The body rests, but the theater continues.
The curtain of sleep closes,
and behind it, the stage remains lit.
The dream does not bow to fatigue,
does not bend to biology,
does not dissolve in the chemistry of melatonin.
It is something else.
It is the animal that does not sleep,
the watchman who never shuts his eyes,
the intruder who knows the soul’s password.
Sleep is a gesture,
a ritual of disconnection,
but the dream is the saboteur of silence.
It enters with dirty feet,
with hands full of images,
with a mouth full of voices we do not recognize.
The dream does not ask permission,
does not respect time,
does not obey logic.
It is what remains when everything goes dark.
That is why sleep does not change the dream.
Because the dream does not belong to the body.
It belongs to the abyss.
To the secret archive.
To what was never said.
To what was said and denied.
To what was lived and forgotten.
To what never happened, but insists on existing.
The river bath, on the other hand,
is a pact with the visible world.
It is the body surrendering to the current,
the skin negotiating with the water,
time bending to temperature.
There, the dream does not enter.
There, sleep does not matter.
There, only the now exists.
The river bath rejuvenates
because it returns the body to its liquid childhood.
Because water does not ask,
does not judge,
does not archive.
It touches and carries.
It welcomes and dissolves.
It is forgetting that does not wound.
In the river, the body remembers not to be stone.
Remembers not to be machine.
Remembers not to be prisoner.
There, time has no teeth.
There, the face has no age.
There, fatigue has no name.
The river bath is the opposite of the dream.
Not invasion, but surrender.
Not theater, but ground.
Not shadow, but clarity.
Not what remains, but what restores.
That is why sleep does not change the dream.
But the river bath changes the body.
And sometimes, by changing the body,
it changes what the dream dares to visit.
“Liquid childhood” interesting what that conjured up for this reader.
I rarely remember dreams anymore and they are never about the past anymore…used to be. But now they are of some unnamed future and often I don’t even recognize me in the dreams…
At my older age, I surrender to sleep and let it do whatever it wants with me.
Really good write here PAR. You bring us along with you, but not just as observers, more like participants.
j.
Thank you, I try my best to invite everyone into my poetic adventures in PARland. 😎
Wow… like this
” Sleep is a gesture,
a ritual of disconnection,
but the dream is the saboteur of silence.”
Enjoyed this poem Par
Sending my love to you.
Brilliantly penned, PAR. Into the book it belongs! Riveting imagery, written as only you can my friend. Simply amazing. Appreciate you.
Damian
Sending my love to you, dear friend.
Inspiring, transcending, mesmerizing, infinite. I’m hooked. PARland sounds mind blowing.
We must keep on acting to feed reality with our half-dreams.
Hello, dearest poet.
Your observational and introspective poem took me in a journey I didn’t want to end – a peaceful meandering that left me weightless and to borrow a word, liquid.
Brava.
The liquid form is the most adaptable and dangerous of all, so we must keep our emotional liquidity under surveillance.
That we must.