feel confused or lost.
I have been here before, and I will come back again;
I am walking in my own footprints,
and I know the memories they bring back of a time before-
like I know the face of an old friend.

Sometimes where I am feels like a beach of white sand
that I am standing on and facing out at
a blue, green, and gold-kissed ocean;
and at other times it feels like I am in the middle of a busy city;
at times it feels like I am in motion;
while at other times it feels like
I have been shocked into stillness,
as if having come in contact with a surge of electricity.

I am reliving my own memories and experiences,
and then I am floating above all and marveling at the beauty below me;
I am constricted within the shell of an egg,
and then I am breaking out of my own translucent bubble
and racing through a forest of trees.

Extraordinary thoughts occur to me.
Gorgeous sights reveal themselves to me.
Dreams become reality.
Time stretches infinitely.
The temperature changes from really hot to freezing cold.
I feel like I am a child
about to be pushed out into the light of the world,
and also at the moment of the end of the universe,
after coming out the other side of a wormhole.

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My Poem ‘In between dreams’

I am wide-awake at 1 a.m.
and I have just awoken from a dream,
in which crows and seagulls were at war with each-other
outside my bedroom window- in the sky, on the ground,
fighting for the air, the rooftops, the food to be found;
I dreamt that the crows and the seagulls were in the throws
of aerial-combat of the speed, manoeuvrability, and ferocity,
of a World War II dogfight- darting, swooping,
and attacking like winged-warriors of black and white.

4 a.m. and I am awake again.
I decide to read a book,
then I listen to some music,
then I return to my book again.
I am restless. The sun has yet to rise.
I get out of bed and decide to make myself a cup of tea-
the rooms of my home are dark, but I know this house so well
that I no longer need to rely on my eyes
to find what I can’t at first see.
I can’t remember what I was dreaming about before I woke up this time;
if I recall correctly I felt like I was still awake,
but I was definitely still dreaming-
the world looked familiar, but it didn’t make sense;
everything around me was something I felt a connection to,
but it was as if they were not mine.

Seven o’clock in the morning. I open my eyes, I close them again,
and then I open them wide, wondering whether I am awake, dreaming,
or in-between places, and I look again at my surroundings to be my guide.
Before I awoke, I dreamed that I was walking the streets of a bustling city-
not knowing where I was going, but that I had somewhere to be.
The city was full of people that I knew well,
I felt like I was walking through a memory-
everything seemed so detailed, real, clear.
I could have been dreaming, I could have been awake-
at first, it was hard to tell.
I was walking across an open square, with people standing around talking
and people sitting on benches conferring with each-other,
and no one was looking at me.
I tried to say something, but I couldn’t make a sound;
I looked to my feet and saw a notebook and a pen lying on the ground.
I picked up the pen and started to write what I wanted to say in the book,
and I realised that the notebook was already full of words and thoughts
written in blue ink and written in what looked like my hand-writing
but scattered in all directions- as if they had been shook.
Then I looked up and everyone who was looking the other way
was now watching me;
one of the women sitting on a nearby bench stood up and approached me
and took the red notebook our of my hand, closed it,
and then gave it back to me.
I was confused, disorientated,
but I wanted to know why she had just done that-
so I approached the woman who had returned to her seat,
and then I saw that she was sitting next to and talking to someone
who looked exactly like me.
I looked down at my “other-self”
to make certain I was seeing who I was seeing,
and then my other-self turned his head to look up at me,
and with a smile and a nod of his head
my dream disappeared in a flash of light
and I was opening my eyes, closing them, and opening them again.

In the morning light, as I stare out my window at the outside world,
so bright and beautiful and cloaked for now in silence,
I feel that things are not what they seem.
I get dressed, I make myself a cup of tea,
and then I muse to myself about the things that happen in between dreams.