DALI DREAM

Blue skies, turquoise water,

and a melted watch were time

itself when rockets and shuttles

were tigers in the blue...

when Florida was home

and the beach was a

national seashore where

a few of us fished and surfed

and a few others went nudist

five miles down the way.

Those were the times

when the space ships blasted

and the Shuttles still shuttled

in a grand ole time of

sunshine and outer space.

You could point sixty

degrees up at the blast of

fire that grabbed your bones

and shook your rib cage.

It was an empty time,

it was a time when I had

everything I needed and

a lot of what I wanted.

I had blue-green water

white sand, and NASA.

I had the best kids ever,

good friends, and a boat.

Fishing in the surf was

epic, dancing in the tow,

the arc of weighted bait

flung into inner space

in a sacrament of line

spooled out, and a smooth

flow of time to wait for

an orgasm of writhing,

reeling, and battle until

a silver knife flopped

onto the shore at my feet.

Reviews

[Eilis]

I like the shiver of your last two lines. Time itself can feel surreal. The contemplation of memory does end this way for me at times. The nostalgia of the past set alongside the present can make it hard to distinguish what exactly has changed—me or the world. The world (life, experience) does change me so it feels there must be some reciprocity.

I really enjoyed the use of “empty time” where you placed it because it is an unexpected use of the word empty and when held up to your final image creates a sort of echo. We have this space where things feel open, full of possibility, an order understood, and also safe. There’s a sense of knowing what will come next that is offered, almost promised, by the building of the poem that rattles on the ground as that knife falls.

This is sort of like revisiting memory with someone else and finding their memory is completely different. Or perhaps simply becoming disillusioned by what the past makes us feel. I’m not sure. I will think about it a bit more but I like the thoughts it induces for me. I like this duality in the universe of the poem. The comfort alongside the disappointment. I’m not sure if disappointment is the word I want but it is my first instinct. Great poem.

[Vol]

Ellis,
Thank you for your wonderful review! I love it when conversation that belongs in a quiet pub over a cold beer, flows toward poetry. Just thing a hundred years ago, poetry was part of everyday life for many people... There were "patrons' and followers who could not wait to see what ould be in someone's next publication... If Time is measured by progress, we are headed something is wrong!!!
Vol

[Relic]

A while ago I was always looking for some surreal avatar and Dali was always a go-to. I like your takes on time. I was in Florida once when I was a kid. I almost tipped me and my father over in a golf cart while driving him to the next hole. lol

[Vol]

Florida is not the same anymore...

[Relic]

So I've heard. :(

[Thomas W Case]

Great imagery. You take the reader into the scene.

[Vol]

Thomas,
Sometimes the image IS the message...

[Lorry]

I like Dali, I think, but it is way more complex than that. On the one hand he painted Christ of St John on the cross, which is a brilliant painting and is now housed in the Kelvingrove art gallery, which was my local gallery growing up, but on the other hand he does look a bit like he should be making and selling ice cream,or is that just because when I was a kid the local "Icey" (ice cream van) was run by a guy with a weird swirly moustache, therefore making him every parents worst nightmare!
But don't you just love it when you have a Dali-esque dream? I think they were my anxiety dreams, where I would be thinking I was in an exam with no idea how long I had left, as all the clocks had melted! (I knew it was an anxiety dream though, because I was mute in them and they are the only guaranteed way of shutting me up! 😃
I'd have loved being around in the first days of space flight, but now its like " another rockets going where? ....Meh!"
On the plus side though, Musk might take his new buddy the Trumpet to Mars with him, God help the Martians! 😃

[Vol]

Lorry,
Dali... really is a cool dude... he grew up in Catalonia under Franco who treated those people and their land with all the cruelty he could muster, and his paintings almost always depict the land as serene and beautiful but everything on it is distorted, and... uh, weel you know, surreal... He was a devout Catholic who understood where his salvation came from. I get him, and have always loveed his work. One of the two main museums dedicated to him is in St. Petersburg, Florida not far from my home in Sarasota. Some of his s**t, on the other hand, is nothing less than WEIRD!
What a blast it was to live on the space coast when the shuttles were going up!
Is there something going on with the Martian economy that needs saving? Those guys could probably fix it, but if the little green men are like some of the do nothings in Washington, they won't mind an invasion...
Vol

[Lorry]

Even the title of his painting are weird. Like "Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening."
Need I say more. Plus he gets away with the swirly moustache thing and being an early hipster too. A crime usually punishable by death in my book! 😃

[Vol]

Lorry,
Hahaha!
He was a Genius. I was introduced to his work in a trade journal for jewelry that featured his designs... There was a rectangular Smkey Topaz with a hinge on one side. When opened, there was a crucifix inside, when closed and you looked through the flat table... he had figuted out the refraction and tiy saw a portrait of Jesus... I still cannot believe it. I've looked on line many times and figure it must now belong in some private collector's collection...
Vol

[Lorry]

Bloody rich people! Think they can own everything and anything. Should be a law against it, like taking art away from society. Isn't that what the nazi's did? Didn't work out too well for them in the end either, so here's hoping, eh?
😃

[Vol]

I am absolutely with you... I remember when the Navy purportedly shot down Flight 800 out of New York, and no one survived... I never give them a thought... But there was a Picasso on board, as well...